There’s been a lot of hand-wringing lately about the fate of gamers or hardcore gamers. Nintendo’s success has everyone retooling their appeal to the mainstream, and questions about what that means for the traditional gaming audience have arisen as a logical consequence . In February, Opposable Thumbs published a post asking “Are Hardcore Gamers on the Decline?” In July, Gamasutra’s “Analyze This” asked, “Will Hardcore Gamers be Pushed Aside in this Console Generation?” And now Ian Bogost has an editorial in Edge speculating about “The End of Gamers“.

While the first two articles are driven by market considerations, Bogosts’ piece is motivated by his idea of what games are. All media do lots of different things, he argues. Video games, as a medium, are defined by rules, so why wouldn’t video games reflect the whole range of things you can do with rules-driven models of human experience?

Good question. I’m all for extending the range of what video games can be. I also would be grateful for a decrease in the influence of anyone who gravitates to hyper-kinetic, hyper-masculine, aggression-and-obsession-rewarding sorts of games (even though, yeah, I play the hell out of them too). The fixation on this style of game has long stifled the creativity of game developers, especially in America.

And yet, I’d also agree with those who feel that Nintendo’s new breed of game doesn’t necessarily bode well for the future either.

I get a kick out of the lo-fi fun of Warioware: Smooth Moves, and I’m happy that people can now satisfy their Sudoku jones on a TV screen. Getting gamers exercising and socializing is a great idea too, so I’m a fan of Wii Fit and Wii Sports. But we should be wary of the way Nintendo’s cues will be digested by a larger game industry that constantly seeks maximum profit for minimum effort. It will look like “Billy Blanks Ab-Incinerator Interactive” is the next Grand Theft Auto. It will look like you can throw together a shoddy party game or adapt some trifle from the Sunday newspaper and make a killing. And maybe you can. Lots of people will try. If their games sell, what’s to stop ever larger chunks of the industry from doing nothing but train your brain? What possible motivation would a publisher have to greenlight a relatively resource-intensive, high-risk project like Bioshock or Okami ?

This is not a new argument, but I’d like to point out that it brings into relief the fact that video games are more than just rules. A form like the video game is a specific thing, with a particular history and culture. Our idea of what video games are, and what they can be at their best, is as much the “medium” as anything else, even if we don’t all agree about what our idea of video games is. Rules don’t make games. Hardware doesn’t make games. “Gamers” make games. Without the people and the obsessive love they have for games, they’re nothing.

In this light, Bogosts’ take on “gamers” begins to look more problematic, even if at first it seemed sensible and open-minded. While a big tent for video games sounds good, the fact is we’re dealing with an industry whose major structural features include limited retail shelf space and skittish financiers whose priority list doesn’t include “advancing the medium”. Video games live and grow along the lines of tension between these limitations and the impossible visions of creators and fans.

What remains to be seen is whether “gamers” can turn their visions into something that matters culturally. Some would say they already have, but there are also those who fear that video games will go the way of comic books, always too hamstrung by the tastes of their core audience to connect with a wider one. Every form makes an uneasy peace with this balancing act — but video games have a lot of growing to do before they make theirs — and Nintendo’s new breed of game is just one piece of the puzzle. 

In the meantime, the only thing that stands between a gaming market that can support titles like Rez or Ico or Fallout and one that can’t is the human effort and human ingenuity of a handful of people. From where I sit, those people appear to be getting older and more marginalized every day. It’s unclear who will replace them when they are gone — not because there aren’t creative young people who want to make games, but because the changing structural realities of the game industry may withhold the clout they need to advance the medium. 

Of course, this battle between large faceless forces/institutions and the humans who are forced to work within their parameters has been waged before. Those who fight the good fight don’t always win, but they deserve our admiration. I don’t know if you’d call them “hardcore”, but you’d definitely call them “gamers”. Here’s to them.