VIDEO GAME MONSTERS

Some of us play video games and kill monsters. Why does anyone enjoy this? The idea that we suffer through nasty and unpleasant fighting in order to reach some distant happy goal, like beating the game and watching its minute-long video, is obviously wrong. I think we take pleasure in fighting the strange bestiary of each game. Fighting is exciting while scary, challenging although each victory is very likely, aggressive without rage, and quite technical while looking and sounding spectacular. What about the monsters themselves.

Monsters can be concepts. They are aliens, personifications of a gate, wild animals, brought to life by evil magic, technologically enhanced bodies. Or, they can be meaningless challenges defined by nothing but their scores in generic traits: rate of movement, number of hit points, type and strength of attacks, and specific weaknesses.

Not all monsters are scary. Players learn that even the horrific ones have a functional definition for play. A zombie is scary, stupid, green, and fast. But, for those who want to kill the zombie efficiently without being hurt, they are a kind of machine with specific function, or artificial intelligence operating according to limited rules. Such a player reduces the terrifying living dead, who lurch forward, defiant of the laws of nature, evidence that God has abandoned us, to an algorithm. The creature becomes patterns of attack, movement and weakness. A location that sends out attacks and can receive damage. The pattern becomes a rhythm and the player learns how to dance. That’s what it’s like to fight a boss. Hide on the side, run back and forth in the middle, then jump over the sweep attack, and attack the top of the head. It’s almost like DDR. Operationalizing monsters, players regularly turn monstrosity, horror, and terror into patterns to dance with.

This reduction is additional to other representations and not just destructive of them. The monster is an algorithm and more. It’s important to remember that monsters can be very impressive. Some are taller than you had imagined the game could allow, some are beautifully colored and covered with extra organs or equipment that serve no purpose, and some are too fast to hit with normal weapons. Monsters look different and can act different. This is not just diversity; it is an art of living things. Sculpture of artificial life of one kind. These living things are monsters.

The avatar spends time with no one but monsters. For players, monsters are not our friends, we do not hear their side of the story (or miss it), and we do not respect their wishes. Yet, this relationship is how we who play look at and communicate with monsters. If there are pleasures here, they involve an appreciation of monsters’ character and characteristics, a changing and complex respect for their power, a comfort in taking some of their damage, and a smugness concurrent with aspiration that we will soon be able to kill them.