Video Games and the Paradigm Shift

Thomas Kuhn was a trained physicist, but he is most famous for his theories on the manner by which science progresses -- often known as the "paradigm shift". The standard view of science is that, as it progresses, it solves new problems in a relatively linear fashion: the more we do science, the more knowledge we accrue. Kuhn, though, says that science proceeds in terms of "paradigms" -- overarching organizing theories by which information is categorized, and through which scientists conduct their research. Inevitably, the paradigm will not be able to explain everything, and as anomalous results build up, eventually the paradigm hits a "crisis", and someone proffers a new paradigm (the revolution). Once this occurs, the paradigm "shifts," and the cycle begins anew.

But importantly, paradigm shifts entail at least some loss of knowledge. Even though the new paradigm presumably possesses greater explanatory power than the old, there will still be some types of knowledge or explanations which work under the old theory but not (or not yet) under the new. Hence, progress also entails loss -- a key element of the Kuhnian paradigm shift.

It is this observation that I want to link back to video games. As gaming technology increases, we don't just get better games, we fundamentally change the type of games we get to play. And some elements of old games are lost, not because they were not fun, but because they don't fit within the new paradigms of gaming which emphasize, for example, good graphics and 3-d environments.

Take, for example, the Final Fantasy series. Up through Final Fantasy IX, all the "speech" in the game was text based, in those stereotypical blue boxes. In Final Fantasy X, however, the developers managed to make the characters actually "talk", hiring voice actors to say their lines. This is "progress", and I agree, but it entailed loss as well: in the case of the Final Fantasy series, it meant that you couldn't name your own characters anymore (because the names had to be set for the voice actors).

Similarly, if one looks at the original Super Mario Brothers game, up through Mario Three (and even Super Mario World), it's pretty clear that they are operating within a similar paradigm (though each game tries to improve on the last). But today, even though everyone thinks those were stellar games, you would never see a game released that is of the same basic form as Super Mario World (a 2-d platformer). It doesn't make sense within the current gaming paradigm -- it is a design that is no longer available to game developers.

Again, not saying this is a bad thing, just an interesting observation.