By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
In the debate over whether video games can be art, Harold Goldberg comes down firmly on the affirmative side. In his new book, All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture (Three Rivers Press, $15), Goldberg unashamedly mixes references to popular games such as Gears of War and Lost Planet with film, books and music. "I think that video games can be popular art, so that's why I make those allusions," he says. "The writing in Red Dead Redemption is as good as in any Hollywood script and is as good as many popular novels." The longtime video game journalist also worked at Sony on games such as EverQuest, and co-authored My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers with Helen Morrison.
By Helen Pfeffer
He knows his stuff: Harold Goldberg, author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us, worked at Sony and helped develop games.
By Helen Pfeffer
He knows his stuff: Harold Goldberg, author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us, worked at Sony and helped develop games.
Q: What was your goal with the book?
A: If you played Pong back in the '70s and maybe went away from video games, it might be interesting for you to know how we got from Pong to Red Dead Redemption. Or if you were young and you had just played Red Dead Redemption, it might be interesting for you to go back and see how we got to that point. There have been books on video games, but none in the narrative history that I was thinking of with its effect on pop culture.
Q: Did you find a common thread or attribute in the game developers whom you interviewed?
A: Passion. I saw it all down the line from (Magnavox Odyssey inventor) Ralph Baer to (Rockstar Games' co-founder) Sam Houser. You could see it in their eyes. Ralph is perhaps more soft-spoken, but Sam Houser is very outwardly passionate and excited. It's like giving birth to them when a game comes out.
Q: Your book covers the economic woes coinciding with the rise and fall of Atari. What has changed over the years that allowed the industry to at least hold the line over the past two to three years?
A: I think the industry ... has been forced to become more agile. Sadly, sometimes they are ruthless in their agility, so they shut down studios, and great developers are without jobs. But beyond the business savvy, there is also a technology savvy. We are in a cycle where the Wii and Xbox 360 and PS3 aren't selling quite as well, and now out comes the Nintendo 3DS, which is just so brilliant in many ways in terms of taking you into a new world.
Q: What challenges do you see facing the industry today?
A: It's not going to happen overnight, but once we open up the broadband pipeline a bit more, we are going to see fewer console-based games and far more full games that are downloadable. I'm not saying we will be seeing the death knell of consoles anytime soon, but that probably will come in a decade. That is a sad thing, because you like to have the physical media and see it and hold it in your hand and look through the booklet. But to take up the slack, we have indie developers who are doing really creative things with iPad, iPhone and iPod games. It always seems to be an industry in flux, but not necessarily in a bad way.
Q: The industry is awaiting a Supreme Court decision about the sale and rental of violent games to minors. Do you think that games are treated differently from other media?
A: I think it is fair to say. There are still people perhaps who haven't played games for a while who look at them as toys for kids. It's a big mistake, because they are shutting themselves out from enjoying one of the most fantastic mediums out there. I don't think the majority of the games are based on violence. And I think two-thirds of the games are not the M-rated core games. So there are places for all of them. Rockstar, with the upcoming L.A. Noire, is making it clear these are games for adults. That is why the "M" rating is on there. I really do think it is up to parents. That's why there are parental controls on consoles.
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