The original quote, from an MTV interview, sounds vaguely esoteric, but the article goes on to highlight a certain arch mystique that games still have in comparison to film or TV-- we use those media for entertainment, but there are also films about mundane things-- say, airline safety-- and TV shows about other TV shows, films and literature. Ian Bogost, who did the feature, goes on to note that, to date, the design goal in gaming has largely been the flashy blockbuster, the fantasy escape, and asks: Do we need more boring games?


Is it possible that Brain Age and its ilk are successful because they're boring? Because they demand little of us, integrate seamlessly into the background of our lives, like those short television ads that play over the stairwells of some subways, or films used to educate prospective jurors about their civic duty? And moreover-- do we want games to continue developing this way?
On one hand, nobody likes the idea of our beloved medium being hand-tamed for the masses. Lots of us have spent years, after all, feeling vaguely excluded-- if not from some social circles, at least, we've felt that there are large segments of our verbal and emotional lexicon accessible only to other gamers. After all this time, perhaps we've become a little protective of our secret society; we like the idea that it's mysterious to others. It'd be great if more people enjoyed, talked about, understood video gaming-- but not if gaming has to change to make that happen. We like the idea of non-gamers evolving towards us-- not the other way around.

In other words, in this era where design, development, graphics and overall stimulation play "top this" with one another year after year, perhaps a few-- or many-- boring games, utilitarian games, are exactly what the industry needs. In a broad gradient with room for virtually limitless degrees of stimulation, wouldn't it be possible for everyone to get more precisely what they want-- and appreciate it, too?
It's a salient point; games are currently divided into genres based mainly on the mechanics of play, not on the nature of the experience, as films are. But "how to play" is forgettable; the games fixed in our memory hold their position because of the way we experienced them-- it was silly, cool, intense, emotional, disturbing. Filmgoers are much more able to get what they want out of that medium-- they go into the theatre, or the rental store, knowing that if they want an emotional experience, they'll grab a drama. When they want to learn, they pick a documentary, and when they want to laugh, they hit the comedy section. Games, on the other hand, have two basic primary arenas-- the design elements, encompassing design and controls-- and the experiential elements, comprising graphics, story, and music.

The goal: Make the design as accessible as possible, and as for experience? As stimulating as possible. Period. There's no spectrum that can be used to specify the experience emotionally or cognitively; it is, or it isn't. "Boring" is perhaps the exact opposite of what developers and designers want to achieve-- but by providing a counterpoint, a black to the white, perhaps a "boring" game is an essential step in the right direction, so that a range of colors can someday be represented in between.
We might fear that a domesticated, drowsy breed of game that belongs to my Mom, or to Mr. Business Man, or to Paris Hilton, might somehow make gaming belong to us less. But look at it this way-- if they can make a game exactly for them, then they can make one exactly, precisely, not for us, but for you.