Red vs. Blue: How Did We Get Here?

I think I first watched Red vs. Blue back in 2009 or so, after it randomly popped onto my list of recommended youtube videos. While the whole series is entertaining, the first episode is especially thought-provoking. I didn’t realize it back then, but this was probably one of the first times that I was brought to think about games outside of the context of directly playing them. The show starts off in Blood Gulch, a familiar spot to any Halo: CE players. However instead of fighting, the characters you normally control are standing around talking:

“Do you ever wonder why we’re here?”

In a few simple words, RvB points out the absurdity of the games that we play and enjoy. While this question turns out to be a philosophical joke, the point stands. From a naive perspective, games ask us to accept the reality of their world without any questions. We are supposed to learn the controls, memorize the maps, and play to win. We are, like the characters, left helpless in a world that we had no part in creating.

Of course, as we have all learned over the past 10 weeks, there is so much more to videogames than the gameplay. We are constantly finding new ways to decompose, analyze, and extend games into new forms. Simple games can have deep meanings. Short games can give way to extended discussion. There is a whole universe surrounding games, a universe which is popularized primarily by machinima.

RvB came out two years after the release of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001. Nearly 19 years later, the original Halo doesn’t have much of a following, but its legacy has been kept alive in part by youtube videos like RvB. Watching the video now, I think about how my relationship with games has changed over time. When I first found RvB, I enjoyed it because it seemed (at least in appearance) so reminiscent of the original game. Now, I am intrigued by the distance that it creates. Is RvB about the soldiers in a Halo match- or could a philosophical dialogue about the purpose of desert military bases be an allusion to something else?

Tune in to the next episode to find out...