This is the first part of a new interview series, “Unmasking the Gamers,” humanising the people who play video games: the real character controlling that fictional character, the ‘person’ behind the First Person Genre.

Brendan has always struck me as a guy possessing a real passion for the medium – in particular story and morality-based titles – as well as being a strong advocate for gaming to be recognised as a legitimate entertainment medium. He lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife Megan (they pronounce it ‘Meggen’ over there), and we have spoken at length on Xbox Live chat about Australian, Canadian and American culture, the deeper meaning of games, and the patenting of Brendan’s ingenious idea of ‘Ninjabread cookies’.

His comments in this interview on the topic of ‘Games as Art’ and thoughts on the ‘virtual embodiment’ of Bioshock are a particular standout.

Here is a downloadable copy of a conference paper he has written on the latter topic: “It’s All Fun and Virtual Games Until Someone Gets Their Eye Poked Out: Virtually Embodied Spaces, and the Inherent Risk of Instantiation by the Implicit Imperative of the Second-Person ‘You’“ [Copyright Brendan Stapley, 2009.]

WillOoi: Hi Brendan, thank you for your time in taking part in this. May I begin by asking you how you got into gaming in the first place? First console, first game, that type of thing.

IncredibleBrendan: Hello Will, thank you for putting together this interview; I feel honored that you’d be interested in what I have to say!

So, how I got into gaming…when I was a kid, my parents didn’t have a television. Rather, they did, but it was kept, unplugged, in the attic, and eventually they junked it. They didn’t want my sister and I to watch too much TV, and figured the most certain means to that end was to remove it from the house completely. So gaming didn’t enter the house without some effort on my part! But I knew I wanted a game console after playing my friends’ Nintendos and Sega Master Systems, and in ‘92 when I was 12, I knew I wanted that system to be the Sega Genesis. I saved my allowance, I worked at my mom’s store a couple days a week, and I worked out a deal with my aunt that for my birthday she would get me a television from a motel auction on the cheap; after saving for what seemed an impossible amount of money to a 12-year-old, I was the proud owner of a Sega Genesis, which came packaged with one of my favorite all-time games,Sonic the Hedgehog. I beat the game the day I brought it home, but played it for months before I even bought another game.

WillOoi: The IncredibleBrendan I know is a keen gamer and community member on the 1up network (as first IncredibleBrendan, now IgnipotentBrendan). Your thoughts on games and, in particular, the power they have to consume and influence the gamer, are very passionate. You are also a rather cultured academic, fond of writing and presenting your papers on gaming as a medium. How did this all begin?

IncredibleBrendan: Because I grew up without a television, I read a lot, one of many things for which I’ll always be indebted to my parents. I enjoy literature; as far as mediums go, it’s difficult to compete with the profoundly compelling power behind words. But games have always been something I’ve found a lot of pleasure in as well. While I was studying for school, or writing a paper, break time would always be game time, and so initially games and literature occupied separate, but spatially adjacent realms. Then in junior high school I was writing a paper and taking breaks playing Flashback, another great Genesis game, and I thought I may just as easily write my paper about Flashback. So I did. And I got away with it! Kind of. The teacher wasn’t thrilled, but the writing was good and it was clear my understanding of the literary concepts we were assigned to address was on par with expectations, so I was awarded an ‘A’ with the understanding that I should never take similar initiative in the future without at least consulting with her first. After that I guess I just decided that the more things I could stuff into the realm of ’study’ that I enjoyed, the more it would become something other than work. So, someday, I want people to pay me to read, play games, and write!

WillOoi: Where did your screen-name ‘IncredibleBrendan’ originate from? Are you a Hulk fan?

IncredibleBrendan: Haha no, actually I never liked the Hulk. I always thought in real life Banner would have suffered a nervous breakdown or something. The name incrediblebrendan is one that I use all over the internet, for all kinds of things, but it was born right here on 1up. 1up is the first and only online community I’ve belonged to, and in joining, I wanted to get the name thing right. It’s the type of thing I agonize over, stupidly enough. Anyway, personal identity is kind of an interesting dilemma on the internet. I decided to include my name so I could kind of just give a part of mine away, experience the endless digital dissemination that’s so cool with all the kids these days. The identity of the internet itself is also kind of an interesting thing, and a lot of hyperbole tends to get sandwiched in with its descriptors. It’s the best, the fastest, the grandest…it’s just incredible. So naturally, if I’m to translate my ’self’ into this realm of superest of everything, I should expect Digital Brendan to be nothing short of me in my most incredible capacity. Actual experiences may vary, of course.

WillOoi: What else don’t we know about you, Brendan? Do you have, say, a secret underground lair where most of your gaming is done? The things that, you know, people wouldn’t be able to find out through simply stalking your Facebook profile

IncredibleBrendan: With the economy being what is and all that, plans for the lair are on hold. I’m sure Megan will thank you for putting that idea in my head! *laughs* No, my gaming is done right in the living room, which is pretty standard as far as living rooms go. Various curio about me: I play weird numbers games in my head, breaking numbers down into digits and repeatedly adding them until I have a single digit, and then deciding the ‘feel’ or ‘value’ of the number by which number the digit is, each digit having an assigned meaning, or feeling, to me; at the end of each shower every morning, I spit at the drain – the closer I get to a bullseye, the better the day, or if I’m thinking of something in particular, the better the outcome of whatever I’m thinking; I only started using soap regularly after I met my wife – before that, I’d just use the shampoo suds.

WillOoi: What are a few of your most beloved gaming memories?

IncredibleBrendan: The first playthrough of Sonic that I mentioned, absolutely. The Starlight Zone was a sublime moment in gaming history, as far as I’m concerned. Staying up until 5am playing Mario 64, earning all those 120 stars…and then forgetting all about Mario after playing Ocarina of Time. Man I love that game, the feeling that you were finding something new, that your experience in the gameworld was unique. Pure genius. Panzer Dragoon Saga. Strange, otherworldly, utterly enchanting. I haven’t really liked a Final Fantasy game since. I’ve got to throw Half-Life 2 in there. It was the first game I played where, simultaneous to my playing, I was applying different critical schools of thought to the world, mostly Marxiststuff, Althusser and all that nonsense; power to the people! And it made me realize that, done right, a shooter doesn’t just have the potential to draw you into its world, to actually make you care about the characters, it may be the ideal genre to form that elusive bridge between the player and their avatar, to really achieve a sense of telepresence in the player. And I can’t forget Bioshock. The game where the meta side of the story was brought to the fore of the plot and I thought “This is it. This is a seminal moment in gaming. This is what I want from my serious games from now on!”

WO: What are your general thoughts on Achievements? (You’ve got quite an impressive Xbox Live Gamerscore – at the time of writing, you have a whopping 44, 015 points. AND you have maxed out Dragon Age Origins….how?!)

IB: I love Achievements. I was a crazy completionist as a kid, and mostly, I still am. If there were multiple endings, I had to get them all. I had to get Supersonic. I found the pentagram room in Doom before I even knew it existed, or before my friends had heard about it. And when I was done with those things, I wanted to push the game, to see what I could get away with. Achievements are a natural progression of gaming in my eyes, a way to extend games past the final boss in the same ways I’ve always enjoyed, but now when I do it, my friends have to believe me!*laughs*

Of course, not all games use Achievements as effectively as others. If all the Achievements are story related, that’s a big yawn, and against the whole point of the Achievement meta-game. The games that use the Achievement system the best, I think, are the ones that award you for exhibiting ‘unnecessary’ skills. Half-Life 2 is a great example of this, for doing things like granting you 2pts gamerscore for sinking a basket when you’re playing with Dog. Or, at the very least, the games that use the achievements to steer the player toward a better way to play.

WO: You’re a big fan of RPGs, in particular those made by BioWare. What is it about this developer that attracts you so much?

IB: I used to be really into JRPGs, and I still am, but more recently I’ve loved what Bioware and Bethesdain particular have done to the RPG genre. In particular, I like the ability the player has to really make the story their own, to constantly be given options not just to customize your character’s abilities and attributes, but to describe their moral character, and see that character reflected in how NPCs (non playable characters) in the game respond to your character. There’s a real shift in the direction of data flow there that interests me: traditionally, the ‘R’ole was made out of the player to experience, and it was up to them simply to make their way down the path laid out for them in advance. Now I’m not suggesting that newer RPGs give the player the option to create a character that wasn’t already ‘laid out’ for them in some way, but the increasing ubiquity of choice within games of the genre at least grants the player that much more agency when deciding how the story ends. Whether or not there’s any real change here?…that’s another question entirely…

WO: You’ve gotten me into both Mass Effect and Dragon Age through your wonderful reflections on the moral dilemmas proposed to the player. Similarly, you also loved Bioshock, have conquered Fallout 3 and, on a slightly different note, there was also the ‘No Russian’ stage in Modern Warfare 2. What do you think of the concept of ‘choice’ in video games?

IB: The cake is a lie! *laughs* Well, following that Bioshock is one of my favorite games, if not my favorite…I think the choice in games is a cool way to create the illusion of freedom. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Game developers like to talk about the freedom players may expect to enjoy while exploring the worlds they create. The thing I liked about Bioshock the most was the developers mocking the player for feeling they may have scrapped together some semblance of freedom in the game’s world by simply making a few choices about whether or not to save a few little girls.

Andrew Ryan said it best: “A slave obeys. A man chooses.” Of course, during the scene, you have absolutely no control over what’s happening, just to underscore how little control you actually have in this world. Everything you can possibly do, you can do only because someone else wanted you to, because someone decided to put it on the disc for you to do. If you’re going to play the game, you play by the game’s rules. But how is this any different than life?

This was the seminal moment in Bioshock; in addressing the issue of choice and freedom, the game is opening a dialog not just about a game world, but about the world writ large, and a particular school of thought in that larger world. That is, most definitely, a function of art. All these things aside though, I love the ever-increasing element of choice in games. Although I’m a big proponent of games that lack choice as well. Games with choice? Those have a great potential to allow me to reflect on who I am, what I personally might want to do in a situation. Games without choice, those have a great potential to become art, I think. Art is not about choice. Art is about control, and the measured effect a converging set of elements will have upon an audience. I think, as games evolve, there’s a lot of room for either category to evolve within the canon of gaming.

WO: You also got me into Left 4 Dead, and I know we’ve spoken of this quite regularly (or even too regularly, arguably), but what would you do in a real life zombie apocalypse? Run or shoot? Both?? And has Left 4 Dead trained you in survival skills and team work?

IB: Both! Run and gun! I would hope that if there is a zombie apocalypse, you’d be in the states, or Meg and I would be in Australia, because then we’d only need one more for our team of four….teams of four seeming to be the way to go about surviving zombie apocalypse. If the Left 4 Dead games are adequate training for ‘Z day’, and I have every reason to believe that they are, I think the zombies had better find some non-gaming country to take root in first. Have you read the blurb Valve sent out? Since the launch of Left 4 Dead 2, over 28 billion zombies have been killed. That’s quite a few more zombies than there are people on the planet, so I think our odds are pretty good. Thanks to Valve, of course!

WO: What game genres do you enjoy?

IB: Shooters and RPGs are my two favorites, but I also really enjoy action games, the occasional racer, and a quality platformer here and there. And every once in a while a puzzle game comes out that I just. Can’t. Put. Down! And by that I mean Lumines. In which, if I remember correctly, you currently hold one more Achievement than I do…mostly though, I just like a really well-made game.

WO: How would you rate your experience with the 360 against all the consoles you’ve played?

IB: Oh no, don’t make me rate things! I love my 360. I didn’t think another system would come out that would challenge the Dreamcast as my all-time favorite system, but…well, they’re neck-and-neck, really. And soon, the Dreamcast may be running more on nostalgia than anything to keep up. That nostalgia was well-earned though, so there’s nothing wrong with that. I think the Dreamcast library still holds the highest average rating for games, which tells me my Dreamcast lenses aren’t too rose-tinted…

WO: We’ve mentioned that you’ve written papers and presented talks on the medium of video games. In an ideal world, how would you like the industry to be seen? And for you currently, are games art?

IB: I’d like the industry to be seen as something other than simply children’s toys. I’d like it to be seen as another aspect of our culture, just as books, movies, and television are. I think the whole games as art thing took a wrong turn somewhere. Why is everyone obsessed with finding the equivalent of Citizen Kanein a game? What made Citizen Kane such a definitive piece of art, presented as a movie, was that it presented the art as only a movie could. There are things done in that movie that you simply can not do in a book, or on the stage, or in a painting. Who says this hasn’t happened in games yet? Who says this has to happen in games for games to be art? Where is music’s Citizen Kane, or painting’s Citizen Kane? You could give multiple examples, I think, very readily. And I think you could with games as well. That just one example springs to mind for so many people may just highlight a lack of art in the movie business, I could argue. I’m not going to, but…you know. Games are art. Everything is art, if you want it to be. What the heck is art, anyway? As far as i know, no one’s ever given a definitive answer to that question.

WO: You are also a married gamer =) How does being married fit in with your gaming lifestyle?

IB: Well, I try to only game after my wife’s fallen asleep, because she doesn’t enjoy games as much as I do. And the games she does like mostly don’t involve me running around in the same eight or so multiplayer maps shooting zombies or Nazis or covenant, so I try to spare her that. But she has gotten into a few games, which has been fun. We spent a lot of time playing Lumines together, which she became very good at extremely quickly for someone who doesn’t play games at all. She’s a natural! And when Bioshock came out, I was not allowed to play while she wasn’t there. Not so she could play, but just so she could watch as the story of Rapture unfolds. We’re now playing through the second one, in fact! Mostly though, I’m really thankful that I found a woman who’s willing to put up with my gaming habits. Because once I get into a game…well, the game never stands a chance would be one way to put it.

WO: What games have stood out for you this generation? What has made them special?

IB: I know it keeps coming up, but first and foremost, Bioshock, for all the reasons we’ve already discussed. And most recently, Dragon Age, for its incredible plot juggling, and the way the writers wove so many characters together, each with their own unique story. Modern Warfare stood out as well, not for its story, but for its ability to set the bar for intensity, and its novel approach to multiplayer. By offering XP rewards, the game effectively removes a lot of the frustration of losing an online match. And Elder Scrolls: Oblivion too. I know that kind of game has been around for longer than this generation, but I feel this generation was the first to truly afford developers the resources they need to realize the level of exploration and customization they desired from the worlds they create. And it was a much smaller game, but Braidreally stood out as well. The indie scene has made a triumphant return to gaming concurrent with the rising popularity of downloadable titles, and Braid embodies everything I’d want to expect from that indie scene: a smart game, beautifully presented, that pushes and bends the genres it occupies with new ideas from a young developer.

WO: What are your views on the ‘casualisation’, shall we say, of the market – what with the appearance of the Wii, followed by the upcoming PS3 ‘Arc’ Motion Controller and the Xbox 360 Project Natal

IB: Well…I’ll say this about casual gaming: at least its helping games to occupy a place within our culture, rather than just in the toy chest. That said, I’m not much of a casual gamer. The Wii doesn’t do much for me, although I would love to play through the new Mario and Zelda games. And honestly, I’m more interested in Natal as a remote control substitute than I am a game controller. I do think it could prove to be an important step toward developing something much more exciting in the future, but for now, it all feels just a little too gimmicky for me.

WO: To wrap up, lets say you can only take three games with you onto a desert island – which ones would you bring along?

IB: Three?! You’re killing me here! Ok, ok…um…Bioshock. Half-Life 2. Ocarina of Time.

WO: Any final comments? Quips? Revelations? =)

IB: The world is not a flat screen.