The memories of our future: Steampunk in gaming

These are the sounds of days that are passed

Long before Commander Shepard started rooting out an evil alien conspiracy, the Master Chief battled the forces of the Covenant, or the moment the earth stood still, science-fiction was fun. For a decades, it was dominated by semi-idealistic possibilities about what might be; it transformed a potentially scary and unknown future into a source of wonder.  Unfortunately, that hopeful wonder hasn't really translated well into the realm of video games.

Dystopian futures make for more appealing adventures, since such worlds to need more saving than other, more sunny timelines. But despite the fact that most current sci-fi games focus on the the bleaker possibilities (war with aliens, oppressive governments, and the impending doom of all humanity, to name a few), change is in the air. A niche art style that draws on both the brute power of steam-driven technology and the elegance of the past is gaining popularity, and it could bring some fresh air to the somewhat stale designs of modern games. 

Steampunk is a type of science fiction that, unlike much of the rest of the genre, is rooted both stylistically and literally in history. When Jules Verne, Mark Twain and H.G. Wells put pen to paper, their science fiction was based on the concept of combining the wind- and steam-powered mechanical devices that already existed in their world with impossible technologies to create a setting that was fantastic, stunning, and a bit idealistic in terms of its vision of where such things might take our society. As a result, the protagonists we encounter in these sci-fi stories are often intrepid explorers, men and women who were fearless and devoted to the cause of creating a better world, even if they sometimes falter when trying to achieve those goals.

But after the loss of cultural innocence that followed two World Wars—wars in which science was put to prominent and deadly use—science fiction moved to embrace somewhat darker visions of our future: retro-futurism, space operas, cyberpunk, and post-apocalyptic worlds. Around the late 1980s, however, the steam engines and clockwork creations of Jules Verne's era started to make reappearances in literature, and Steampunk's resurgence has since been continuing to pick up.... well, you know.

Steven Sanders, artist of the critically acclaimed Five Fists of Science comic
that draws on these themes, talked to us about why this art style is so
attractive."Steampunk tends to have a bit of the bright-eyed, idealistic
view of
the uses of technology that was in, say, the 20s through the 50s, only
dealing with tech that doesn't already have a negative stigma," he
recently told Ars. "People aren't concerned about steam engines
destroying the environment, or a Difference Engine gaining
consciousness and turning against mankind or something… I guess it's
sci-fi without the social anxiety that started creeping in during the
sixties."

 

Lately, Steampunk isn't a form of science fiction that merges the present with the future; instead, it's a blend of our past with what could come to be in the future or even today, becoming something else entirely. The aesthetic also captures the imagination of modders. Witness the clockwork guitar, the steampunk Mac Mini, these gorgeous monitor and keyboard refittings, or IDW's re-imagining of the Transformers… Some might even own a clockwork iPod case or two.

"There was a time when technology used to be accessible to the common person, everyone could be an inventor, and certainly every owner of any piece of technology was an owner-operator," Morten Iversen, the man behind the upcoming steampunk action/adventure/RPG game Recoil: Retrograde, told Ars. "Now most of the technology we use, we don't understand how it works. Maybe we understand abstractly—but I certainly couldn't make a new hard drive or even repair it. Contemporary design is also often very minimalistic—not always because someone spent long hours figuring out how to, but more often than not because it's much cheaper to mass produce that way. Steampunk is a way of flipping the bird to prepacked iPods made in China—I have one, and love it, so don't misunderstand me—but the notion of a universe dominated by machinery with 'user serviceable parts inside' offers an affectionate fantasy of a past with building and modifying everyday objects I certainly can relate to."

For such a great premise, it's surprising that only a few games in the steampunk genre have been commercially successful.