When Ezra Pound, in “On ‘Notes for The Ivory Tower,’” emphasized the arduous meditation and measurement that preceded, or defined, fine art—dismissing the sensibility of “the sort of person who tells you that when he did his first book he ‘just sat down and wrote the first paragraph,’ and then found he ‘couldn’t stop’”—he hailed not only the quality of Henry James’s (incomplete) novel but also the literary artisan’s underlying method. Here was a novelist who, including when resigned to dictating his ideas instead of penning them down, took exquisite care to interlace the components of his efforts into a coherent unit. Although James’s use of language is often deemed markedly complicated or even alienating, it appears to have been of the utmost importance to him that his works' structures be as accessible, character arcs as comprehensible, and scenes as comprehensive as possible.
Jordan Mechner’s video game creations—for which he has gained most renown, besides successes in cinema and graphic novelism—might be approached with a similar conception of the artist’s craftsmanship. The 1985 bestseller Karateka, for instance, plays out as a straightforward fighting game though Mechner rather considers it “a story-based game where the gameplay mechanic is fighting.” Despite technical restrictions of the time, obliging the 16th-century Japanese protagonist to don blond hair, the sole developer drew inspiration from such sources as Kurosawa films and Japanese woodblock prints—those that could “convey such powerful emotion and atmosphere without a word being spoken.” Accordingly, Mechner’s first publication enriches its world with a variety of visual minutiae, but is no less intricate technically. With the time-consuming use of rotoscoping, he insisted on the fluidity of animations for the Apple II that others with greater resources did not quite manage to translate to the game’s PC port: “it’s a million little things, and they’re just not up to the hassle. That kind of attention to detail is why the Apple version took me two years,” and this, no less, while studying film at Yale.
Still, Mechner is possibly recognized most for establishing the Prince of Persia franchise, eventually screenwriting the movie based on its fourth title. This entry, The Sands of Time (2003), suggested as his favorite project of all, like Karateka focuses on a simple setup that nevertheless allows for depth in both gameplay and narrative; conceivably, it is precisely the fundamental simplicity that allows broader considerations to come into play without deviating from the game’s principal experience. Just as the elaborate nature of Henry James’s works would not have been apparent without the notes he left behind, Mechner’s journals touching upon the complexities of a new and quickly evolving industry offer insight into the long-winded process of building a successful game that looks simple, as does a reflexive article detailing the contemplations and mechanics behind The Sands of Time, which even had most of its initial script scratched. The final version of the script (still differing from the end product) was published on Mechner’s website and is also available annotated on-site; self-evident as its action may be, the video game is typified by a unique narrative framework, smooth platforming, an innovative time-rewinding mechanism, and two central characters whom players significantly get to know through action in addition to cutscenes. This insistence on translating to concrete gameplay what might otherwise be told—a focus, in other words, on implicating the audience directly in the situation before them—is perhaps the installment’s defining maxim, alongside the objectives, which tie into this, of maintaining player immersion throughout and justifying the gameplay elements via the story, though the former remain primordial.
That these aspects arguably come to light most in The Sands of Time, however, ought not imply their being overlooked in the rest of Mechner’s games. For example, an interview regarding The Last Express (1997) demonstrates his concern for the (dis)illusions of time: “It always bothered me in adventure games that, say, you reach a clearing and there’s an old man whittling on a stump, ready to trade his knife to you, whether it took you one hour to find him or six.” As this particular title incorporates a considerable structural importance of timing, players are all the more active and engaged in its events. Moreover, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and The Last Express have in common anti-war themes that implicitly problematize many a video game’s presentation of violence as a constructive and laudable solution to woes of various sorts (although, it should be noted, such a position has in recent years consistently been addressed more critically within the industry).
As with the aforementioned release of the script for The Sands of Time, Mechner allows access to other foundational elements of his games such as the source code documentation for the original Prince of Persia, while communicating and sharing insights with his fans as well. Especially for someone who picked up the craft by studying and revising existing video games, having bought an Apple II with money earned from drawing caricatures at fairs, it has become a way of giving back to the community and enriching it once again.
