When We Start Playing Oscar-Winning Movies
Pace, Kathy Shaidle. That a few large, hirsute, awkward men enjoy things like video games does not mean the medium can be dismissed. Video games continue to approach the artistic quality of films — and they should be taken seriously.
For example: L.A. Noire premiered one year ago at the Tribeca Film Festival, and it received “Official Selection” honors.
Heavy Rain, released two years ago by French developer Quantic Dream, received rave reviews. Yet some hesitated to refer to the title as a game. They instead thought of it as a movie.
Both Rockstar, which developed L.A. Noire, and Quantic Dream lead the industry in producing soaring, serious titles. And they utilize the latest technology in order to give gamers the best possible experience. Rockstar’s latest release Max Payne 3 already received recognition for its expectation-twisting use of technology. Quantic is developing an innovative engine that utilizes motion-capture technology.
These companies and the work they produce push the boundaries as to what constitutes a mere “game.” Some in the film industry appear to be taking notice. BAFTA — the British Academy of Film and Television Arts — recognizes achievement in the video game industry, which they started to do in 1998.
The Smithsonian recently unveiled an exhibit that explores the growth of the industry. It was featured in the Washington Post.
But games still struggle to receive wider recognition from critics. Roger Ebert, in a piece that responded to a TED Talk by Kellee Santiago, noted that games “can never be art.” He said that art should properly imitate life and video games, as they have ends and objectives, do not. He wrote:
One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.
Is life not ordered? Do we, as men, not have ends? These are the questions one might raise in response to Ebert, and other, critics of video games — especially since most of today’s games begin as screenplays.
But the criticisms, though shaken, still stand. The game industry needs to grasp something revolutionary before designers can begin taking home awards like ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director.’ With the latest pushes in technological development, though, that might be soon enough.
“A Pinball Named Desire?” Reduced to Stanley beating his wife 75 times and raping his sister 75 times while banging back and forth between garbage cans in between battling street thugs seems a play that somehow lacks merit.
Put lipstick, a push up bra, better lights, 3D animation on a pinball machine and it’s still a pinball machine. “Dante’s Inferno” with a points counter is – what?
I take it your game-playing days ended with the pinball machine?
No matter – some of the earliest games focused on telling a story and navigating riddles. The genre became known as interactive fiction, and it is still going on to this day.
There are also games that tell stories via interactive dialogue or decisions. LA Noire and Heavy Rain both fall into that category, as does the Star Trek-like Mass Effect series and the spy thriller Alpha Protocol. This genre goes back some time as well – when video game developers were able to record watchable video, they began recording movie scenes for their games, and a whole genre of interactive movies and full-motion video came to life. Some of these games are less like games and more like movies where the player controls the plot and action sequences.
There are also games that create beautiful environments for players to explore. Every new generation adds more to the detail of the graphics, and the visual artistry involved should be recognized.
I honestly cannot see Ebert’s criticism. The key element of a video game is that the audience is also the actor, even the director. The actor/player is cast as a character, who does have goals, and is constrained by the setting and the laws of reality. The character can achieve their goals, and triumph, or fall short in defeat. For instance, Macbeth is ambitious and desires to rule, but he is human and granted only a partial glimpse of the future. His efforts to achieve his goal could easily become the subject of player interaction. Could a more cunning plot have ensured his lasting success, or was his ambition doomed regardless? This is what video games explore.
The games that rival movies are already here. It’s called “being on the railroad.”
Poorly executed railroads (see FFXIII) are derided. Good railroads can hide their exit points with semi-open areas between them, but the exit points are still there.
No matter how many chocobos you race, the meteor’s still gotta be stopped.
That’s where the “movie” is, and there have been games that rival Oscar winners in the last twenty years. Was A Beautiful Mind really better than Halo? Was Shakespeare in Love better than Ocarina of Time? Was Titanic really better than Final Fantasy VII?