Now, whilst I would myself subscribe to the school of thought that holds that games CAN be art, I would probably say that most of them aren't. And I don't say this as a negative thing. After all, it's not like the cinemas are exactly overflowing with merit these days.
The thing is, even the worst Michael Bay mind scarring atrocity has had a lot of effort put into it by various creative types. With the obvious exception of writers anyway. Big and dumb as the average summer blockbuster undoubtedly is, it still takes effort and some talent to bring it to the screen. It's hardly a coincidence that these are the sort of films that games get compared to most often. There's lots of action and explosions but it's probably best if you don't pay to much attention to the writing. And behind all that you have teams of designers and artists and animators working away to the best of their abilities to make everything actually happen.
That and the fact that any time a character starts speaking we want to commit suicide.
FOR FUCKS SAKE JUST HIRE ACTORS FOR ONCE.
The thing is that it's these sort of spectacle heavy actionfests that games do really well really easily. As a medium it's only ever about telling a story for 50% of the time at best. And that's not even necessarily a good thing. Because a game is far more about DOING A THING. Now, I'm not saying that this is any excuse for the story of a game to be stupid. Far from it. But the story has to serve the action, because it's the action where the majority of the players time will be spent. It's the doing of stuff that makes this a game in the first place.
One thing I noticed when watching throught the archives of Game Overthinker videos on Screw Attack was that on more than one occasion whilst bemoaning the prevalence of the modern war shooter he lamented that whilst the genre produced vast heaps of big dumb action it had yet to produce anything comparable to Apocalypse Now or any of those other big important war films I've never watched because they don't have lasers in.
Shallow? Maybe. Awesome? Definitely.
And the thing is, this really shouldn't be all that surprising. It's not that you couldn't do such a thing in a game. It's just that it would be really difficult. The key underlying message of most of the great cinematic treatments of the subject can basically be oversimplified as saying "war is bad". And it's going to be tricky to weave that into an experience based around how much fun it is to shoot brown and grey things in the face over and over again. How can you get the point across that war is in fact NOT fun, when the basic play experience itself NEEDS to be some shade of fun in for anyone to ever bother playing it in the first place? Let alone long enough to get to the point.
Now, we could of course make a game where if you get shot once you either die outright (and the game uninstalls itself, wiping all your data), or you are then put into a 15 hour physiotherapy mini game in order to get another go. But that wouldn't be very fun to play. It WOULD however be art. At least in my opinion.
The problem I suppose is that in these sort of discussions games most frequently get compared to films. And they're really built on different fundamental principles of audience engagement. For all that certain sections of the game industry would clearly be working in film there are different requirements and expectations between these active and passive forms of experience. Even the most compelling RPG storyline is still going to feature an awful lot of killing Kobolds for the XP.
"why you not wuv me?"
Whilst film allows you to skip to the most interesting and relevant parts of a story, games pretty much require you to sit through the extended slog of every little detail. Borderlands the movie would be 15 hours long and consist almost entirely of a lone gunman wandering around a desert. Then at the end he'd get ganked by skag and respawn at the start of the sequel ready to do it all over again. It wouldn't be nearly as much fun to watch as it would to play.
Again, I want to emphasise that it isn't that games can't do these mighty, compelling artistic stories and experiences. It's just that it's a lot easier not to. Let's take as an example a really harsh, sad story. Doesn't even matter what, just those basic principles. Now, that doesn't necessarily sound like it would make for a great game. I mean, if the whole point of the story is that everyone is miserable then how is it fun to play? But then think about how engaging that could be in a game if handled properly. If there was a compelling character that the player liked who was having the bad time, and the gameplay was the player trying hopelessly to help out? Just trying to find some way through the game that made things better.
Hell, I don't even need to make this a theoretical example. We didn't fight Sephiroth because he was the final boss. We did it because he killed Aeris.
Douche.
Games are fully capable of dealing emotional punches like this. You can use story in a game in anyway you like, as long as it facilitates the actual game play and provides a narratively satisfying conclusion. Which, it should be noted, is not the same as a happy ending. Sad, tragic, bittersweet. Any of these can work as long as it actually wraps things up. Most people would start talking about Mass Effect here I'm sure. I won't, as I haven't played any of them. Yes, I know I probably should at some point. But this does raise a point. I know there's been a lot of rage over the Mass Effect ending, but that's not exactly what I mean. See, the thing is that gamers are, it seems, rather prone to rage and frustration. Usually over basically anything, but here I'm talking about in games themselves. See, it's going to be kinda tricky to appreciate the subtle nuanced pathos that a story might be seeking to engender if you're still to busy quietly fuming over how aggravating that last level was. Or basking in that curious mixture of relief and elation at having completed a particularly difficult boss.
It's odd really, because games simultaneously have both more and less potential to set the emotional tone through their interactive nature. And it's just as much down to personal experience as it is execution. Do you find the survival horror game scary? Or just aggravating? Is that RPG a compelling, epic tale? Or just long winded melodrama? Beauty is, as they say, in the eye of the beholder. But then isn't that true for all other forms of art as well?
And the dirty truth of any artistic medium is that the vast majority of it IS disposable. Pick any decade of classic music you like and see what was REALLY coming out at the time. Yeah, there were those handful of classics. And a metric fuckton of bland, mindless forgetable pap. And that's where we are with gaming at the moment. Right in the middle of everthing without the benefit of hindsight. Yes, there will be crap. There is always crap. But there will also be gems. And it's those that will be remembered, not the shovelware.
After all, if we don't have a shitty mainstream, what is it the true artists are supposed to be reacting to, commenting on or rebelling against?
No comments:
Post a Comment