With school starting in almost exactly 4 weeks, I'm now weening myself off gaming. I might go snag Bioshock 2, now that it's $30, but that's going to be it for a while. I am contemplating picking up Halo: Reach on launch night, because I've never done a midnight launch from the other side of the doors, so I'm interested in the experience of it. It's seemed like fun, and reminds me of my days lining up for the first showing of new movies at the Uptown, when I lived in Toronto.
Gaming has become something important to me, maybe even more important than film. Mind you, when I say important, I don't mean that in regard to my priorities, but in it's place as a storytelling medium. I like the interactivity of it. I like how that creates a sense of immersion that at worst replicates the sensation of watching a particularly gripping movie or reading a great book.
Right now, there's somebody upset that I've dared to compare video games to cinema and literature, and he's probably Roger Ebert, but I am quite serious. Playing a video game is like reading a book, but instead of flipping a page to see how the narrative continues, you're pushing buttons and analog sticks. It's probably more immersive than reading a book, as you're more engaged by the character, as you actually become the character.
Speaking of Ebert, he's almost absolutely wrong about video games not being art as you directly effect the outcome of the story, as you largely don't. Very few games actually have those branching paths, and most of them are published by Bioware. Most games have a fixed narrative, and you experience that in a personal way that books can't. Novels and video games give the consumer (as in the person consuming the media, not the buyer) a very similar sense of agency regarding the control of the narrative, in that you can just as easily stop reading a novel as you can stop playing a game. Games just give you more incentive to continue on beyond following the narrative.
Now, I'm not going to say that video games are superior to literature, but at the same time, I'm not going to say that literature is superior to video games. They're very different mediums, and have different degrees of authorship. Novels, at least the good ones, are not created by committee, whereas video games are. This is where video games and film start to have more in common. While video games will often have a single lead developer, like a Tim Shafer or Shigeru Miyamoto, who oversees the entire project with their unique vision of authorship, they usually don't. They aren't really like movies, either, as unless it's totally studio controlled, the director has at least a very small sense of authorship, but the process of creating is similar.
When an author writes a novel, it's mostly a solitary job. One person, their imagination, and something to compile it on. Sure, they'll have outside help for inspiration, and have an editor's input, but it's mostly them and their pen. Film, on the other hand, is a three-ring circus with five shows a day. It's an organism that keeps moving, except when it's not, where parts of it support other parts, and most of it is never seen outside the big-top. Look at the credits to a movie, and look at the credits of a video game, and you'll see a very big similarity. Sure, a lot of the titles are different, but the jobs are very similar.
To suddenly veer to the left, I think this sets up the biggest problem with video games, and that is lack of authorial vision. People complain that there's little innovation in gaming, and we see clever, innovative games fall by the wayside while the iterative sequels get all the press (see opening paragraph) and attention. Shafer's Brütal Legend was a flawed, but clever and innovative game that had a small,cult following, and was one I quite enjoyed. Perhaps it's biggest problem was that it was too clever and innovative for it's own good. I mean, it was a heavy metal inspired, open world, third person hack'n'slash action game crossed with a real-time strategy game that I can see would put off players of either genre.
Again, I loved the game, but when you really think of it, it's a pretty hard sell to the fickle, and overly commercially led game market. I'm surprised that it sold as well as it did, something in the ballpark of 215,000 units in October 20009, with 150,000 units sold on the 360 alone, and hit 1 million units sometime in February. By week 20, it hit about 1.215 million units. (As an aside, I've just added VGChartz to the links, as that's one very useful site.)
Actually, come to think of it, that makes the game somewhat of a minor hit for such a unique game. Apparently, like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, it also caused a major spike in music sales after release, with Neilson SoundScan reporting that some of the songs from the game's soundtrack had a 700% increase in digital sales after the game's release.
(For the record, this is largely the post I was going to make a couple of weeks ago but was sidelined by the glorious experience that is Red Dead Redemption.)
Back to games as a storytelling medium, and how they compare to film and literature.
As I was saying, from a procedural way, film and video games are produced in a very similar manner. Yes, the actual tasks being done to create a game are very different than with film, but end results are largely similar. (Such as set design.) There's more authorial vision with film, than video games, unless being helmed by a big name developer. Halo games, for instance, are managed through 343 Industries, rather than a single named developer. Sure, it's a team, and they do have directors/managers/producers, but it's a different sort of job than it is with film, and there's a lot less individual control with a lot more committee control.
I think this might be what Ebert was getting at when he thought that video games could never be art, as he was looking at the big ticket, AAA titles with their publisher controlled franchises, as opposed to the smaller studios like Double Fine or Team ICO, who are often left to their own devices.
Which reminds me, I once had an argument with a dev about who is really in charge, the developer or the publisher. In this case it was between EALA, and EA. If there's anything to be gleamed from industry news, it's that the corporate, wholly owned, devs have a lot less freedom than they think they do, as witnessed by the Activition/Infinity Ward/Respawn debacle. Having a publisher breathing down your neck, with demands on DRM for an example, is pretty much the same as having a studio breathing down your neck over content. The only really difference here, is that in film there's more of a single personality involved, rather than a team.
This goes back to my examples of Shafer and Miyamoto. If there were more of a central personality involved, but one that's not at rockstar levels, then I think that gaming would be in a better position to grow. There would be more innovation to the iterative nature of industry, and that innovation would go beyond the purely mechanical (which, don't get me wrong, is very important, too), and carry over into the artistic.
So, yeah, I think that the experience of gaming is an important experience, one that ranks up with the experience of reading and watching film. It's more mainstream than ever, but it still needs to cross that final level to acceptability, but that's years off. Comics have only now hit the level of mainstream acceptability where they are in libraries and schools, and video games aren't that far off. Once the anti-gaming hysteria wears off, I think we'll see gaming evolve beyond the sequels. We'll see more authorial control. We'll see them accepted by majority.
It'll be a good time for industry.
Anywho, yeah, I am contemplating a gaming fast, as well as contemplating a pre-order of Halo: Reach, as I've never really experienced launch day for a major AAA title from the consumer side of things. Bioshock 2 is very tempting, but I should also finish up Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia, and Stranglehold before I tackle anything else.
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