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Games Industry Echoes Of Hollywood's Golden Age?
Zack Young writes "I just read an article over at TweakTown Gamer that has an interesting comparison between the movie industry and the gaming industry. It mentions many of the similarities between the relatively young gaming industry and the film industry of the 1920's, including the introduction of new technologies and how they shaped and are shaping the artistic direction the formats take." The article also suggests: "The overall structure of gaming companies... resembles the studio system of the 'Golden Age of Hollywood' rather than the fragmented independent layout of today. The movie studios such as MGM, Paramount or Warner Brothers had their own stock of actors, writers and directors from which the crew of a particular movie was comprised."
The article makes mention of the advent of "talkies" being a revolution in the film industry and what the comparable revolution would be in the gaming industry, but didn't movies just use an announcer or a narrator, or even just a piano playing in the beginning? That's still sound for the movie, regardless of the source, and different implementations of the same idea is just evolution.
I thought the TRUE golden age would start when Duke Nukem Forever finally comes out?!?
From the span of like 1992 to 1996, there was hardly any decent games out in the market. I remember how revolutionary mortal kombat was. Cause there was hardly any decent competition. Today I am many years older.... yet my game wish-list is 10 miles longer. Every game seem to have so much more playability with online capability and so much more depth.
Just struck me as a little odd that the state of gaming was compared to the 20's instead of the 80's. It seems like in the mid-to-late 80's is when we saw the the start of convincing effects. The result of this was fewer compromises in making a movie with a vision. It wasn't perfect, things still looked fake, but man it just got better and better.
You'll have to pardon me, I just watched the Back to the Future trilogy. Cannot help but be reminded at how refreshing I found those movies when I was a kid. Seems to me that gaming's in that state right now. The graphics are quite sophisticated, the renderings are very close to what the artists intended, but there's still quite a leap to go before we get to 'convining'.
Maybe I'm just focusing on the wrong aspect, though.
"Derp de derp."
Yes, game developers (actors) are also worked to death, and make much less money than the publishers (studios) in the Golden Age did.
I think that the rate of technological advancement is part of why game productions are still relatively (well, compared to a movie) small. If you have processors doubling in power every 18 months, video resolutions climbing, and an even faster rate of improvement on video chipsets, and unforseen standard-of-gameplay improvements increasing you simply cannot afford to spend ages producing your game. Gargantuan productions aren't as survivable as fast, more quickly released productions.
May we never see th
I pointed out these similarities in an article for Amazing Stories back in 1998, and I was nowhere near the first to make the observation.
On another train of thought - I wonder if programmers who gain 'status' for creating outstanding games may be well known enough (e.g John Carmack) to be exactly like an actor, in the way:
Programmers will have a personal manager and be able to almost freelance between game companies for particular game projects - like an actor is offered movie roles, a programmer would be offered contracts by gaming studios for a particular game.
Games would highlight even more so the fact that a particular programmer worked on a previous 'hit' game - like any new movie will highlight any A-list actors it may have in it.
What was revolutionary was dialog, voices. The music involved was under more studio control as a result of soundtracks, but that's a tradeoff.
Music for silent movies was a significant artistic "industry." House bands were pros, working many hours a day, and they had to really know their stuff. Studios might specify a theme for certain parts of a movie, and if the theater had that in their library -- theaters had music libraries -- they'd play it. Otherwise they might choose from similar keys and moods. (Under tight time constraints, movie studios use a pretty limited range of themes for their previews now. Think of how many movies use "Carmina Burana" or something close to it for their trailers.)
You wouldn't believe how complete the score could seem, based on the rudimentary "cue sheets" that a movie came with; they could do an hour-and-a-half of music (for a major release) based on cues on one side of a sheet of paper. We're talking about significant live performances of music, not just some guy banging the keys playing ragtime.
Sometime find a local art museum showing, say, an old silent Sci Fi title, and go see someone playing the theremin alongside it. Live music adds something, even if it doesn't synch with the movie as perfectly as a modern score does. It's different, not just a change in quality.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
It seems to me that Grand Theft Auto III might just be the sound revelution.
Not only does it tell a story, but it is the free-form, non-linear, go-at-your-own-pace, any order, video game ideal. The user is complete control of the progression of the story.
Not to mention its commercial success.
Sounds like a candidate to me! ^_^
We'd agree that live music played as a part of a performance, with silent movies, is a different animal than recorded soundtracks including voices -- and that the change was a "revolution" in the sense you mean. What I was reacting to was just that characterization of silent movie music:
"a human voice not of your choosing and a piano"
That isn't what happened at silent movies. It's a stereotype. People already were hearing music with their movies, and it wasn't just some guy banging out ragtime hits, it was a small professional orchestra. In reality the big change was being able to synchronize voices with the image. Somewhat more control over the music's timing and so on was a lot less "revolutionary."
Maybe your terms are somewhat off your point for me, too. "Quality" and "Quantity" don't seem like the words you want -- as "points on a continuum" they don't quite work. I do "get" the idea that at some point enough change in, say, the speed of video cards will become, or at least almost force, a difference in the essential character of what's being done. Somewhere in there we got from "ever-more cool sprites" to "3-D modeling" and then later to "holodeck fantasy episodes." It's just the terms that are muddled, for me. ("Quality" is pretty loaded: "character" comes with less baggage, maybe?)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
"Qualitative" and "quantitative" are well established words not of my choosing. They are often portrayed as opposites but they are not.
;-), so I'm glad you clarified the history. (Often, when the details don't matter to me I don't go look them up, since they have no affect on my point.)
In my case, while I confess to using a stereotype it turns out to not affect my point
That's only original in driving games. It's pretty common in RPGs.