Once Upon A Game

Technopulp writes "In William Vitka's column on CBSNews.com, Henry Jenkins of MIT, author Warren Ellis and GDC Director Jamil Moledina wax philosophical about storytelling in video games and discuss whether or not gaming will ever have its own kind of great literature. 'Could a game be as good a work as War and Peace?'"

Comments

Well, videogames aren't about the story.

[Doom bucket]

You don't remember Super Mario Brothers because of story do you? "Oh my god, the princess is in ANOTHER castle? What a plot twist!"

No. You remember it because of the gameplay. I'm not saying that a game with story is impossible, I'm definitely not. Half Life, System Shock, Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy... All games with great stories... but they are mostly remembered for their gameplay, right?

A game is great becuase it plays well and is fun. Story is just the icing on the cake, and does not alone make a great game make. :)

war and peace

[vivIsel]

This article deeply misinterprets Tolstoy's novel. From TFA:

"Jenkins elaborates, "The last hundred pages [of "War and Peace"] is this essay that Tolstoy wrote, saying 'if the Russians had done this differently, then this would have been the result and if the French had done this differently then this would have been the result.' "It's not hard to look at 'War and Peace' and say that this wanted to be a video game."

Absurd. The last hundred pages of War and Peace describe the way in which events necessarily turned out as they did, and that those in power were so constrained by their roles that they had no more choice than the cannons that fired at Borodino. The true power, Tolstoy claims, lies with the people--but not in any concrete choices they make. In their mass action they constitute the integral of history, that which drives and shapes it. Tolstoy would never, ever, ever have said "if X had done Y differently, Z would have happened." He viciously attacked those who said precisely that--they were looking only at the manifestations of history, not its causes.

And for all of you who appreciate [insert videogame here] more than Tolstoy: it's your perogative, and there's no accounting for taste. But I've played a lot of videogames, and I've read a lot of Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, Resurrection, War and Peace, The Devil, The Forged Coupon, The Death of Ivan Illyich, Family Happiness, Sevastopol in May, Sevastopol in December, The Kreutzer Sonata, and countless other short stories). And as someone who met and appreciated video games (and I can think of several games I would classify as 'brilliant') before I encountered Tolstoy, I'll say this: I have never played a game that posessed anything like the fierce invention, modal clarity and deep insight of Tolstoy's works. It may be fashionable to bash literature on Slashdot--there was a discussion on Shakespeare vs. Video Games the other day on which I barely restrained myself from commenting--but the insight of War and Peace will never grow old or die.

Re:Why shoot so low?

[AuMatar]

I'm a geek who's a graduate student in English Literature, so perhaps I can provide some special insight into the matter. Ready? Here we go:

YOU'RE WRONG!!!!11!!

Okay seriously, the thing is that what makes "literature" lasting doesn't so much have to do with its engagingness as a story as to its level of philosophical insight into the human condition. Ideally it should work as *both* insight and a good story.

As I said in another part of the thread- appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

And no, the thing that makes good books lasting has nothing to do with insight into the human condition. Thats not why I read books. Its not why the vast majority of people read books, as proven by the fact that "literature" is nowhere near the top of the best seller list. The story and its presentation is all that matters. As shown by the fact every Harry Potter book *does* hit the top of the best seller list.

Now *you* might like stories with hidden meanings and symbolism and allegory (despite the fact that I'm convinced the majority of the stuff people read into books is crap the author didn't mean). Thats great, keep at it. But its not what most people like, and it doesn't make the book better for having it. All it means is that you and people like you will be more likely to enjoy it, and me and people like me will be less likely to enjoy it.

As for what makes "literature" lasting- the fact that professors and high school english teachers make people continue to buy copies. The number of people who decide to read Kafka's Metamorphisis for fun is vanishingly small. Yet it speaks volumes about the human condition. Compare to Tolkien, who tells a great story. He's still selling orders of magnitude more the Kafka.

Anything older than you will have an unavoidable distance between the time it was written and your own perspective, and the greater the time, the larger the gulf that must be crossed. I think it's this distance that throws a lot of people off the study of literature.

Nope. Its the fact that people don't enjoy it. Most people don't enjoy symbolism, they don't enjoy allegory. But I know very few people who don't enjoy a good story.

Beyond that- of all the things you can do in your life, why the hell would you want to *study* literature? Reading a good tale is fun, its a great way to kill a few hours in the evening, or spend a lazy weekend. Studying a book? Boring as hell. If I wanted to read a philisophical treatsie, I'd read a philisophical treatsie. Not one that wastes my time by wrapping it in a story and making me guess at what he meant. Studying books is a great way to take a fun passtime and remove all the enjoyment from it.

In a way, if you're remembered eighty years after your death, you're automatically art.

Nope. I read some early 20s pulp sci-fi stories, and enjoy them greatly (far more so than I ever did Faulkner or Dickens). If I were to call them art, the english profs would be sneering at me. The very idea of "art" is appeal to authority- this group of snobs decides such and such is worthy of study and therefor art.

Now if we're discussing staying power- good stories seem to have that far more than "literature" does. If a story is good, people will read it regaurdless of how old it is. Other authors will write their take on it, or write derivatives. But the dustbin of history is filled with pretentious literature writers of the type you like who noone remembers. All their allegories and speaking of the human condition failed to get them remembered, because their stories sucked.

He is also considered lewd and crude today in many ways. That's not a problem with Shakespeare, it is a strength.

Depends on who you talk to. In his own time, it was considered a weakness. Now, with no change to the content of the play, its considered a strength. W

Re:Why shoot so low?

[AuMatar]

Well that brings up an interesting question: are readers the only measure of book quality that matters?

Whether you enjoyed reading it is the measure of quality. Other than that, no measure is possible.

We've already established that the people living at the time of a book's initial publication are not the best judges as to whether it'll become remembered through the ages or not.

Well, that is kind of self fullfilling- in 100 years, if we still remember it, its remembered through the ages :)

There is a school of thought that, even if the writer didn't consciously mean it, he still meant it subconsciously.

Utter bullshit. It translates to "I think this interpretation is cool, so I'm going to pretend its right wether it is or not". If you used logic like that in the sciences, you'd be laughed out of academia.

And there's another way of thinking about it that states, what the reader brings to the work, that's what really matters.

More BS. Another way of saying the same as the above.

You might be surprised, my friend.

Not likely. I kno the number *is* non-zero, but its pretty damn small.

The fact is, Tolkien does contain subtexts. It's not just a yarn. It does have something to say about the human condition. And it's ultimately a very, nay an extremely Catholic story. You don't have to be an English student to see that the story contains no less than three Christ figures, one of which is an almost literal messiah.

Dear god, when you read the book did you totally skip the introduction? The part where he says there is NO allegory or symbolism in the book? THis is an example of the worst kind of lit bullshit- the author friggin TELLS YOU that there is no symbolism, and you try and add it to try and prove your point. WHich goes back to my point that 90% of all symbolism you guys talk about doesn't exist.

so I ask, then, why so many books don't get more than a first printing?

A combination of economic issues (expense of printings and ROI), and the fact that there are so many books being written today (and people are reading less and less) that noone can keep up. Only the ones that get good word of mouth manage to get a following and sell large numbers.