Slashdot Mirror
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?'"
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 isn't really that interesting. In fact, of all the "great literature" that english majors like to rave about, I find that less than 10% of it even makes the level of decent, much less good.
Thats the problem with people who talk about art and wether games are art- art doesn't exist. People tag some items as "art" and others as "not art" as pure snob appeal- a way to say this is what I like and others who like this are better than other people. Its nothing intrinsic in the item. There's no magical quality of an object that catapults it to the level or art or fine art. Its wether it appeals to a small group of snobs.
Hell, the set of what's included as art doesn't even stay the same. Remberandt and Van Gogh were starving artists. Shakespear was considered lewd and crude in his day and lambasted for appealing to the masses.
Forget about striving to become art or creating something for the ages. Make a game thats fun. In the end, thats all that matters.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Disgaea for starters. Isn't War and Peace more memorable for its length than its quality (sounds like a porn star in that respect)?
... We need real emotional and intellectual experiences." Really? Maybe if the game is trying to tell a story. But not all games try. Not all games need to. Should families stop playing charades at Christmas until Grandad comes up with a better plot as justification for playing? What a load of rubbish. We should enjoy games for what they are. I still want a game that is fun for 30 minutes. If I want to read a book, then guess what ... I'll actually read one.
I do get fed up with the "games as storytellers" topic. I don't quite understand where it comes from. Just because games are played on TV, doesn't mean they *have* to be compared with movies. Football (soccer) is played on grass, but has nothing to do with tending one's lawn. In fact, quite the opposite!
Some games have stories, great. Not all games do. Games generate their own stories. Consider the storyline of the last game of chess you played or the last basketball match you watched. *If* a game sets out to tell a story (eg RPG), then fine, compare it with stories. If it doesn't, then stop bothering.
From the article: "Creating powerful narratives is the next step
And, most of all, STOP LUMPING ALL GAMES INTO THE SAME POT.
"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.