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Game/Movie Comparisons Raise Art Question Again
Via Game|Life, an article on the Variety site that sees something rather novel: a film writer defending games. Unhappy reviews of the film 300 sometimes cite the film's 'game-like' nature as a measure of it's poor quality, and Variety writer Ben Fritz calls those authors out on their poor grasp of modern media. Ron Gilbert, at the Grumpy Gamer site, has a few words of commentary on this issue. Coincidentally Gamasutra chose today to post a discussion of games as art which begins with the phrase "here we go again".
...just make you want to slap a guy. "It looks too much like a game" so what? It sure looks to me like its selling and I thought it was an awsome movie when I finally got to see it(it was sold out all weekend).
Back to the point though, what aversion do these people have against video games? Is it because they were fun? Is it because they didn't get to play them when they were little? Or maybe its because whole teams of artists of different kinds actually work together to make something that a normal person would look at more than once.
I just don't get it, a baby could take a crap in a diaper and these people would call it art, but if that diaper moves when you push a button...
FTA:300 is a vacuous film filled with bad dialog, stiff acting, a pointless one-dimensional plot and interchangeable characters that hardly deserve to be named in the script. The film barely has a first act and does nothing but drive to a preposterous conclusion led along by a sequence of ridiculous events. The Visuals are nothing more than technical masturbation. Simply put, 300 is the best damn film I've seen all year. I haven't had this much fun watching a movie in a long time. It's nice to see Hollywood is finally striving to be more likes games.
Ok, so in short, gamers as he sees it are only interested in the technical masturbation portion of what games are. IF that's true, then consoles that emphasize game play wouldn't be doing as well as a certain little industry darling that does is. But even if that's only about -gameplay- (as Wii games don't exactly have the best acting/plot), some of the most loved games out there have some incredible characters and/or plot. (textual or otherwise).
He totally misses the point, this movie was one for people who are looking for eye candy and visuals, not plot or well developed characters and script. There are games like this as well. For example, the difference between the Monkey Island series (amusing, somewhat witty script) and Doom 3. Implying that all games in the popular market in somewhat recent memory are terrible in terms of things that a typical movie-goer would find important only demonstrates an ignorance of what the over-21 year old gamer market really is looking for.
Instead of using "game-like" in a deragatory manner you could say "Uwe Boll-Like"
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
..has nothing to do with it being based on a game. It's based on a comic book (rather mediocre one imho) and it does a great job bringing the pictures and the story to life. Thus it succeeds in its aim and the people mentioned had obviously no idea what they were talking about. Spider-man is also a good example of a movie in which you could freeze at almost any frame and have a beautiful picture that could have been just like that in the comic book - that's skill, that's art!
That being said it seems "300" itself gets misunderstood by quite a few people, ostensibly because it has no accurate disclaimer at the beginning and most people are ignorant about the story and Greek/Persian history in general. It should be clear from viewing the first few scenes, that it is hardly a realistic depiction, but rather a fantastic (obviously biased) and embellished story told by a proud Spartan war veteran. The comic-like style is actually essential in pointing out this very fact.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
I believe that games would do better to become more 'movie-esque' than vice versa. It seems to me that there aren't many games that feature characteristics more closely associated with film or even literature, such as good characterisation or plot. Most mainstream games are all about plopping you straight into the action with little regard to back-story and expect you to be satisfied 1607 dead stormtroopers later. The oft-repeated mantra, common on Slashdot, that 'games should be fun' seems disingenuous to me. I mean, if the gamers among us want the industry to be legitimised as a 'proper art form' and move beyond the nerd kids in the bedroom stigma, why does there seem to be such a lack of 'adult' (not necessarily in the boobs and gore sense) titles, of intellectual titles, in the local game shop? Do we say that 'films should be fun'? Yes, while many are indeed fun, there are also many that are shocking, dark, depressing, thought-provoking. Where are the 'head scratcher' games - the ones you try and figure out with your friends at the pub like after the movie theatre? Where are the games in black and white?
Yes, there are obvious differences in format; movies are non-interactive and last a couple of hours, games are naturally controllable and generally last at least ten hours. I'd like to see more of a fusion between the two art forms. I'd like a game that was short by game standards, but was beautifully written, had a tight storyline and was populated by intelligent, deep and interesting characters. I'd like to see games where you have to put some thought into what you are doing and the decisions you make. I'd like a game where you hardly fire your gun. I want a game to make me cry.
I'm not saying that such games aren't to be found or that there should be no shallow, time-waster games. It just seems an under-represented niche.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?