Now that the semester is winding down I’ve got a bit of time to blog (and write my last couple dissertation chapters and then revise all of them and write the intro and conclusion chapters…). A couple things have happened (and are in the process of happening) that have the gaming world buzzing: Roger Ebert wrote about videogames again and the Supreme Court is taking up the case of California’s law forbidding the sale of videogames to minors.
Regarding Ebert, he ends by asking, “Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?” which echoes my own call for all of us to stop caring about “art.” Tons and tons of people have tried to convince him he’s wrong — so many in fact that I don’t even want to bother hunting down links to some of the stories that do it. I’m not interested in arguing with him because I don’t really care if he thinks games are art or not.
However, it is very disconcerting that he seems to think that he can judge games by looking at screenshots. Would he write a review of a film based on the text on the back of the dvd box? That’s pretty ignorant to think that he can judge games in that manner.
Unfortunately, this is just the top of the iceberg because look at the picture at the top of his post. Now I have no idea if he picked that picture or not. I would say that he probably didn’t but he did pick the rest of the pictures in the post so perhaps he did. Regardless, the picture didn’t just appear by itself. Someone chose that picture. What is in that picture? A kid. So someone whether it was Ebert of just some random web guy, wanted to pick a picture of a gamer and they picked a kid — once again perpetuating the stereotype that games are for kids and in this instance also seemingly indicating that games are in and of themselves childish. Wow. That’s pretty sad.
OK, now onto the Supreme Court…
I’m pretty confident that the Supreme Court will say this law is unconstitutional not only because lower courts have consistently ruled that laws regulating videogame sales are unconstitutional but also because of the recent Supreme Court decision declaring a law banning animal cruelty videos unconstitutional.
Today the Diane Rehm Show had a segment on the Supreme Court taking on the Videogame law regulating videogame sales and had Leland Yee, the California politician behind the bill, Craig Anderson, the guy who has never met a form of media that didn’t cause aggression, and a couple other people I don’t remember. Now, I’ve previously criticized Anderson’s vague use of the term “aggression” so I was pleasantly surprised that Diane Rehm’s first question to him was “what is the difference between agression and violence?” Anderson initially tried to avoid answering the question but then Rehm re-asked the question and Anderson admitted that while violence is generally understood as an extreme form of aggression, it is very rare for aggression to actually turn into violence. I think that it really key because in that statement Anderson (who also in this CNN video says that videogame-caused “aggression” isn’t really any worse than film or television-causes “aggression” ) says that videogames don’t really make kids violent.
If the most well known person who thinks videogames cause aggression doesn’t think they make you violent then that makes the case that they are so bad that we need laws against selling them much harder to prove.
Personally, I look forward to the SCOTUS shutting down these kinds of laws once and for all.
…well that and Jack Thompson getting involved and saying some crazy things…
Related
I don’t think I’ve seen a site yet that has “specifically” defined cinematic yet either. However, check out the Advent Rising’s Overview and then Features page for a hint of this definition.
http://www.adventtrilogy.com/
“Advent Rising is the first in an epic trilogy of action/adventure games, presented in a stunning cinematic format to deliver an unprecedented variety of game play experiences.”
“An unprecedented single-player gameplay that allows gamers to play through the thrilling action sequences of a blockbuster movie or game, rather than just watch them”
Therefore, I’m assuming most publishers want you to feel like you are the main hero in an action movie when playing a cinematic game. The sad part is that I think I’ve played games in the past that didn’t utilize the word “cinematics” in their marketing and yet they had more of “being in a movie” feel than games like Advent Rising do. No I didn’t buy Advent but primarily because I looked at the in-game movie gameplay and was thoroughly disappointed by what I saw.
You see the movie trailer on the home page look thoroughly impressive and I though wow, this game is going to rock if it looks like that. Of course it looks nothing like that. If you watch the game trailer you’ll see what I mean. It actually reminded me a lot of arcade gameplay which doesn’t really exude an immersive movie cinematic feeling or experience.
I think giving a cinematic look or feel to a game is pretty difficult primarily because most of this style is done with a variation of spliced scenes (i.e. one side profile, one whole scene shot, then a close up of the hero’s face, and so forth) which would be pretty difficult to do within a game since it would probably be disorientating to the gamer in terms of being aware of their surroundings. Also, as it is being mentioned more and more by gamers, cut scenes are becoming more and more distracting to gamers (even if visually impressive) since they don’t like the feeling of losing control of their character.
Actually if the developers had specifically defined viewpoint angles for certain actions in the game then possibly this wouldnt’ be so disorientating to gamers, as they would exactly know which viewpoint the game would go into if they were going to perform a certain action.
I’ve used this quote elsewhere, I’m not sure exactly how illuminationg it is, but I like it:
In his book Something Like An Autobiography, Akira Kurosawa is asked “What is cinema?” and he tells the following story:
“Long ago the Japanese novelist Shiga Noya presented an essay written by his grandchild as one of the most remarkable prose pieces of his time. He had it published in a literary magazine. It was entitled My Dog and ran as follows: “My dog resembles a bear; he also resembles a badger; he also resembles a fox .” It proceeded to enumerate the dogs special characteristics, comparing each one to yet another animal, developing into a full list of the animal kingdom. However, the essay closed with, “But since hes a dog, he most resembles a dog.” I remember bursting out laughing when I read this essay, but it makes a serious point. Cinema resembles so many other arts. If cinema has very literary characteristics, it also has theatrical qualities, a philosophical side, attributes of painting and sculpture and music elements. But cinema is, in the final analysis, cinema.”
Change a couple of words and you could probably say almost exactly the same thing about computer games.
I realise this isn’t quite what you’re after, but if film-makers can’t decide what cinema is, what chance do games makers have?
Cinematic is used for other mediums for a few reasons:
It doesn’t look cheesy of home-moviesh,
This one is theory and it needs work. A consise presentable package. Complete in itself needing no other external “stuff” for it to “be”.
Cinema is all the arts combined. Since you can see a painting on screen and you hear the music and you are emotionally moved by the acting or whatever. Video games these days are becoming move and more cinematic because of the insertion of story elements instead of just trying to win and the visuals are done at(do they use vector graphics) supurb levels. The technology just isn’t there to and their vision needs to go back to formula to make truly interactive video games at the fully cinematic level. Thats why it just looks that way. Would you bother playing halo on a movie theatre screen? Of coarse not, its a waste.
I actually think World of Warcraft is the closest thing to it for its realtime, global, social atributes. And it looks great on a 20″ flat mac screen. It still needs work though. Like more character development to equal out the vast sea of human players.