by Stefan Delatovic
[I make a substantial comment below -- Geoff]
As technology continues to evolve and graphics approach photo realism, video games are providing an increasingly cinematic experience.
Should video games really be aspiring to be films though? Wouldn't it be better if they were trying to be great video games?
Narrative film is a great thing, so I understand why games would like to emulate them. That time Nicholas Cage swapped faces with John Travolta? Movie magic. But film isn't interactive. I noticed that I couldn't shoot Travolta as he chewed scenery. My girlfriend noticed that she couldn't build him a three-bedroom apartment and manage his relationships.
Video games that get the closest to cinema seem to receive the highest praise. Grand Theft Auto IV - which featured a credit sequence and opening footage clearly aimed at being viewed as a film, was hailed as the greatest game of all by many reviewers. The game had a lot going for it; a living world more realistic than any seen previously, well-drawn characters and a compelling story.
The one thing that let it down, however, was gameplay. Personally, I found the game boring as hell. I wanted to see how the story was resolved, but I was too bored to continue.
See, when I start up a new film I lie back on the couch and prepare to observe. When I boot up a new game I have a controller in my hand and I'm eager to use it. Whenever I am viewing a video game cut scenes, one thought simmers in the back of my brain: "I really want to see this, I want to follow the story, but I wish it would end so I could play."
A good story and characters are boons for any game, but everything is driven by gameplay. If a game isn't fun to play, then everything else is wasted.
'Games as movies' ties into a general belief amongst many that graphics make a game, a belief I cannot personally understand. The Wii, the most graphically inferior console of the current generation, is a solid gold candy bar of fun.
Bioshock was elevated to a fantastic game due to its excellent atmosphere, design and a compelling story, but all of that was wrapped around solid gameplay with a neat mechanical twist.
Super Mario Brothers destroyed my childhood from a time management standpoint. It's characters were insane and its story nonexistent. But it was fun, and continues to be fun, as it introduces new game mechanics, if not new narrative elements.
Little Big Planet, a terrifyingly fun game and a truly innovative product - could never be produced on film.
If games must aim to become 'interactive movies', then there must be a better way than simply scattering overly-long movies between the fun bits.
[Star Wars Clone Wars Lightsaber Duels has a few seconds of story between the battles -- an even those I have never seen because I hit the button to skip them in an effort to get to the next fight. This is a really good point about the differences between games and films, which are so often compared or contrasted in reviews -- Tim Callahan said the thing that bothered him about the Clone Wars movie was it was like one giant cut scene, and he was frustrated by his inability to "play" it. When a video game offers me the chance to shape the story by choosing what direction to send my character, I don't feel empowered -- I feel like I am missing some possibly better story. I am very much in love with the passive nature of movies, in which decisions are made for me and I am along for the ride. I do not want to make narrative choices in a game, I just want to swing a sword around.
I have a kind of clunky pop psych idea about this that maybe we could use as a springboard to something useful. I feel like one of the reasons I like the movies is that I like not having to make decisions -- I make them all day, and most of them get on my nerves, and I like sitting down in a place where someone else will tell me a story. If I wanted to make a series of bad decisions I have my life. (I am the same way with sandwiches: I do not want the guy asking me 30 questions about various sandwich toppings; I want to ask for the Number Four or whatever, and be done with it). One aspect of this passivity, is how much I love TV on my Netflix cue -- once I decide to watch The Shield, for example, I have 23 disks on the way to my house, and I do not have to make a decision about what to watch next for a good long while. I get passivity from Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde and a school of literary criticism that encourages you to surrender yourself to the object. There are deeper levels to this psychology but I do not think it worth getting into here.
Is there a different psychology to people who like video-games where they control the story? Are these people more "creative," more artists than critics? Or are they more disenfranchised -- I have this image of teenagers playing videogames and loving all the decisions they get to make in Grand Theft Auto because so much in their lives is decided for them by their parents and other authority figures. But this is an old image I think, from my childhood, of nerds living in their moms basement playing -- everybody plays videogames and loves them and many of these people are quite cool, so I hear.
Of course, disenfranchised teenagers who do not get to make decisions in their own lives, or do not feel like they do, also love passive entertainment like movies and TV and books -- but they make them into active entertainment with things like role-playing games and fan fiction and youtube tribute movies.]
Showing posts with label Stefan Delatovic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stefan Delatovic. Show all posts
Friday, January 09, 2009
Monday, December 08, 2008
Neverending Stories
By Stefan Delatovic [I make a brief comment at the end.]
As a monthly serial, comics never really end.
While storylines within, say, the Uncanny X-Men title may wind up, the central story following the characters' lives will continue forever. Even when a storyline finishes, the open-ended nature of the narrative can see it be drawn on indefinitely. The reader can never really be sure that they have seen the last word on any given plot, subject or character. (Batman is a bit of a different story. Even DC seems happy to have Miller's take on the character's last hurrah be the definitive version.)
Robbed of an ending, comics spend far too much time monkeying around with the beginning. Origin stories - the best of which are simple enough to be relayed in a single sentence - undergo unnecessary revision and expansion every few years. Wolverine, once remarkable for his mysterious lack of an origin tale, ended up with a mess of convoluted rubbish so dense that adamantium claws could not cut him free.
Even as their roots grow dense characters are never allowed to stray too far, lest they become inaccessible. When Marvel felt Spiderman had swung too far from his beginnings, they enlisted the devil himself to bring him back into line. Superman may momentarily be made of electricity and Aquaman may grow a beard, but eventually they snap back to their established norm.
(Can you imagine tending an unruly beard while living in water with a hand made of water? No wonder he became such a 90s downer.)
Publishers are aware of these constraints. They chafe against such storytelling paralysis by accentuating any change, no matter how illusionary or brief, as being of such import as to 'break the internet in half'. Morrison's Batman RIP storyline would have no doubt been less disappointing to someone not exposed to DC's publicity machine, which promised the closing chapter would make us all burn our previous works of fiction in reverence to its superiority and importance. It is a testament to this publicity that I'm unable to find someone who was not exposed to these claims. But it is audience expectations that feed the system. Whether we are hoping for relevance in the art we consume, burned by past disappointments or simply jonesing for a good story, we repeatedly look past the medium's constraints and believe the hype. Batman will not die, and we all know this, but we wanted to believe it anyway.
Given that these stories are cyclical and unending - as, ironically, is this article - how far is too far? Can we not expect any closure at all?
I have been enjoying Marvel and DC's slate of unending events as it rolls along, with each feeding into the next. It's a good model, with big things happening all the time to distract from the lack of change we all know lurks under the surface. Secret Invasion has come to a close and birthed Dark Reign. But whereas Civil War gave us an (arguably anticlimactic) ending that sprang into The Initiative storyline - more a state of play than a crossover event - the current transition was not so smooth.
Secret Invasion, like finally settling in to watch The Matrix Reloaded, was a stale event preceded by excellent build-up. The central story was rushed, dull and overshadowed by tie-in stories such as The Incredible Hercules. The ending was particularly disappointing. The final issue, charged with ending a story that had revealed little up until that point, was hamstrung by setting up the next story. There was no closure and no pay-off. Events that could be exciting were rushed through in an effort to get Dark Reign up and running. It was disappointing. I view this as a new low, but am I alone? Given all I've outlined above, is this a storytelling failure or more of the same?
[The best way to handle this, if you cannot get a prestige book like All Star Superman, is to do something that signals to the reader that what you have is an "end" even though it will be continued next month and ignored. New X-Men had a smart ending: it jumped into an "possible" future which was then destroyed -- we saw and ending and we saw Morrison himself overwrite it. Then the next guy came on. But Morrison people knew that that was it. Morrison, of course, was commenting on the neverending nature of mainstream comics. What he was doing in Batman RIP I have no idea. The title signals a KIND of end -- obviously he is not going to kill Batman for real -- and so I really expected something more than Batman punching a helicopter, before just heading into the next unrelated story 7 days later. I understand Batman goes on and on but it needed a symbolic ending, a symbolic death more important than Batman punching his was out of a coffin taken from Kill Bill.]
As a monthly serial, comics never really end.
While storylines within, say, the Uncanny X-Men title may wind up, the central story following the characters' lives will continue forever. Even when a storyline finishes, the open-ended nature of the narrative can see it be drawn on indefinitely. The reader can never really be sure that they have seen the last word on any given plot, subject or character. (Batman is a bit of a different story. Even DC seems happy to have Miller's take on the character's last hurrah be the definitive version.)
Robbed of an ending, comics spend far too much time monkeying around with the beginning. Origin stories - the best of which are simple enough to be relayed in a single sentence - undergo unnecessary revision and expansion every few years. Wolverine, once remarkable for his mysterious lack of an origin tale, ended up with a mess of convoluted rubbish so dense that adamantium claws could not cut him free.
Even as their roots grow dense characters are never allowed to stray too far, lest they become inaccessible. When Marvel felt Spiderman had swung too far from his beginnings, they enlisted the devil himself to bring him back into line. Superman may momentarily be made of electricity and Aquaman may grow a beard, but eventually they snap back to their established norm.
(Can you imagine tending an unruly beard while living in water with a hand made of water? No wonder he became such a 90s downer.)
Publishers are aware of these constraints. They chafe against such storytelling paralysis by accentuating any change, no matter how illusionary or brief, as being of such import as to 'break the internet in half'. Morrison's Batman RIP storyline would have no doubt been less disappointing to someone not exposed to DC's publicity machine, which promised the closing chapter would make us all burn our previous works of fiction in reverence to its superiority and importance. It is a testament to this publicity that I'm unable to find someone who was not exposed to these claims. But it is audience expectations that feed the system. Whether we are hoping for relevance in the art we consume, burned by past disappointments or simply jonesing for a good story, we repeatedly look past the medium's constraints and believe the hype. Batman will not die, and we all know this, but we wanted to believe it anyway.
Given that these stories are cyclical and unending - as, ironically, is this article - how far is too far? Can we not expect any closure at all?
I have been enjoying Marvel and DC's slate of unending events as it rolls along, with each feeding into the next. It's a good model, with big things happening all the time to distract from the lack of change we all know lurks under the surface. Secret Invasion has come to a close and birthed Dark Reign. But whereas Civil War gave us an (arguably anticlimactic) ending that sprang into The Initiative storyline - more a state of play than a crossover event - the current transition was not so smooth.
Secret Invasion, like finally settling in to watch The Matrix Reloaded, was a stale event preceded by excellent build-up. The central story was rushed, dull and overshadowed by tie-in stories such as The Incredible Hercules. The ending was particularly disappointing. The final issue, charged with ending a story that had revealed little up until that point, was hamstrung by setting up the next story. There was no closure and no pay-off. Events that could be exciting were rushed through in an effort to get Dark Reign up and running. It was disappointing. I view this as a new low, but am I alone? Given all I've outlined above, is this a storytelling failure or more of the same?
[The best way to handle this, if you cannot get a prestige book like All Star Superman, is to do something that signals to the reader that what you have is an "end" even though it will be continued next month and ignored. New X-Men had a smart ending: it jumped into an "possible" future which was then destroyed -- we saw and ending and we saw Morrison himself overwrite it. Then the next guy came on. But Morrison people knew that that was it. Morrison, of course, was commenting on the neverending nature of mainstream comics. What he was doing in Batman RIP I have no idea. The title signals a KIND of end -- obviously he is not going to kill Batman for real -- and so I really expected something more than Batman punching a helicopter, before just heading into the next unrelated story 7 days later. I understand Batman goes on and on but it needed a symbolic ending, a symbolic death more important than Batman punching his was out of a coffin taken from Kill Bill.]
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Unimportant Things
by Stefan Delatovic [I make a brief comment below.]
In fiction I find myself drawn to the small touches, those little flourishes that bring a story to life.
They let you know a writer has thought about the universe they've created for their characters and aids in the willing suspension in disbelief.
When I occasionally rewatch The Matrix - which it seems everyone owns as it was the first effects-driven film released at the same time as DVD players - it's the small touches I appreciate. When a black cat crosses Neo's path for a second time he remarks, and I'm paraphrasing, 'whoa, deja vu, whoa'. The other characters, more familiar with the digital facsimile that is the Matrix, tell him that deja vu is in fact a glitch in the system, things are repeating like a scratched LP.
It's a nice touch. While it flags the appearance of the movie's villains, its ancillary to the thrust of the story. It's not important, but its one of those nice little flourishes that I enjoy so much.
I enjoy things like that for two reasons. Firstly, they make the world I'm watching feel lived in. Otherwise - much like a comic panel without a background - things feel a bit thin. Secondly, they strike me with the thought that the world's creator cares. They know this world and its mechanics, and they're letting me know with a wink. It helps me get involved.
Asides such as this can vary in importance and can foreshadow future events, lending them an integral role in the story, even if its not immediately recognizable.
In season three of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy shares a dream with her comatose counterpart Faith. As the girls make a bed and discuss the world in that dreamy-yet-weighty way our subconscious loves so much, Faith remarks that 'Dawn is coming', and that Ms Muffet is 'counting down from 730'. As the audience we write it off as dreamy nonsense, something to add to the atmosphere. But it is in two seasons - two years, or 730 days in the real world - that the character of Dawn will be introduced. There is never anything as dull as a 'this is like that dream I had' revelation from Buffy, and the dream is not mentioned again, but we as the audience make the connection, and the author winks to us that he has thought about this world, and he had a plan all along.
As a child I had glasses of such thickness that I appeared to have two highly-polished trashcan lids attached to my face, and a spine which was bent into the shape of an S. While I thought the spine thing was cool, as it was the first letter of my name, the whole arrangement added up to crippling migraines and quickly lost its luster. That situation however (the less said about the hair I was sporting at the time the better), allowed me to first find appreciation in these small flourishes of fiction. In an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation - which alongside Nintendo had formed a patchwork replacement for friends, sports and the opposite sex - Captain Picard is getting headaches. They eventually turn out to be the nefarious plan of some kind of almost-human-but-with-slightly-more-face alien, but before that revelation, Doctor Crusher gives him the once over. He complains, dismissing his condition as 'just headaches'. She remains worried though, explaining that headaches are no longer commonplace since the brain was mapped hundreds of years ago. It's clumsy exposition to be sure, but it's a nice touch from this future world. It also neatly encapsulates the thematic centre of Star Trek, and I'm paraphrasing again: The future will be shiny and great.
Anybody else love this stuff? Any favourites?
LOST doesn't count though, as their entire structure is built around the small details that may or may not gain importance sometime but could equally just be a polar bear but what if the island is in the past whoosh.
[I watch for these moments too -- but the key problem I raise is what to do with them in the evaluation of the thing as a whole. How many "bonus points" do I award for these perfect little details? If the movie is a B at best because of structure, pacing, acting, or whatever, do these little details push the thing into an A? Dark Knight had a lot of problems but a hundred little details around the Joker pushed that thing into a higher category -- for many people making a B movie into an A. But for me -- and I will admit I am a little inconsistent on this point -- the A has to go to movies that do not have flaws, rather than movies with flaws but great moments to make up for them. Otherwise you get in a position where you have to say, for example. that Phantom Menace is a great movie on the principle that the fight scenes are so good they make up for everything else.]
I have already mentioned some of my favorite throw-away details on this blog, but I will repeat one here: Cameron Frye in Ferris Buller's Day off wears both a belt and suspenders, perfectly capturing what his character is all about. ]
In fiction I find myself drawn to the small touches, those little flourishes that bring a story to life.
They let you know a writer has thought about the universe they've created for their characters and aids in the willing suspension in disbelief.
When I occasionally rewatch The Matrix - which it seems everyone owns as it was the first effects-driven film released at the same time as DVD players - it's the small touches I appreciate. When a black cat crosses Neo's path for a second time he remarks, and I'm paraphrasing, 'whoa, deja vu, whoa'. The other characters, more familiar with the digital facsimile that is the Matrix, tell him that deja vu is in fact a glitch in the system, things are repeating like a scratched LP.
It's a nice touch. While it flags the appearance of the movie's villains, its ancillary to the thrust of the story. It's not important, but its one of those nice little flourishes that I enjoy so much.
I enjoy things like that for two reasons. Firstly, they make the world I'm watching feel lived in. Otherwise - much like a comic panel without a background - things feel a bit thin. Secondly, they strike me with the thought that the world's creator cares. They know this world and its mechanics, and they're letting me know with a wink. It helps me get involved.
Asides such as this can vary in importance and can foreshadow future events, lending them an integral role in the story, even if its not immediately recognizable.
In season three of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy shares a dream with her comatose counterpart Faith. As the girls make a bed and discuss the world in that dreamy-yet-weighty way our subconscious loves so much, Faith remarks that 'Dawn is coming', and that Ms Muffet is 'counting down from 730'. As the audience we write it off as dreamy nonsense, something to add to the atmosphere. But it is in two seasons - two years, or 730 days in the real world - that the character of Dawn will be introduced. There is never anything as dull as a 'this is like that dream I had' revelation from Buffy, and the dream is not mentioned again, but we as the audience make the connection, and the author winks to us that he has thought about this world, and he had a plan all along.
As a child I had glasses of such thickness that I appeared to have two highly-polished trashcan lids attached to my face, and a spine which was bent into the shape of an S. While I thought the spine thing was cool, as it was the first letter of my name, the whole arrangement added up to crippling migraines and quickly lost its luster. That situation however (the less said about the hair I was sporting at the time the better), allowed me to first find appreciation in these small flourishes of fiction. In an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation - which alongside Nintendo had formed a patchwork replacement for friends, sports and the opposite sex - Captain Picard is getting headaches. They eventually turn out to be the nefarious plan of some kind of almost-human-but-with-slightly-more-face alien, but before that revelation, Doctor Crusher gives him the once over. He complains, dismissing his condition as 'just headaches'. She remains worried though, explaining that headaches are no longer commonplace since the brain was mapped hundreds of years ago. It's clumsy exposition to be sure, but it's a nice touch from this future world. It also neatly encapsulates the thematic centre of Star Trek, and I'm paraphrasing again: The future will be shiny and great.
Anybody else love this stuff? Any favourites?
LOST doesn't count though, as their entire structure is built around the small details that may or may not gain importance sometime but could equally just be a polar bear but what if the island is in the past whoosh.
[I watch for these moments too -- but the key problem I raise is what to do with them in the evaluation of the thing as a whole. How many "bonus points" do I award for these perfect little details? If the movie is a B at best because of structure, pacing, acting, or whatever, do these little details push the thing into an A? Dark Knight had a lot of problems but a hundred little details around the Joker pushed that thing into a higher category -- for many people making a B movie into an A. But for me -- and I will admit I am a little inconsistent on this point -- the A has to go to movies that do not have flaws, rather than movies with flaws but great moments to make up for them. Otherwise you get in a position where you have to say, for example. that Phantom Menace is a great movie on the principle that the fight scenes are so good they make up for everything else.]
I have already mentioned some of my favorite throw-away details on this blog, but I will repeat one here: Cameron Frye in Ferris Buller's Day off wears both a belt and suspenders, perfectly capturing what his character is all about. ]
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Garfield Minus Garfield
Stefan Delatovic drew our attention to this in the Free Form Comments, but it is so great I wanted to give it a higher profile.
http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/
Stephan wrote, "With Garfield removed, this site reproduces comic strips that become devastatingly funny looks at a man's struggle with loneliness, depression and mental illness. It's my current obsession."
http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/
Stephan wrote, "With Garfield removed, this site reproduces comic strips that become devastatingly funny looks at a man's struggle with loneliness, depression and mental illness. It's my current obsession."
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