Tag Archive for 'Film'

Steven Spielberg Skips the Cutscenes

Published
on December 9, 2008
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Blockbuster King turned game developer Steven Spielberg talked about his hatred of cutscenes that interrupt gameplay in an interview with Yahoo! Games.

The thing that doesn’t work for me in these games are the little movies where they attempt to tell a story in between the playable levels. That’s where there hasn’t been a synergy between storytelling and gaming. They go to a lot of trouble to do these [motion-capture] movies that explain the characters. And then the second the game is returned to you and it’s under your control, you forget everything the interstitials are trying to impact you with, and you just go back to shooting things. And that has not found its way into a universal narrative.

Spielberg complained specifically about games like Battlefield: Bad Company where you can’t skip the cutscenes. His perspective comes from almost four decades of movie storytelling, and shows the importance of delivering a cohesive narrative through gameplay rather than cinematics.

“I think filmmakers are learning things from video games,” said Spielberg. “Movies are starting to look more and more like videogames, like the digital introductory teasers videogames give you before they turn control over to the player.” He added that Wanted and The Bourne Ultimatum show “a lot of video game saavy.”

Spielberg also talked about his own game projects in the interview. His puzzle game Boom Blox surprised a lot of gamers with its lack of narrative when it came out for the Wii in May. The director’s next project, LMNO, is “more of a movie-type story game” and revolves around an ex-secret agent.

Where is Gaming’s ‘Citizen Kane’?

Published
on October 24, 2008
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In this month’s edition of Game Couch’s Blog Banter series, five bloggers answered the question: Does gaming have a Citizen Kane?

Orson Welles’ classic film was a technically innovative, personally deep and infinitely enjoyable masterpiece still watched again and again six decades after it was made.

“Are there any video games that possess a timeless appeal?” asked Lou Chou of Lou vs Video Games: Fight! “Games that, despite constant advances in technology, retain a game engine or narrative that will forever be relevant. If so, why?”

In answering his own question, Chou said that there are no timeless games, only revolutionary “artifacts” which developed concepts and gameplay elements that are then adapted by later titles. BioShock and Dead Space are better than their predecessors, System Shock and Resident Evil.

The bloggers at Game Couch said old games cannot be replayed like old films. People discover films like Citizen Kane through television, theaters and re-releases, said Game Couch, but “if you want to play Ico, you need the game disk and you need a PlayStation 2… Ico is a magnificent game — a work of art — but it’s essentially undiscoverable.”

Both dismissals are flawed, but not incorrect.

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‘BioShock 2′ Creative Director Sees Demand For ‘Challenging Material’

Published
on August 23, 2008
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Gameplayer has a great interview with BioShock 2’s creative director Jordan Thomas that covers the storytelling strengths of one of last year’s best games.

With BioShock, “2K Boston and 2K Australia wanted to build an action-narrative epic that would show respect for the player’s intelligence without forcing them to think exactly like the design team in order to ‘win,’” said Thomas.

“BioShock plays well, I think, to some of the strengths of games as a medium. Most of the first game’s story is unmitigated, meaning you get to live through or discover it directly, in the manner of a forensic anthropologist, as opposed to ‘visiting storyland’ from time to time and then returning to the entirely unrelated game experience.” added Thomas.

“If anything, we’d like to deliver an even more consistently integrated experience with any future games in the series. We hope to maintain a rich narrative atmosphere while allowing for the player to author key aspects of his or her identity with a large degree of expressive freedom. To me, that’s what BioShock is all about.”

Thomas is heading production of BioShock 2 at 2k Marin, which took up the franchise from their sister studios 2k Boston/2k Australia. Some of the original BioShock team is working with Thomas on the sequel, but the first game’s creative director Ken Levine is notably absent from the helm.

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Mad Max-creator George Miller Turns to Gaming

Published
on March 14, 2008
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When I first heard that George Miller is working on a fourth Mad Max film, titled “Fury Road,” my first thought was, “Awesome.” When I learned that Miller was teaming up with God of War II director Cory Barlog to produce a Mad Max game for concurrent release with the film, I thought, “Even better.”

Prominent filmmakers, including Miller and Steven Spielberg, are flocking to the game industry, where cinematic products are becoming increasingly viable.

In a two part interview with Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal, Miller talked about his attraction to games.

“I realized that the kind of filmmaker that I am, I unconsciously try to make films that are as immersive as possible,” said Miller. “My cutting patterns and compositions try to exaggerate–well, not exaggerate, but try to enhance a kind of three-dimensionality and an immersive quality to my storytelling. That of course is what games do so well.”

Miller sees games as a more open way to explore a narrative. “Film is a pretty closed narrative–it moves along at 24 frames a second, it’s extremely linear, and in that sense rigid, whereas games bust that open. So in a way, with games being more exploratory, it’s closer to what a novelist can do in many way,” he said.

“It’s just another way to tell stories,” added Miller. “If you’re much more interested in games than movies, then you might enter the story through the game. Or you might enter the story through the film and move towards the game. It’s still the same story. It’s still the same characters. It’s still the same world. It’s just that you can approach the characters and the world from different angles.”

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REVIEW: “Rambo” Successfully Revives the Franchise

Published
on February 6, 2008
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[I wrote this for my college newspaper, which comes out Thursday.]

“Rambo” is awesome. Not in the ’80s sense of the word, but in the traditional, fear-the-wrath-of-God way.

Instead of watching it, you might as well just ask your local projectionist to shine it directly into your mouth. It is delicious, a visceral action treat infused with steroids, bullets and explosives that sticks to the roots of the franchise.

Clay-faced Sylvester Stallone, the greatest American actor of all time, reprises his role as ultimate badass, John Rambo, tortured by memories of Vietnam. “Rambo” is the fourth film in the series, following “First Blood,” “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” and “Rambo III.” If this naming sequence doesn’t make sense, maybe “Rambo” isn’t for you. John Rambo isn’t a fan of “sense.” He prefers to run in screaming with a knife, to stand in a hail of bullets he knows can’t hit him before blowing everyone away.

Even at 61, Sly Stallone still pulls off the muscled, mulleted action hero. You won’t see Rambo jump off waterfalls or climb up cliffs, but he’s great at running through rain-soaked jungles and disemboweling enemy soldiers with a knife as big as your head.

As for plot, nothing much has changed since the 1980s. Some whiny missionaries get in trouble while helping the Karen minority in eastern Burma; Rambo has to go save them and kill everyone else. They add in some junk about the human rights violations, but who cares? It’s really just an excuse for Rambo to vaporize faces. He jumps the political red tape and machine guns his way into our hearts.

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On the Revival of ’80s Cartoons

Published
on August 14, 2007
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I know avoiding overly-brief, link ridden posts was part of my manifesto for this site, but…

What the hell is going on?!

That being said — VOLTRON.

Edit: Another one.

Thus Spake Roger Ebert: Games Are Not Art

Published
on August 12, 2007
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Revered film critic Roger Ebert’s 2005 indictment of video games as a non-artistic medium caused renewed controversy this past month, with big-name figures like Newsweek journalist N’Gai Croal, author and director Clive Barker and gaming historian Steven Kent weighing in.

“I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful,” Ebert said in response to a gamer’s letter in 2005. “But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art.”

“To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.”

Ebert’s comments drew an outcry from gamers, responses from game developers, and even mainstream media attention. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Aussie developer John De Margheriti, founder of Micro Forte studio, countered Ebert’s arguments.

“The author of the game has written some grand plotline, has created the races, the pretext of the stories,” said De Margheriti. “He’s constrained you in a series of quests you must do, missions you must complete, objects you have to collect. There is a structure, but it’s a structure that’s interactive.”

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