Games; the significance of literature and content within the media

Games represent what may be the most potent example of a media that was established with excellent intentions as an art form and scientific innovation, but has over the last couple decades garnered an ill name as a purveyor of sophomoric violence, wasting the time and minds of our youths across the worlds.  Of course, gaming is not the only entertainment media that has achieved the reputation of being a form less relevant, artistic or mature as the likes of literature (books) or film.  Animation and comics are both substantial forms of media that have established as an innovative, and often times adult media, that has since supposedly turned into the stupid man’s, or children’s media.  It is only within recent years that we begin to see the a wider appreciation for these media, as their popularity rises across all demographics and their content becomes recognized as not only relevant to children.  I find this particularly true of games.  Still to this day, most times I converse with a non gamer, or person not versed in the world of animation, I am met with scoffs and condescension indicative of the widespread view that gaming has never been, or never will be a worthwhile, intrinsically artistic media. 

              It is because of gaming’s defining characteristic, and it greatest strength as a fresh form of media that we can also blame for its almost universally bad rap.  The characteristic that sets gaming apart from film is that it is an extremely immersive and interactive form of art.  While you are playing a protagonist who almost always has a very limited destiny and narrative, it does not change the fact that you are no longer watching a character play the story; you are the story.  It is because of this characteristic, and the fact that gaming is a new art form with not nearly as much recognition or supporters of other media such as film that games have come under fire from opponents who feel that despite much more realistic, graphic, and disturbing violence and sexual content that we see in movies and television, games can blamed for violence in youth.  The high level of immersion can also be blamed for the stereotype of gamers as antisocial basement dwellers wasting their lives away, neglecting to contribute anything worthwhile to society. 

            I would argue however, that these negative views on gaming stem not from their potential to be tools of evil and antisocial tendencies, but are instead indication that games represent an often-heightened sense of potential in comparison to other forms of media.  Large numbers of the population, across many different demographics are being exposed to a maturing art form, and are note simply witnessing the innovations and narratives or the media, but are instead participating in it.  I can say from personal experience that myself and many of my friends hold some memories of games to be just as relevant as experiences we have had in our lives reading books, watching film, or even experiences in the natural world.  It is because of the impacts that gaming has had in my life that I myself want to graduate later this year and find work within the gaming industry, to help create new worlds and experiences that would otherwise never be exposed to the world.

              Whenever I enter into a dialogue about the relevance of gaming as a form of art, the most potent argument of gaming’s lack of, or waste in potential is that a majority of what we see produced in the gaming world a slew of repetitive sequels lacking in emotional content, brimming with nothing but violence, gray desaturated photorealistic environments, and brawny, bald space marines.  When presented with this argument, I must put out the counterargument that within every art form, including music, film and literature, 90% of the content is simply terrible.  Within gaming, this is also true.  This is not so much concerned with the potential or talent of the developers, but instead due to the excess of money and talent put into the development of these games.  Like most Hollywood films, a high budget game that will be exposed to millions of people across the world represents a very high amount of potential, both artistically, but also financially.  As a result, these games represent a very high risk in the developers part, and more often than not, a safe, repetitious game which often supports the stereotype of gaming as nothing more then hedonistic violence will be developed solely for the fact that publisher’s know they will make a good return on their investment

            While there is always exceptions this trends wherein a large studio will make a game that is truly innovative and furthers the medium, the obvious rebuttal is that the greatest potential within the world of game development lies within the indie game scene.  I have played a relatively large volume of high budget games, most which were well designed, fun, and relatively clichés.  I have recently gained a larger appreciation for smaller studios and developers who by and large are in the business not to make money, do not have a billion dollar publisher to censor their content, and are producing content sheerly for the love of it.  I have played games that break every convention of the media, illicit emotional response, and remind me that gaming as an art form is just as relevant as painting, music and film.  Several years ago I played a game where the gameplay is to walk across a low detail corridor, filled with minimal graphics and props.  You walk for several minutes before you notice your character’s low poly model start to deteriorate and age.  As an old man, your character begins to walk slower before you finally stop, and your character dies, replaced by a tombstone.  I remember shedding a tear for the first time in playing a game, partially due to the surprising reminder of mortality, partially due to the idea that this was possible due to the limitations and characteristics of this new art form.

            Shifting gears to talk about gaming as literature, I find myself looking at gaming in a completely new light.  As the only defining characteristic is that it is an interactive, often digital experience, the possibilities in presentation are limitless, expanding greatly every year as graphical potential increases.  We have seen games such as Heavy Rain and LA Noire tell stories through cutting edge animation and facial motion capture technology, telling stories not as a book would, but more as an interactive film.  On the other side, we have also seen text based adventure games tell stories more as traditional literature; a word based experience that unfolds as you interact with the game. 

            To me though, the most interesting aspect of games regarding their relevance as literature is not what the story is, or even how it is told, but instead the absence or presence of any story whatsoever.  Most of the games I have played have had a storyline to the extent that a porno does; the narrative is their only to get you as quickly as possible to the content that you purchased the game for, in most cases the chance to shoot/explode/ninja up aliens/gangsters/nazis/nazi zombies.  Over this last year however I have been playing the game minecraft, which represents to me a departure from this convention.  The game’s graphics are not particularly aesthetically pleasing, particularly by today’s standards.  Literally everything in the world exists on a grid that expands infinitely in the 4 cardinal directions (or along the x and z axis) and 64 units up, and 64 units down (on the y axis).  Most elements in the game are cubes; all elements are comprised of blocks lacking in polygon counts that would allow for the illusion of smoothness.  You start the game born in a random location, in a completely new, randomly generated world.  Not only do you exist in a game lacking in any sort of narrative context, but the random generation of the world deprives the player of any sort of placeholder that would allow for a story to be established.  The only story that exists in the game is what the player chooses to do in the world.

Media is the massage

For this weeks reading I partook in the audio book for the “Media is the Massage”.  I’m an not sure if this completely satisfies the weekly requirement, but at the very least I feel as though I absorbed enough of the concepts presented to be able to discuss the ideas within.  My impression of the work is that the author is trying to convey the idea that with constantly changing media altering not only the ways in which media is presented, but also the way we think.  A tertiary note to this is the proposed notion that content is becoming secondary to the way in which it is being presented.

            While I agree with this idea to a large part, I cannot accept the idea that the stories and literary content being presented is losing significance as the media itself takes precedence.  We are starting to see forms of media such as games wherein the content, from a literary story point is essentially unnecessary, replaced by the experience of the viewer or participant.  While I consider these forms of media no less relevant to books, film, or any other media containing more coherent narrative content, I understand that this is evidence that media can stand alone without strong literary content.  I would argue however that literature in any context losses no relevance or value from this fact.  Still to this day media needn’t contain any of the flash or appeal of a blockbuster movie to be enjoyed by millions, as long as the story, content and strength of the ideas is present.  The best examples of this I can give are the simplest of storytelling form; word of mouth storytelling, paperback literature, and even the immergence of stories in new media such as the Internet.  I am reminded of a story lacking almost completely in content in it’s presentation; A story exists almost completely independent of a strong persuasive presentation but still illicit wonder emotional response;

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."  -Hemingway

Harry Potter; Tran-media cultural phenomena

Harry Potter has been in my lifetime perhaps the most substantial cultural phenomena.  To me it ranks with Star Wars and Lord of The Rings as some of the most significant works of fiction in the numbers of enthusiasts.  What interests me about Harry Potter isn’t necessarily the characters or the story, which, to be blunt are rather generic and conform a bit to much to the cambellian model of a hero’s journey.  What intrigues me about the work is more the world the book creates. 

            The world of harry potter may not be the most innovative or original one, but it nonetheless illustrates a universe with great appeal and wonder.  This wonder is augmented by the notion that the world exists not only in a static vision found on the pages of a novel, but also in a physical attraction at a a theme park, in Hollywood movies, and even in Lego and other toys sold across the world.  The world is created not only by Rowling, movie studios, but also by the fans in fan fiction and even interpretations of the games played in the novels, such as quiditch.             

I have read all 7 books (shortly after each’s release) and seen every movie in theaters.  The actors have been the same age as myself roughly every year the movies are released, so the works have maintained a strong sense of relevance to me, as the series appears to grow up with and a large portion of the fan base.  In this way the series shows innovation as it struggles, and largely succeeds in staying relevant to it’s maturing fan base, instead of dying as an outdated youth fiction.  The draw of the first books was its focus on wonder, coming of age and being a special individual.  As the series progresses we find the books appeal more in a focus on teen angst, sex, and death.    The series has prevented it’s own demise and maintained its relevance by not only unfolding in response to it’s own story line and conventions, but also by evolving based on it’s audience and the media in which it is conveyed.

Oryx and Crake; warnings, satire and pigoons

Oryx and Crake, was written in 2003 by Margaret Atwood, and exhibits a certain level of ambiguity in its classification of genre.  If it had to fall into a particular category, it would most likely be dystopian, but Atwood asserts that the novel might be better classified as “speculative fiction” or “adventure romance”.  For my intents of analyzing the work as a piece of literate and its thematic contents, I will consider the piece a satire, but more importantly a warning.  The novel begins as one of the protagonists is living in a post-apocalyptic world, inhibited by simple, humanlike beings, and strange hybrid animals such as pigoons, wolvogs, and rakunks.  We eerily get the feelings as though we exist in a world with the influences of mankind and natural elements, and yet somehow something is terribly distorted.  As the novel progresses, we see that the true horror of the book is not what happened before the apocalyptic event, but instead the world that existed, and led up to said event. 

            Prior to the shift that led to the demise of all humanity with the exception of the protagonist, snowman, we see a world similar to ours, taking place in the future.  The future we see is one that Atwood speculates could be a possibility if modern trends continue unchecked.  Modern society in the novel is ruled by transnational corporations, who lock their employees in corporate compounds, exacerbating the divide between the rich and the poor.  Entertainment becomes increasingly macabre, and the monetization of sex has become universally acceptable.  Even the natural world becomes distorted and skewed based on the wills of an increasingly greedy humanity; genetic engineering advances to the point where hybrid animals become common. 

            Throughout the novel, the protagonist’s childhood friend Crake slowly transforms from a brilliant student with a morbid fascination of the world that was, to a sort of mad scientist, who, despite his disdain of religion, will eventually become the creator, and God and the world that will come.  Leading up the time of the novel’s opening pages, Crake, now a brilliant scientist, creates a new species to replace humanity, a peaceful, if not duller variety of homo-sapiens, and unleashes a disease that will destroy most of humanity with the exception of the inoculated snowman, who would live on as the protector of the new world’s man.

Player One

Player one is an analysis of identity, time and perception that takes place in a cocktail lounge that exists within the dawn of the apocalypse that is written in a novel which is derived from a series of 5 lecture.  In Canada.  Partially as a result of the intention of the book, and the unconventional means in which the novel was composed and delivered, many have noted that the book contains many elements and characters that are oftentimes lacking in believability.  This is a characteristic that I at time had difficulty dealing with, but eventually began to add some sense of mood and significance to the book.  The premise here is this romantic idea that when the world as we know it is ending, we will not be concerned so much with the fires that lie outside our doors, but instead the state of humanity, identity, and meaning of self worth and value.

            Taking for a moment about identity, I must mention the title of the novel, and it’s significance.  Player one is one of the narrators of the novel, and omnipresent overseer of the novel’s events who contributes at the end of every of the novel’s 5 chapters to summarize and prepare the reader for the next novel.  The character, if you can call it that, is described, or compared to the protagonist of a videogame one of the other narrator plays.  It is by comparing the other (human) narrators of the novel that we are further allowed to analyze the paradigms of the non-omniscient beings. 

            Aside from Player One, Coupland also uses the environment and unfolding situation at the times of the character’s convergence to add meaning to, and delving into the entities, and identity crisis of the characters.  The setting of the novel is a cocktail lounge inside a hotel airport, as riots and explosions begin to unfold as a result of skyrocketing oil prices.  The events preceding the cocktail lounge allude to the events that will come; two character meat in a chatroom called the Peak Oil Apocalypse chat room.   The lounge itself serves as the optimal stage to operate on the identities of these character’s, as it is by nature an environment that suggests transition, and imbues very little inherent identity in any of the characters.  The novel heightens this sense by closing off the outside world, giving this space devoid of identity a prisonlike feel, suggesting a void of nothingness outside the confines of the lounge.  In this way, the characters are forces to look at themselves honestly, knowing that their identities are shaped by their past and outside life, but in the context of a universe that is nonexistent outside the present time and location.

Red Shoes; the horror of self-destruction and achieving one’s dreams

I have to say right off the bat that I quite enjoyed the Red Shoes.  We started watching it in class and immediately after I had to pick it up from the library.  What intrigued me about the film was the fantastical, dreamlike sequence that took place while the ballet was being performed.  I cannot say if this was similar to many other horror films of the time, but in my limited experience it reminded me of black and white horrors such as The Carnival of Lost soles.  The horror is less about the fear of disfigurement and viscera, but more with much more tangible and relatable fears such as the loss of identity, fear of unknown, and terror of the mundane.  The music and execution of the film also presented a fresh viewpoint, as I have watched a very limited selection of films predating the 1970’s.  This, however, made the design and effects of the movie much more relevant and impressive to me.  The set designs was beautiful and imaginative, and reminded me to some extent of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

            Straying from my praise of the film, I’ll look at the work’s thematic contents, and similarities to modern films such as The Black Swan, and The Wrestler.  The thematic content in which I can most relate to this film is the idea of suffering for your art, or the question of what will one sacrifice to be great.  The film’s protagonist plays a prima ballerina starring in an immensely popular ballet; one who portrays a character who dons ‘the red shoes’, and dances to her death.  Following the initial showings of the ballet, the ballerina takes a hiatus with her love interest, before being beckoned back into the red shoes.  Confronted with the notion that she will have to chose between being happy, and being a great artist, her character consumes her, and she mirrors the girl in the red shoes by dancing to the death of her career, breaking her legs.  She finds herself unable to ever dance again, but relieved of the curse of playing the character, and the price to pay for greatness.

            The self destruction necessary to compete reminded me greatly of both The Black Swan, and the Wrestler, where character’s destroyed their personal lives, their minds and their bodies in the pursuit of fulfilling their potential in their professional endeavors. I am reminded once again, that every day I must make the same choices, and acknowledge that their exists very little consolidation between my what I wish to achieve in my artistic pursuits, and what I wish to experience as a human being over the course of my lifetime.    

Reflection on Auteur theory, related to Akira Kurosawa

Leading up to our discussion on auteur theory, I watched three films by Akira Kurosawa; Rashamon, 7 samurai, and Yojimbo.  As a result of me finding the films via seeded online sources, all but one of the films had any form of subtitles (the film which did offer English subtitles had overdubbed Russian dialogue on top of the original Japanese audio, leading to quite and interesting viewing experience).  I have to note as I begin to discuss auteur theory, that while I have already seen 7 samurai several years ago, and remembered the story, in not having any English dub or subtitles for 7 samurai or Rashamon, I actually had watched more than half of Yojimbo under the impression that I was watching 7 samurai before I realized that I was watching another film.  To me, this is indicative that a director, or at the very least, Kurosawa’s vision in filmmaking outshines influences and the process and pipeline of developing film. 

            In making my own film as we speak for my senior thesis in computer animation, I have say that I am personally offended by the notion that there are people who would not believe the concepts of auteur theory.  To me what this is saying is that there are people who would believe that directors are interchangeable, and that the creative vision of individuals working on a film, or any piece of art for that matter, are of little importance to the process or outcome of creating a work of film.

            I understand criticisms of auteur theory, particularly in regards to animation.  There is the idea that animated film are produced in a formulaic means, wherein every aspect of the pipeline and creative process predetermines the final film, and very little creative vision or stress ends up in the final product.  While I agree that there exists a strictly regimented pipeline, I would assert that it’s presence is not so much to determine the creative result of the film, but to minimize technical errors and stresses, and let the creativity and decisions of those working on the film to shine out.  In my opinion, anyone who would suppose that Pixar films are made by a system of formulas and predetermined processes are holding onto such antiquated thoughts on art and film, similar to the notion that digital painters press a button to paint a building, or computer animators do not actually use any creative talent in doing what we do.  Damn muggles, if they only knew the effort and stress necessary to make the magic of art possible.