roger ebert

Yes, videogames are toys.

  • Reading time:6 mins read

I don’t think anyone’s saying that there isn’t human potential to videogames. It’s just that they aren’t really living up to that potential yet. Even in the best cases. Give ’em a couple of decades.

Ebert hasn’t spent much time with them. He hasn’t really thought about them. Freeman’s basically on mark in saying the problem is, we don’t really have the vocabulary down.

I responded to Ebert, telling him that although he was essentially right as far as he went with his argument, he was a little off base in what he was using to judge. He says the main problem with videogames is that they ask for user input, so there isn’t any “authorial control” to them. Well, sure there is. The control is, as with film or novels, in the rules that the fictional world goes by. The difference is really just in what the different media study.

Film is about the juxtaposition of imagery over time, and what that can do to us. Videogames are about cause and effect, and what that ultimately can do to us.

The reason most videogames are kind of trivial right now is that few games really bother with the idea of consequences. I don’t even necessarily mean within the gameworld itself, although in some cases that could be a good step. I just mean emotional consequences. Given that almost all videogames are based on physical violence, you can see how they’re a little hard to take seriously.

This is the problem with the whole “videogames are supposed to be fun!” argument. Not really. Videogames are supposed to elicit some kind of emotion in the player. It’s the quality of that emotion which the medium and indeed the game must be judged on. That, and the elegance with which the emotion is elicited.

This is not to imply that every videogame must be “serious” — meaning Important or Dark or Thoughtful or Artsy or what-have-you. Or that most should be. Or that any should be, really. I still can’t bring myself to play killer7 because the beginning annoyed me so much. I’m just saying that they should try to be a little more human, is all.

Ideally, every videogame offers us a unique perspective of the Way Things Are. The way life works. What the rules are, what the possibilities are.

Are there any videogames out there that revolve around the bizarre way rules work when you’re a child? I don’t mean the invisible walls that don’t let you explore that part of a level just “because I said so”. I mean all of the little lies and half-truths and simplifications that are handed to us, either to get us to obey or to shut up or to mask that our parents don’t really know the answer — or just to toy with us. What about a game that explores that world, and the fear that comes along with potentially violating a rule by accident. The fear that comes with being called in that certain tone of voice, even if you don’t remember doing anything bad.

There are so many interesting things to explore. Instead we’re mostly just collecting trinkets and shooting things. See something, shoot it, get points. Cause and effect. We’ve still yet to progress past Space Invaders.

I guess maybe the reason I like older games so much, especially things like scrolling shooters and fighting games, is how honest they are. Somewhere in the last fifteen years, between the RPG explosion and the SNES and 3D and full-motion video, things have gotten kind of distracted. There’s this idea that videogames are better than they ever have been, that because people have (in some cases) learned how to put together the old pieces rather more competently than before, we’re at the heights of the craft and the art of game design. It’s all inbred bullshit. A group hug about how great Videogames are for their own sake. It’s a lie, like William Gibson’s computer-generated pop stars. Or like pop music as a genre and an industry, really.

Everyone’s been so busy looking down that something’s gotten lost and no one’s much noticed: the justification for any of this shit being here to begin with. Why are we doing this? Why are we playing videogames? Why are they being made? The only answer is that it’s because they’re videogames!

…

Now. This is real, and it’s a real problem. Most people just don’t have a name for it yet. They don’t know how to describe it. The industry’s getting restless. People are always complaining about sequels and about EA and about lack of good IP. Japan’s gaming industry has been imploding for a while. People keep predicting crashes. People keep talking about how jaded they’re getting, and about how much better videogames used to be. To shrug off any of that, no matter how much you might be thrilled with things as they are now, is pretty hard to excuse.

For all the talk about how healthy the industry is, how much money it’s making, as a percentage of the population videogames have exactly the same market saturation they did twenty years ago, during the NES era. There’s just more on the market, and the people who buy videogames are getting older and buying more. New people aren’t really playing videogames. And if they are, they’re doing it at about the same rate as existing players grow disillusioned.

…

If modern videogames tend to take the player for granted, I guess it’s because they take videogames for granted. Everyone does, really. Videogames are videogames. They’re Mario and Pokemon and Grand Theft Auto and everything we’ve ever seen. That’s all kind of poisonous. It’s best we just put it out of our heads. Those are examples of what has been done with videogames. Most of them are very well-done, for what they are. They’re just sketches, though. Videogames can be so much more interesting. So much more relevant. To see how, don’t look at videogames; look into yourself. Look at your life. Look around your town. Look at the news. Society. Look at why you like anything. Look at what makes Catch-22 such a great work and not just a funny story about World War II.

For those of you have attained enlightenment from widget-gathering, feel free to ignore this whole argument.

A response to a videogame critic

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Relativity is the most important factor to consider when assigning scores. In lack of an absolute objective meter — which implicitly we can’t have in these matters — what we’re left with is our own subjective assessments, that we distill to make relatively objective conclusions. The question is how we calibrate that relativity.

It seems to me that your case with San Andreas and Castle of Shikigami is miscalibrated in the same manner as most game reviews, in that you calibrate your relatve objectivity to your assumptions about what your average reader might consider “worthwhile” rather than to, frankly, the most solid foundation you have — that being the work itself: how well it succeeds in what it sets out to do, and whether you feel that its goal was a worthwhile one in the first place.

It would be one thing if you rated San Andreas higher because you felt it succeeded better at what it set out to do, regardless of which game you’d rather play. To compare them directly to each other, however, with a goal of determining some mythical absolute value for your average reader, is ludicrous. It’s exactly the issue that you complain about in this article.

For the sake of comparison, let’s take Roger Ebert’s system of review. If he really enjoys a mindless action movie, and feels it does everything it sets out to do as well as it could be done, he might well give it four stars. If he is frustrated with a much more challenging and worthwhile movie, because it fails in a few key areas, he might give it two and a half or three stars. This is not because the former movie has more content in it, more features, covers more ground than the arty movie. It’s just because it is more successful. Given an personal choice between the two, he would not hesitate to recommend the latter over the former. It’s almost certainly a better movie. It just doesn’t accomplish its goals as well.

I would argue, from what I have seen of San Andreas, that it falls short of its goals in a lot of places. It’s got some great ideas that it doesn’t really know how to follow through on. After you leave the first city, most of the game’s potential falls apart. Not only that; it also limits the player in a lot of silly ways that the earlier games in the series did not. Does Castle of Shikigami 2 have the same problems? I don’t know. I’ve not paid much attention. People seem pleased with what it has to offer. I’ve seen nowhere near the same kind of annoyance that I’ve seen with San Andreas. For what that’s worth. And I think it’s worth something.

Chasing Harry Lime

  • Reading time:3 mins read

This piece does not a bad job of summing up my attitude toward… things. Videogames, sure. The last paragraph in particular illustrates why I’m baffled at the animosity often directed toward critics. And the better they do their job, it seems the more they’re resented.

Then, I guess my experience in school should have prepared me for people’s reactions when you begin to ask questions.

This summer I witnessed, in the Gaming Age forums, a person’s hate-drenched response to Insert Credit‘s big videogame journalism article. This fellow claimed to be involved with game development. He went on about how vile and useless critics were. What do they know. They don’t make the games. (I should note here that some of the best filmmakers, poets, and musicians have also been influential critics in their day.) I decided that I never want to play a game made by this person. It was clear to me that he didn’t have much interest in communicating.

Which makes me wonder why he ever got involved in the videogame business. Perhaps because he wanted to Make Videogames, without really understanding what that means. Perhaps he became dazzled with, and ego-attached to, the idea of Being a game developer. Or he came to worship the games themselves.

This is compared to… well. Because he felt he had something to say, and this seemed a good way to express himself.

If the latter were the case, he’d want intelligent criticism. He’d want interaction. He’d want to see if his message got across — and if not, what the alternate interpretations might be.

If the former were the case, he wouldn’t. Because he’d be afraid that his world would shatter.

It sounds to me like he’s in the wrong profession, if it causes him that kind of insecurity. And again, what kind of a game would a guy like this make?

I received a puzzled email not long ago, in reference to a passing comment in an old entry of mine. I’d mentioned that we could do without any more people making videogames who want to Make Videogames. I suppose the above is a part of what I meant.

It doesn’t stop with videogames, of course. Artists, writers, politicians… really, anything that a person might do with himself. I suppose this — the motivation to Be Things through doing — is all a side effect of our goal-oriented society. And perhaps, to some extent, of that perennial whipping boy, The Media. (Hey, I’ve got to throw it in somewhere.) If you’re not somebody, you’re nobody. Just ask your grandmother who wanted you to grow up and be a famous lawyer or a rich doctor or the President. Just look to all of the people who’ve asked you what you want to be when you grow up. And to all of the people who look at you with a puzzled expression whenever you choose to study something without a direct practical application.

Hell, I need to go to sleep.

You can ring my Belmont.

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Anyone out there who still thinks The Matrix is deep or original in any legitimate respect — I’m talking about the whole franchise (as it’s come to be) — then watch Dark City. Please. If you’ve already seen it, then watch it again if you haven’t recently. You probably haven’t seen it since the second Matrix movie was released. Since no one seems to remember the film, I feel this is a pretty safe assumption.

Every single theme encapsulated within the first two movies is present in Dark City — only there’s even more. And it’s tied together more well. It’s more elegant. It’s more stylish. It’s more original. It’s made with more talent and more heart. It’s got a better sense of narrative. Not only that, but it understands what it’s talking about. It doesn’t just dump freshman-level philosophy directly out of a class discussion. It doesn’t get is special effects from TV commercials. Although they’re just as much tools of the narrative as in The Matrix, its characters have personality.

It doesn’t pretend to be hip, by borrowing its hips from all of the most obviously cool ziggurats of popular culture. And it doesn’t overstay its welcome. It is a self-contained short story, because that is the nature of its message. The Wachowski brothers, in contrast, don’t seem to understand the useful limits of their material. Kind of like George Lucas.

And — again — they don’t have anywhere nearly as much to say. Not that they understand what little they do have. Nor do they seem to understand that their words are not their own.

Let’s kill Timothy!

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Without Orson Welles, we would have no Touch of Evil. Without Touch of Evil, we would have no Peter Gunn. And, relatedly, no Blake Edwards, as he came to be. We wouldn’t exactly have Henry Mancini, in the form we know. Without them, we’d have no Cowboy Bebop.

Another big piece comes from Peter Max (and The Yellow Sumbarine).

Another big piece comes from Saul Bass.

So. Philip K. Dick and William Gibson took late ’70s/early ’80s punk culture and other then-current societal trends and newish technologies (such as Arpanet), projected them a few decades into the future, and came up with the Cyberpunk genre.

Shinichiro Watanabe took early ’60s post-beat jazz and mod culture, and detective and kung-fu films of the era, and projected them a few decades into the future to create The Work, Which Becomes a New Genre Itself.

So. We’ve done punk. We’ve done ’60s cool jazz/bebop/mod culture. Perhaps next we can project the mid-1800s romantic classical music scene a few decades into the future. That might have some possibilities.

No, hold on. The Victorian thing is starting to get overdone. How about the turn-of-the-century ragtime era? The clash between classical and blues; between performance and recording; between vaudeville and cinema.

What other archetypical, musically-related period cultures can we tap into? This is important. We’re creating a NEW CLASSIC here.

It’s almost like casual jeans day.

  • Reading time:7 mins read

Game:

A few days ago, having recently acquired my very own copy of Truxton I uncloaked my Genesis — for the playing thereof.

Truxton, I found to be almost identical to Fire Shark — only… not as much fun. I can’t get past the beginning of level two without some dumb ship popping out of nowhere and running into my back before I know what’s up.

Still. It’s there. And now so is my Genesis. Being it that I’m on this Castlevania kick — again — I pulled out my Majesco-republished (and thereby terribly-boxed) copy of Bloodlines. As not entirely bad as this game is, I’ve rarely bothered to play it past the second level or so. The game is difficult — but in a more floaty way than I expect from Castlevania. It lacks some charm. As applaudable as Michiru Yamane‘s music might be, her sound effects are entirely loathsome. All in all, the game is just kind of… well, again — it’s there.

On one default set of two continues, I managed to get to… what I think should be Dracula’s final form: a big, fake Mode-7 demon with a face in his crotch. I might even have beaten him; I had the pattern down and everything. He didn’t have much life left. And yet: I didn’t dodge when I should’ve.

Still. Bloodlines. Last form (?) of last boss. Not bad, I say. Dare I suppose, better than you.

If you’ve actually beaten the game, don’t tell me. Let me feel special for the moment.

Movie:

The Italian Job: Sure.

It’s got energy. It’s certainly nothing special in its own right; all I could think of, from the premise on out, were the observations of Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. Still, it’s very well-made. It has a great sense of momentum. The plot doesn’t follow through on any of the stupid possibilities that it coudl have; it manages to dodge away — fairly — every time it approaches a potentially-unsatisfying easy answer. Not once did I feel insulted or cheated. I felt tense when I was supposed to feel tense. I cared when I was supposed to care.

I think the whole Napster bit could have been minimized. The movie also acted as a rather obvious commercial for those mini cars (which I don’t believe are real Minis, as such — not that I know anything of, or much care about, cars). Still, not enough to overly stretch my patience.

So. Yeah. For what it is, it’s certainly worthwhile. There’s not much to study, but it’s enjoyable just in the fact that it’s so unusually competent. It feels more European than American — which might explain the previous observation.

UPDATE:

According to Ebert: “This is just the movie for two hours of mindless escapism on a relatively skilled professional level.”

Didn’t I just say that?

Music (and… Game, again):

Harmony of Dissonance: seriously, this game has to possess the most powerful soundtrack in the whole series. Most Castlevanias have really impressive power-melodies. The NES trilogy: if Bach (not J.S.; perhaps a lesser Bach) were aware of 20th century music, this might be what he’d have come up with. Circle of the Moon has some of the most lush, layered, driving, just plain fun music in the series.

However: the HoD score is the only one to really make me feel anything in particular. The more closely I listen, the more impressed I become. This isn’t just videogame music. There’s something else going on here; a certain kind of genius, or at least wild inspiration. The contrasting melodies swirl into madness, creating a dark updraft for the player — instilling an unsettled momentum into his musculature.

The bass takes up the central melody role, holding the piece together while the lead stutters incoherently. The entire piece pulls in its legs, rotating more and more tightly, getting all the stronger — until it snaps; it lets go, carrying the player to sanity with one key breeze. There’s but one escape, and the music finds it — yet it doesn’t stop. It must keep going while the player remains dazed from the last bit of overstimulation. It has places to go. It can’t let the player loose to drift away. It can’t break the atmosphere.

All of the parts speak to each other. They’re not just there to fill out the orchestration, as in so many other soundtracks in this series. They argue. They trade off. They team up. They go in their own disparate directions, then crtash back together again. They listen. They respond.

This soundtrack knows what it’s doing. It has an intelligence to it. It has a personality unto itself. It would be worth talking to.

Again, I can’t say that about the Aria of Sorrow score. That music is just… nice. And appropriate. It’s… there. It has no personality of its own — and I imagine that’s probably the whole intent. People screamed so much about the HoD score that Igarashi must’ve told Yamane to give him something more typical this time around. It looks like it’s worked, given the popular reaction.

Sigh.

See, this is where informed feedback could do a developer well. I’ve slowly been poring my way through the free magazines that I got at E3 — and, man. I’ve yet to see one thoughtful critique. One interesting, well-considered argument. The obviously lousy games get bad scores. The high-profile games get good scores. The ones in between are gernally analyzed on the basis of a few random observations which might or might not have anything to do with the intent of the game in question. It’s hard to tell.

HoD gets a 9.5, because it must — although note is made of the terrible soundtrack. In this case, the reviewer doesn’t even bother to explain that it sounds like NES music (!). Then, neither does he vaguely brush off its composition, as in so many web reviews. Not enough space to explain. Must conserve words.

Metroid Fusion gets a 9.5. Why? Because it must. Show some respect for the Gameboy game of the year, people. Everyone knows that Metroid is flawless. Reword the press release, and perpetuate the consumer cycle. Even if it’s not perfect, so what. It’s one of the best games ever. Must show the proper respect. Mustn’t question the publishers (aside from Acclaim; they’re okay to bash at will), or they might complain. Can’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Since E3, I’ve come to the realization that the game industry — at least over here — seems to be made up of a million frat boys, all in it for the ride. And I’m not just talking about the “journalists”.

Let’s talk about the journalists, though. Brandon asks two or three well-informed questions. He listens to the responses, and asks follow-up questions. PR guy, astonished, comments that Brandon “should work for CNN”. So: how has everyone else been acting? Brandon was only being professional.

Then I remember the reviews I see on IGN and — particularly — Gamespot: the big sites. Then I remember the way news travels — rarely credited or researched with so much as a phone call. Then I overhear Tim’s experiences with a particular site to which he contributed for… about two or three weeks. Then I come home and I read the fucking press releases.Then I read the magazines.

…

I… was going to say more, but I’m beginning to tire — both of this subject, and in a more general sense. Maybe I’ll pick up this thread later.

For now: EGM continues to be not-all-that-bad.