Nathan Ross's F&V blog

Conclusion

Despite video games being a relatively new medium, especially when compared to film and literature, it’s interactive nature allows it to take various elements from both mediums and combine them in unique and novel ways. Various aspects of video games can be attributed to certain genre’s better than others, especially as a creative art next to film.

Puzzle games for example are only possible on an interactive medium, and while its genre is puzzle, it has more scope and ability to merge with other genre, which allows greater flexibility in creating game genre’s, films on the other hand have various elements such as narrative and stylistic choices they have to incorporate in it for it to be labeled as a specific genre, film noir and westerns coming to mind.

The narrative structure of video games are now taking advantage of it’s ability to have it’s story manipulated in real time, with games such as BioWare’s Mass Effect having communication branches that can massively alter the direction of the game, compare this to the old interactive movies where you were severely restricted with your option’s and it’s clear to see that the video game industry has increased at an alarming pace in a relatively short space of time.

These innovation’s of the story telling side of things have led many to have video games defined as art a concept strongly argued against by people such as Roger Ebert, who replied to a question regarding games as art.;

‘Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.

I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. 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.”

One barrier that anything interactive faces is it’s user experience, with a bad one being able to quickly tarnish the image of a perfectly good product, this along with the large influx of casual gamers has resulted in a huge boom for the industry.

Regardless of games status as an art, video-games have a bright future ahead of them regarding the avenues they can go do technically, interface wise and narratively and by combining these advances with various genre’s, have a lot of range in where it can go, more-so than film and books.

References;

Ludography;

Mass Effect (2007) BioWare. Alberta, Canada.Xbox 360 DVD-DL

Websites:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=ANSWERMAN&date=20051127

2010: 05/26
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Interactivity

“The problematic nature of the term “interactive” has been frequently noted, but use of the term has been persistent and it seems to have stuck. Since it is such a broad concept, a comprehensive theory of interactivity is needed to look at how the interaction of a game is designed, and how a game’s options and choices are structured.” (Perron, Wolf, pg. 12. 2008)

The defining element between film and video games, is the latter’s natural interactivity. As Perron & Wolf state, “it is such a broad concept” that there is a huge scope in ways to interact with video games, from single press games such a Semi Secret Softwares Canabalt;

to Capcoms Steel Battalion;

Video-games by nature are meant to be interacted and manipulated, with various different input methods varying on the genre of the game they’re intended for; such as fishing rods and light-guns. As these interfaces are generally the first object the player interacts with when they experience a new game/accessory, they need to be ergonomic and accessible so they don’t negatively impact the gameplay experience. As hardware and software technology increases, the demand for greater graphics and animation grows at a uniform rate, requiring newer input methods to keep up with abilities of game developers. Certain genre’s such as racing games, tend to be more approachable than FPS’s and strategy games as they are instantly familiar, even without a steering wheel attachment.

As older consoles are technologically inferior to what’s available now, the games were simpler to control, as technology advanced, developers experimented with different ways to interact with various genres. The arrival of the CD allowed FMV (Full Motion Video) to fit on a single disc, initially popular, these were quickly shunned as the audience found the reduced interactivity limiting.

“Reducing interactivity gains us only small benefits in terms of reducing workload but costs us heavily in terms of reducing workload but cost’s us heavily in terms of the players ability to creatively influence the outcome of the game. This, I think, is the real reason why low-interactivity games have been such failures. Diminishing the interactivity just makes the game less fun faster than it makes the game easier. What we gain in terms of reduced workload we more than make up for in terms of diminished fun” (Crawford, pg. 87, 2003)

Quantic Dream’s Farenheit, a cinematographic adventure game can be seen as an interactive movie, being generated in real time but being heavily scripted. This enables the developers to create a cohesive narrative that fits in well with the genre of the game an its story. It’s use of camera angles gives it a movie-like feel, along with it’s innovative control system, using the analogue sticks to create gestures, such us stroking up and down to use a broom.

“At first glance, Fahrenheit doesn’t seem to fit this description as it makes intensive use of a real-time 3D engine to render environments and characters. Yet there is still a fundamental distinction between Fahrenheit and a first-person shooter or a third-person action-adventure game: its visual representation isn’t a complete procedural response of the software to the input of the player, taking into consideration the game world and logic. Instead, it is almost always a pre-scripted response, displaying pre-recorded content.” (Lessard, pg. 199, 2009)

Quantic Dream’s latest game, Heavy Rain continues with the interactive movie approach, and almost eliminates the controls, creating a more cinematic experience.

As casual gaming increases, the market is seeing a variety of more “human” interfaces arriving, from touchscreen devices such as Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Nintento’s DS, to a variety of motion control’s such as the Playstation Move, Microsofts Project Natal, and Nintendo’s Wii, various genre’s are having their control schemes rethought based around these new interfaces.

References:

Bibliography:

Perron. B. & Wolf. Mark J.P. (2008) The Video Game Theory Reader 2, Routledge

Crawford. C. (2003) Chris Crawford on Game Design, New Riders

Lessard. J. (2009) Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture. 2009

Ludography:

Canabalt (2008)Semi Secret Software, Internet.

Steel Battalion (2003) Capcom, DVD

Heavy Rain, (2010) Sony Computer Entertainment. Paris, France. (Blu-Ray)

2010: 05/26
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Narrative Structure

The most defining feature between video games and films, is that video games by nature are interactive, this interactivity means that the player’s choices can have a direct outcome on the narrative of the game, influencing minor plot elements such as a homeless person being able to buy some food, to more prominent actions, such as sparing someone’s life, or having children.

“We can identify a lot of different genres and game types, where some games scarcely hold any embedded, scripted story elements, like in Tetris, Pacman, Pong ,The Sims, SimCity. Other videogames however, entangle gameplay and narrative to such an extend that one aspect can not exist without the other: without narrativity there is no game, like in Fable, Bioshock, Prince of Persia, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” (Folkerts, n.d pg.8)

Until recently, most games, while interactive, were linear in the sense they had a predetermined beginning, middle and end, with the player being led through scenario’s not having a real effect on the outcome of the games narrative. This use of narrative curtails which game genres work well having a central narrative. Games with a main character or group of characters tend to be more endearing to the player than a car in a racing game as they’ll get to take control and witness “their own” character develop over the course of the game developers story. This trend is being reversed and we’re seeing more and more games giving the player choice in allowing them to have more of an influence over the games course of action. Video games aim to draw the player into the world and have them empathise with the character that’s been created. These video-games with a central narrative can be heavily influenced by their genre. The developers of these games straddle a fine line between creating a deep enough story for the player to be drawn in, but have enough re-playability for them to replay the game once complete. Games have to rely on methods such as choice as they aren’t as effective as film in portraying story-lines, due to them being interactive and longer in duration than the average film. The public go to the cinema to escape and watch various characters in various locales, whereas in video games, the players aim is to step into the shoes of the character. This poses a challenge for developers who often create a mute or masked character,as not to tarnish the view of the player.

These games often question human morales in an effort for the player to become more emotionally attached to the character.

2k Bostons’s Bioshock both adheres to these “rules” and disregards them at the same time. Throughout the game the player is led to believe that his actions are being done by his free will, at the same time giving you the choice of saving a little girl or killing her for greater financial gain. Narrative choices like these enable character driven games fit in with well with various genres, giving the player the ability to manipulate the world as they see fit.

References:

Ludography:

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent (2006), Ubisoft. Montreal, Quebec. Xbox 360 DVD-DL

Fable 3 (2010) Microsoft Game Studios. Surrey UK. Xbox 360 DVD-DL

Bioshock (2007) 2K Games. Canberra, Australia. DVD-L, Blu-Ray, PC DVD-ROM

Bibliography:

Folkerts. J. (n.d) Playing games as an art experience. Available at: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:KQGd0qFjOicJ:www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/folkerts-paper.pdf+jef+folkerts+bioshock&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiXBWMhiaAlXKIgwYSI7XSpVONAw93Jsq9QVxaIB7CSrEaqPLye60FAd3KqKGNV79BGMES2axMCeDyHjpG4vS9PZHBbuvOG8yunH4VX1RSAn8MzbkCnVqQ3ynos0ShRcslDgMSA&sig=AHIEtbSIpVQ7fDAipJ1q_XvIXGEHh-qkLw [accessed May 25 2010]

Websites:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_and_literature/v033/33.1.tavinor.html

http://www.bitmob.com/articles/from-passage-to-moscow-international-narrative-and-ethical-design-in-contemporary-games

http://talkingincircles.net/2008/04/27/analysis-of-bioshock/

http://gamestudies.org/0701/articles/simons

2010: 05/26
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Stylistic influences & choices

Compared to both music and film, video-games are a relatively new medium, one that is increasingly becoming more mainstream. This has naturally led to various different genres, some of which can only be created in the video-game industry such as puzzle games, some of which borrow from the film industry, such as horror games. These stylistic influences and choices can greatly change what the game is trying to communicate, and the effect it has on the audience.

As you can see, despite both of these games coming from the same series, the stylistic choices used by the games developers totally changes the tone & atmosphere of the game. Game developers draw alot of their influences from a variety of filmic identities, mirroring the aesthetic approach through the use of artwork/art-style, graphics, tone, story and to a lesser extent, cinematography and sound design, often replicating constant trends in film at the time, although many of these trends have been around since the relative genres inception. While a film is defined by it’s genre’s iconography & narrative, such as film noir and westerns, video games merely place reliance on genre conventions, in context with there interactive nature, as the interactive nature of videogames results in them being more of a hybrid of genres and sub-genres than film.

“While the ideas of iconography and theme may be appropriate tools for analyzing Hollywood films as well as many video games, another area, interactivity, is an essential part of every game’s structure and a more appropriate way of examining and defining video game genres” (Wolf, p.114, 2002).

Games such as the Silent Hill series, a survival horror which strongly draws on the conventions of the horror fiction genre epitomise this notion, relying on various horror clichés such as the use of light/dark, a vulnerable main character, using familiar locales against the player (babies, hospitals etc…) while wrapping these up in an interactive medium. As the main way of categorizing video games isn’t as defined as film, with the audiences prior experiences influencing how they perceive the game, stylistic choices help the developer in influencing the players perception of the game based on the creator’s vision. Another reason that game developers often borrow aesthetic choices from various film genre’s is in part due to the fact that the respective game genres lack any clearly defined iconography. A game like William Electrics “Defender”, whilst having a variety of game orientated genre’s and subgenres such as being a shooter and a strategy game, lacks any sort of film equivalent, only being relatively comparable to science fiction, albeit rather loosely. Some people may say this is due to it being graphically primitive and barely interactive, especially compared to games of today, however this concept still applies to more recent video games. Racing games for example, while often being full of video game related genre’s, lack any sort of filmic iconography or narrative as they’re no film equivalents to this genre. As you can see, the game genre’s that lend themselves best to using stylistic conventions are the ones which are most more closely related to film genre, aslong as the player participation and narrative is taken into account.

“The major defining characteristics of a genre will be visual: guns cars, clothes in the gangster film; clothing and dancing in music (apart from the music, of course!; castles, coffins and teeth in horror movies…Another, more important,reason is that it is actually very difficult to list the defining visual characteristics of more than a handful of genres, for the simple reason that many genres – among them the social problem film the biopic, romantic drama and the psychological horror film – lack a specific iconography.” (Neale, p.16, 1999)

Bibliography:

Wolf. Mark J.P. (2002) The Medium of the Video Game, University of Texas Press

Neale. S. (1999) Genre and Hollywood, Routledge.

Ludography:

Team Fortress Classic (1999) Sierra Entertainment, PC CD-ROM

Team Fortress 2 (2007) Valve Corporation, Steam, PC DVD-ROM

Silent Hill Homecoming (2008) Konami, PS3 Blu-Ray, Xbox 360 DVD-DL

Defender (1980) Williams Electronics, Arcade

2010: 05/26
CATEGORY: Uncategorized
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Graphics

It is only recently through technical advances have games reached the graphical fidelity needed to convey emotions properly, despite all these graphical developments, games still lack the ability for the audience to truly care about the characters. This makes it difficult for games developers to design truly believable characters as without the audiences ability to latch onto the characters, they are just a moving collection of polygons and textures, regardless of what the developers wanted to communicate in the story. To combat this, developers often borrow stylistic conventions from various genres in order to make it easier for the audience to relate to their characters (which i’ll be talking about in a later blog).

One of the reasons why people find it difficult to relate to modern characters can be attributed to the “uncanny valley”; a state in which the characters have become so realistic they stop being endearing and become creepy and unable to empathize with. This situation isn’t just limited to the games industry, originally hypothesized regarding the field of robotics in the 1970’s relating to a 1906 essay “On the Psychology of the Uncanny “by Ernst Jentsch, later expanded on by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay “The Uncanny” (“Das Unheimliche”) with it being being increasingly relevant in the film industry as well as games.

“Two courses are open to us at the outset. Either we can find out what meaning has come to be attached to the word ‘uncanny’ in the course of its history; or we can collect all those properties of persons, things, sense-impressions, experiences and situations which arouse in us the feeling of uncanniness, and then infer the unknown nature of the uncanny from what all these examples have in common. I will say at once that both courses lead to the same result: the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar. How this is possible, in what circumstances the familiar can become uncanny and frightening, I shall show in what follows. Let me also add that my investigation was actually begun by collecting a number of individual cases, and was only later confirmed by an examination of linguistic usage. In this discussion, however, I shall follow the reverse course.” Freud, 1919

It is apparently easier to remedy in the film industry as they can throw more technical resources in order to perfect the final image, a luxury games lack due to having decreased power and having to render everything in real-time, compared to film’s pre-rendered nature, a border which is being crossed more and more, Heavy Rain for example. Some company’s actively strive to avoid the uncanny valley, such as Pixar, who create highly stylised characters which many find easier relate to due to the fact they’re intentionally made to not replicate humans perfectly.

People believe that the corpse-like appearances of some digital characters receives such negative response due to it bringing forth the intrinsic human fear of death, while some believe that the response illustrates what is perceived to be a threat against human identity, as reflected in this graph, which despite catering for robots, can be applied to video games.

The stylised character approach is also used extensively in games as some developers know the limits of what they can do with graphics, and consciously avoid discouraging games by creating less than realistic characters, frequently applying stereotypes to the characters, which often can be related to more easily, however without proper narrative, they still won’t be seen as believable. These graphical choices constantly re-enforces the idea to the gamer that they are playing an interactive game, where the intention is often not to replicate life, as often the case with film.

Some games however actively pursue this realism, such as the aforementioned Heavy Rain, which marketed itself as an “interactive experience” rather than a video game, which shuns the stylistic approaches of other games with the aim of replicating film in a video-game, and while largely successful, arguably suffers from the uncanny valley due to it’s intention to portray realism.

Early tech demo for Heavy Rain;

In my next post I will be looking at stylistic choices and influences in video-games.

References

Bibliography

Freud. S,1919, The Uncanny. Located here: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/uncanny.html

Filmography:

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, 2001. [Film] Directed by Hironbu Sakaguchi, Moto Sakakibara. Japan. Columbia Pictures.

The Polar Express, 2004. [Film] Directed by Robert Zemeckis. USA. Warner Brothers.

Up, 2009. [Film] Directed by Pete Docter. USA. Walt Disney Pictures.

Ludography:

Devil May Cry 4 [2008] Capcom. Xbox DVD, PS3 Blu-Ray

Gears of War 2 [2006] Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox DVD

2010: 03/22
CATEGORY: Uncategorized
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Introduction

Hi there, I am currently a first year student at Norwich University College of the Arts (NUCA) and for Critical Studies we were asked to pick a topic related to genre and create a blog about it, exploring various elements about it e.g what makes it a genre, its history, where it’s going, stylistic differences between genres, how relevant it is today etc…

For my topic I will be looking at film genre and it’s relationship to video-games, how similar genre’s differ between the two formats (horror), how games, despite being increasingly cinematic due to the graphics power of games consoles and computers, vary from film and look at the various potential reasons for this;

– Graphics (Uncanny valley)

How the technical aspects of creating aesthetics effects the gamers reception.