“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)

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