Blips: "Video" Games

Source: Hyper Mode: Videogame The Movie
Author: Maddy Myers
Site: Paste

The video game / film comparison topic has been making the rounds again in the wake of The Last of Us. I've already highlighted a handful of essays on the debate, but today Paste ran a piece by Maddy Myers that put an interesting spin on the issue by considering gameplay narrative in light of YouTube videos that compile cutscenes from games and present them as "movies." Myers points to cyberpunk action game Remember Me as an example of a game that, despite its other problems, managed to fuse cinematics and interactivity with its hacking scenes in a way that incorporates the strengths of both simultaneously. It's telling that these YouTube "movie" editors included these hacking sequences despite the fact that they're actually "gameplay."

Myers also makes a strong point against quantifying gameplay as a measure of game-ness. Just because those hacking scenes in Remember Me don't involve direct character and camera control the way the action portions do, doesn't diminish they're value as part of a game. Expansive control and choice in games are not interesting systems in themselves, and neither are linear, cinematically driven quick-time events. The game is the framework that holds everything together and turns those systems into worthwhile experiences, or doesn't. There's something to playing games, even ones dominated by non-interactive cutscenes that you don't get from watching them in video form. The different parts inform one another as part of a unified experience, making cutscene compilations inherently out of context.

Blips: The Other Side of the Story

Source(s): Maybe Games Just Aren't For Telling Great Stories? and Games Are The Ideal Place For Telling Great Stories
Author: John Walker
Site: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

What to make of John Walker's dueling editorials on the competence of video games as a medium for telling great stories? The two pieces represent opposite viewpoints much like talking heads on cable news shows –each saying their piece without ever actually debating topics. The difference here is that since both articles were written by the same person, they represent internal conflict, one that seems unresolved.

However, certain arguments in the pro-game stories article seem to trump claims to the contrary in the other piece. Namely there's a part where Walker breaks down three kinds of narrative approaches in games, and when he gets to the third one, open-ended narratives where players, not designers, make the stories, he really makes his strongest point. In the anti-game stories editorial, Walker lists three games that he remembers having great stories in a more literary sense of the term, but makes no mention of the open-ended narrative in Minecraft and EVE Online that he cites in the other piece. Sure, bringing those games up would have strongly refuted the points he was making, but it also paints this pair of editorials as clever for cleverness' sake.

The issue isn't that game stories are doomed to be poor; there are plenty that aren't, and quite a bit of what makes others miss the mark could be corrected with a higher level of craft on the writing and performance front (a complicated issue, I'm aware). While I don't have an inherent problem with linear narratives in games, the ones that resonate most strongly are the ones that primarily use the game's mechanics to tell the story. These stories can still make use of smart writing, elegant performance capture, and fancy graphics, but treading to closely on the tropes of cinema or literature will just make players wonder why the game isn't just one of those instead.

Blips: For Game Narratives, Less is More

Source: Minimalism in Game Narrative: Can we say more by talking less?
Author: Paul Andrew Mcgee
Site: Felt Thought

How much direction do we really need in games? Is there anything wrong with simply being given a premise and being shoved out into the world to figure things out for ourselves? This is the sentiment running through Paul Andrew Mcgee's essay on minimalist narrative in games.

He uses the different narrative approaches of the first and most recent Zelda games as examples of how minimalist design has been informed by the technology for which it was made. The original Zelda has a minimalist premise, but much of this had to do with game design standards and technical limitations, not because Nintendo was more capable of truly realizing Miyamoto's inspirational vision than now. Even if Skyward Sword has its merits, the loudest criticism I hear about the game is that it never backs off and just let's you play.

Mcgee notes how there is a recent movement to return to minimalist design, sometimes out of nostalgia, but other times out of a desire to recreate the sense of agency and adventurous tone of games that had little choice but to be minimalist. This involves a rejection of many modern game design tropes that have pushed games to be supposedly more accessible and cinematic. This very much resonated with me, as I tend to prefer a more minimalist narrative style in general. Miasmata and Proteus are some of my recent favorite games, and both subscribe wholeheartedly to this philosophy.

There are great citations from the worlds of film, art, and literature as well, and I think Mcgee makes a great case for the power of minimalist narrative in games.