Blips: Press X to Rosebud

Source: Against Kane
Author: Matthew Burns
Site: Magical Wasteland

I kind of hate that "the Citizen Kane of video games" is still a phrase game critics are wrestling with, even those who are quite adept at ripping the analogy to shreds. It's an overused metaphor that is almost always implemented lazily. For someone looking to take criticism to heart, the label of Kane-ness is an empty gesture, essentially a buzzword. Your game should innovate. Your game should change the conversation. Your game should be both of its time and timeless. You should make the Citizen Kane of video games.

Matthew Burns offered up a welcome critique from the other side of the story, where Kane-like games have been produced for years and where the film might not be the best role model for games going forward anyway. The post is brief and to the point, so I won't rehash it all here except to say that I'm mostly in agreement with Burns, but I'm also hesitant to dismiss the technical prowess of Kane in pursuit of the film's purpose.

The first achievements that come to mind when I think of Citizen Kane are indeed technical: cinematography, lighting, editing, special effects, etc. Welles pushed the studio set in directions that were truly innovative at the time. I'm still amazed by the newspaper office set, particularly the ceiling. What looks like a solid surface is actually muslin, which allowed for hidden boom-mics and low-angle indoor shots. It's incredibly clever.

Categorizing technical achievements in film as separate from what a film is about is a fallacy though, the same as it would be in game design. What is the meaning of any film minus the expressiveness of key technical components? To remove the qualities of editing techniques is to remove adjectives from a sentence. Camera-centric technical aspects of film are as much a part of the language of film as acting, if not moreso to differentiate it as a medium from live theater.

If we want to compare the expressiveness of the procedural rhetoric of games to Citizen Kane or dismiss the comparison entirely, we best understand how the film conveys meaning in every frame. It's much more holistic than just acting, dialogue, and s twist ending.

That said, dear God, let's just put this analogy out of its misery.

Blips: Ban All the Things!

Source: Apple rejects the notion that games are the place for comment, but it's built right into the medium
Author: Steven Poole
Site: Edge

Apple's tenuous relationship with games soldiers on. With the recent removal of Sweatshop HD from the App Store, Apple has proven that they fundamentally do not understand games except the part where selling them is good for business. Steven Poole argues that this lack of comprehension isn't just that Apple fails to see that games can "mean something," but that any man-made interactive product implicitly conveys meaning through "procedural rhetoric." If Apple rejects a game for espousing political, social, or religious opinions, shouldn't the rest of the App Store be held to the same standards? In which case, Poole concludes, shouldn't everything else be banned too?

What Apple seems to be filtering, other than singling out games, is message explicitness. Both Sweatshop HD and the previously banned Phone Story get right to the heart of their chosen subject matter. Sweatshop HD is about running a sweatshop and what a horrible exploitive system it is. Likewise, Phone Story presented an interactive narrative of smartphone manufacturing and certain inhumane practices that have been purportedly implemented in those processes. In both cases, it's difficult to miss the point of what the developers are getting at.

Perhaps it's time for developers to go subliminal. Why struggle past Apple's gatekeepers when you can just hypnotize your way to the store front and deep into players' brains. Why, you could even make a game that's so fun to play, it's almost like people are addicted to it, like they have a gambling problem or some other detrimental condition. But who am I kidding, Apple would never let games like that through when they don't allow socially conscious "message" games, right?