Game creators crave validation
Video game designers — especially those looking to produce something truly meaningful — must have some self-esteem issues. After all, their medium simply doesn’t command the same level of respect as film.
Just read Roger Ebert’s creakingly unprogressive columns about the inability of video games to attain the same art and business status that film enjoys to get a sense for the widespread nose-thumbing among film critics afraid of shifting dynamics within a visual medium often compared to film.
Things are changing, however, as the industry moves from its profitable-yet-vapid adolescence into a period that will herald just as much narrative and artistic experimentation as the stagnant sequels and recycled characters that have defined the last decade in video games.
Much of this experimentation is coming — as it did for film students in the ’60s and ’70s — from graduates of video game design schools. Many of these developers use an education in critical thinking and theory to create smaller, independent games that compensate for low-budget with experimentation.
But when David Jaffe — that loudmouthed video game developer behind the legendary and staggeringly profitable God of War and Twisted Metal series — famously claimed he would make a game that would bring tears to the player’s eyes, the steady cultural shift within the industry became truly apparent.
Of course, Fumito Ueda already beat Jaffe to the punch. Ueda’s two games, ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, are widely cited by proponents of the medium as examples of the potential for true artistic expression through narrative and gameplay experimentation.
Shadow of the Colossus — that 2005 masterpiece of unimpressive graphics, awkward player control and magnificently minimalist storytelling — especially redefined what a game made under the masthead of a large, controlling studio like Sony could be.
Thankfully, the news that Ueda’s beloved game would be adapted into a film was met with the sort of derision from fans that the outcry over previous games more distinguished by excellent gameplay than narrative — Resident Evil, for one — could not have predicted. Transferring Ueda’s narrative to the silver screen could be a disaster of epic proportions.
Video game-based film adaptations make a lot of sense for both industries. For a studio head, the collective potential box office energy of a video game fanbase smashed together with a movie fanbase must be practically erotic.
Yet, and few will argue this point, movie adaptations of video games are a particularly awful subset of recent cinema. Sure, Mortal Kombat was amazing back in the third grade, but most people would struggle to name an adaptation that rose above even mediocrity. Here’s an abridged list: Super Mario Brothers, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Wing Commander, Tomb Raider, Max Payne — these films are memorable for naught but their failings.
The fatal difference between cinema and video games is best illustrated by Andrej Bartkowiak’s misguided adaptation of the beloved Doom — itself not exactly a benchmark for narrative quality — which featured a long scene shot entirely from the first person perspective in an effort to recall a first-person shooter. An interesting concept, flawed because the moviemakers forgot that self-determination — the ability to move from scene to scene even within a rigid storyline — is the most important difference between games and film.
Though culled from an otherwise utterly forgettable film, the Doom example is important because it illustrates the near-insurmountable gap between video games and movies that precludes the success of film adaptations: The driving forces behind the different narrative styles are essentially incompatible. In video games, the player pushes the action. In movies, the filmmakers push the action. Glibly-yet-honestly, the difference is as simple as that.
Just because a game has a beloved following and a masterful narrative shouldn’t make it an immediate candidate for adaptation. The also-still-in-development Bioshock adaptation, which has potential but could just as easily follow its predecessors down the path to mediocrity is another example of this notion.
Shadow of the Colossus is brilliant because of its relatively uncinematic narrative. For those unfortunate enough never to have played it, the game essentially follows an almost silent protagonist who wanders a vast and empty wasteland fighting giant lumbering monsters. Not exactly the stuff of blockbuster cinema, but Hollywood will undoubtedly have no qualms about sacrificing the soul of the narrative to make it profitable.
The differences between Shadow of the Colossus the game and the theoretical Shadow of the Colossus the movie — which could be amazing. I’m merely speculating using an advanced critical process called educated guessing — illustrate the nearly antithetical motion of the film and game industries
Games, both independent and blockbuster, are rushing forward from their nostalgia-inducing but artistically ignominious origins toward possible widespread acknowledgment of the medium’s capabilities as more than just a business.
In this manner, film is hardly progressing at all, a trend ironically epitomized by movie adaptations of video games. The dynamic is changing: Video games are already on top financially, perhaps they can also follow suit as works of art.
John Wheeler is a senior majoring in cinema-television critical studies and East Asian languages and cultures. His column, “The Multiplex,” runs Fridays.