It’s funny what a few words can mean to somebody.
Especially when those words involve your name at the end of a game you’ve worked on.
Gamasutra has a feature up on that topic, with comments from Mark Jacobs, CEO of Mythic, Jen MacLean, chair of the IGDA board, and Doug Lombardi, dude at Valve.
It is perhaps unsurprising that most studio heads have opinions like some of those presented in the article. They’re simply not directly affected by the problem. The notion that people can avoid working at places that don’t have reasonable crediting policies is a myth, because the large majority of studios do exactly what Mythic used to. If you want to work for somebody else in the game industry it’s pretty hard to avoid it. Kudos to Mythic & Mark Jacobs for making a change and treating the work of all of its employees with the respect it deserves.
read comments (10)I just don’t understand how you can construct an argument against games driven by a personal perspective. How could they have offended to bring this upon them?
Are these types of games really taking away from collaboratively developed games? Where’s the evidence this is zero-sum? I mean, ok, you want to encourage creative work environments, sure. How does that actually take away from someone wanting to express themselves via a game? If that person has the right to express themselves that way, I can only equate arguing against games as a form of self-expression as wanting to deny them that self-expression.
If the argument is that we need to make “radically new types of games”, well, games with a personal emotional outlook are fairly new as these things go. Arguing against them at this point would be an easy way to discourage this newer type of game. We need more of all the above, not less of one type vs. another.
At least the author and I do agree that a detailed discussion of auteur theory here is not that useful. Regardless of theory, in practice some people view themselves that way, and some games are moreso a product of that kind of vision than others. Auteur theory may or may not be masculine-focused as Kael would argue, but how can you equate games attempting to inspire a deep emotional experiences as limiting to a particular gender? The more games we have that communicate different perspectives the more varied game creators will be. And a requirement to have more games with different perspectives is that more games communicate emotional perspectives, period.
I don’t see why there’s an assumption that a personal emotional perspective naturally inhibits the creativity of others working on a project. The only limitation is the creative leadership - if the vision-holder is capable of communicating the core emotional experience to teammates, encouraging suggestions fall under that vision and dealing well with suggestions that don’t (by more clearly communicating the vision while at the same time not discouraging teammates’ investment in the project), that creative improvisational harmony is a positive exeprience. That kind of creative leaderhsip may not be common, but it’s no less common than well-managed collaborative environments.
Games are in fact objects, game development is the process. Amazing games have been born from horrible process. The more we can extricate the two the easier it will be to advance game criticism, game development, and the range of the medium as a whole.
read comments (2)Just a splash of color. Garish by my normally minimalist standards, anyway.
read comments (0)Fox Searchlight, Miramax, Focus Features, Paramount Vantage. Practically ever major film studio has a label geared to finding, producing, and distributing “specialty” films, films that cover risky topics or themes, films that have a unique voice or emotional tone - films that at first glance may have limited mainstream appeal.
The music industry has an entire spectrum of indie label sizes (including now anybody in their basement). As artists grow in popularity they have the option to transition to larger publishing labels to support a larger fanbase.
The next big step to propel games forward as a medium is having more specialty publishing labels. Like specialty labels in film and music, these companies can more easily pursue marketing and distributing games that are unique and original.
read comments (4)Because it’s reached the nonsensicality of regular news media. To be fair, I guess this is a sign of “maturation”. Sigh. Look at us, the constant drive to fill a perceived void of news has finally achieved the same level of perspective loss as mainstream 24/7 news. Awesome.
What’s set me off? Ben Fritz’s (of Variety’s Cut Scene) criticism of Civ 4: Colonization (now with more equivocation). Well, there’s also the portion of Wagner James Au’s brain that is responsible for logical deduction imploding, but let’s face it, that’s just funny.
It just seems like now that people are slowing realizing that games can have complex themes and do in fact address serious topics, game journalists are looking for missteps along those lines anywhere and everywhere.
Hey look guys, there’s a book on colonization that recounts the struggles of New World colonizers. Insensitive trash, right? Maybe the only reason that shit isn’t being berated CNN is because books don’t make enough money, I don’t know. Does anybody remember any furor over the release of the original Colonization? Surely if there was no noteworthy controversy it must be because back in 1994 we were all pigheaded eurocentric bastards.
The thing is, game developers do have a responsibility to address topics like this with the appropriate seriousness. But as a game journalist, you’re not going to encourage developers to do that by whining about your complete lack of perspective. If you really want to to encourage developers to do that, here’s a thought: Set a good example.
How about reserving your criticism for a finished product? If you don’t like a teaser, marketing campaign, etc. before game has been completed, how about showing a little respect for the developer and restricting your discussion to those materials?
It’s not like your readership is going to appreciate your uninformed opinion. I don’t know if this means reviewers are required to finish an entire game before discussing it, but I have to think those reviewers that don’t maintain some self-discipline ensuring their opinion is based on reality as much as possible are going to inevitably suffer compared to their more exacting peers.
In the end, when dealing with a historical subject in any medium, is it somehow invalid to look at just one side’s perspective as long as it isn’t glorified unjustly? Sheer limits of space and time dictate the necessity of some limits, let’s be reasonable. Is simply depicting those actions in a game by their very nature glorifying them? This seems to be Fritz’s main argument, not having played the new game or the original. Of course not, how could it be? Unless you honestly believe games are incapable of being more than just power fantasies.
So here’s a request of game journalists - how about reserving yourself from acting out on the existential insecurity of needing to fill the news void? You’re not really making a great case for developers to take something seriously if you can’t either.
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M has been taking up a slot in my Netflix queue for over 2 months. Originally I had gotten it not just because it’s critically acclaimed, but it’s also one of Peter Lorre’s first roles (Peter Lorre rocks).
In the movie, Lorre plays Hans Beckert, a serial killer/rapist who preys on children. Not exactly what you’d call an upbeat film - which naturally then led it to sitting neglected on my counter for quite a while (as happens semi-regularly with the more serious fare in my Netflix queue).
Last week I finally got around to watching it (turns out Peter Lorre rocks in it), and there were a number of interesting comparisons to The Baron, a IF by Victor Gijsbers, which I played recently after a recommendation from a commenter here. In The Baron you play a father who is struggling against his pattern of sexually abusing his daughter. Both explore this same dark side of human nature in different ways.
read comments (10)My Xbox died last week. I’d gotten about 10-12% into GTA 4, too. So to keep myself entertained in its place, in the spirit of Randy’s last Edge article, here’s a few versions of GTA I’d rather be playing:
- You play a celebrity starlet, having to cross town in drunken high speed chases. Crank the satire knob to 11 past GTA 4. (Stems from being tragically riveted by an entertainment news special on Lindsey Lohan while I was working out at the gym one evening).
- You play an ambulance driver an a downward spiral. Never seen it, but the high concept is the same as Bringing Out the Dead.
- While I’ve got Scorsese on my mind, two words: Travis Bickle.
- Still got your music controller peripherals? GTA meets Rock Band. Think VH1’s Bands on the Run.
- You play a rescue worker during 9/11. Games are the new documentary medium.
- GTA with flying cars. I want my flying cars! Wait, these are all supposed to have some sort emotional relevance. But who wouldn’t want to play a game with that made flying cars emotionally relevant?
- Screw going around the city - you’re the hot dog cart vendor. Amidst “Diner Dash” type management and a flurry of minigames, an odd cast of characters tell you about their problems as the threads of their stories weave in and out through the day.
- Any open world city game set in a non-American city. American urban planning sucks.
- I’d really like to play Pat Miller’s (of Token Minorities) Black Panther version of GTA.
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Steve Gaynor’s recently posted a Call to Arms for folks to post game concepts the attempt to convey more complex emotions or conflicts. I’ve got to admit, I really like JC Barnett’s - any game with a “will to live” meter is good by me. Why won’t Nintendo, in its peripheral-mania, make his chest/life crushing attachment for the Wii? In any case, all the concepts are cool and worth a read through. Here’s mine.
read comments (1)Jason Rohrer’s game design sketchbook at The Escapist is pretty darn cool. His latest, ”Police Brutality“, looks at civil disobedience. Inspired by the footage of a man getting tazed at a Constitution Day (oh, the irony) forum where John Kerry was speaking, the game explores the strategies an individual can take in such a situation by voicing protest.
What’s especially interesting to me about the game is that it leans towards a dispositional bias - that being the assumption that people either resist authority or conform in such situations based on their inherent personality, or disposition. Alternately a situational bias would look for factors in the environment that cause people to either resist or conform.
read comments (1)This question has bothered me for a long time. Since my first brush with real genre criticism (going to GA Tech before the take off of the LCC school my unfortunately minimal humanities requirements were nonetheless wonderfully met by classes like “Movie Genres” and “History of Science Fiction”), I’ve looked for subversive elements in games much like the elements in subversive genres like science fiction.
This isn’t exactly easy. If being subversive means making the reader (as in a person “reads” a “text” in any medium, to save me the pain of typing reader/viewer/listener/player) question their own assumptions, games seem to start with a handicap. In order to play a game, you must play by rules set down by someone else. If you are always inherently working within a given rule system, is it ever possible to subvert it?
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