The Auteur Problem, In Full Effect

I have read my fair share of literature, and am an elitist indie movie buff. That said, Schafer's Grim Fandango is as good as anything I have read or seen.

The problem with games, and this is the dichomty represented by the dialogue between Korr and Sakey, is that video games are a wholly different kind of medium than any other we have ever generated. Books and film and tv are linear. They are one-way, created by a person or set of persons, and dictated to large groups of people.

Games are similar, but that video games are _games_ makes it an experience that is dictated by the player as much as the creator. Even in highly controlled linear narratives, like rail games or racing games, the player still has a choice: she can sit there while cars pass by (and lose), or she can participate. Both are, technically, playing the game. But I can't put a book down and still be reading a book, or walk away from a movie and still be watching it. When it comes to film and books, there is no narrative save that which is generated by the creators.

And that's why Korr is wrong. He's only looking at half of the creation when talking about SimCity. I could tell him long stories of a city's transformation from a rural town to a bustliing industrial city to washed up slums to a renovated biotech metropolis. I haven't played Battlefield since BF1942, but I can share tons of epic moments and stories that were as much generated by the games' developers) as they were by the players. Same goes for dozens of other games, from Civilization to System Shock 2.

Korr's approach is too limited. It's superimposing the medium of print and film to video games, and that just doesn't work. The Orson Welles moments are occuring, just not along the singular construct provided by the developers. They're happening in those moments when everything in the video game happens at just the right time and the player and developer join forces to create them.

John Beeler | January 10, 2006 11:17 PM

First off, Collaboration, schmollaboration. How many key grips and assistant directors does Martin Scorsese have? I don't know, but lots. The point is, if you don't have "one person's muddy pawprints messily defining an overarching style at all times," you end up with the same recurring sci-fi and fantasy tropes that keep showing up in video games. Video games have plenty of genius game designers. What they don't yet seem to have are geniuses of unique visual art, dialogue, characterization, plot, etc. And second, Sorry dude, but no. Orson Welles moments are most definitely not occurring. See this post for why the nonlinear-path/player-created theory doesn't hold up: http://www.sptimesphotos.com/blogs/videogames/2005/12/are-we-cool-ringo-vs-thank-you-mario.html
"A city's transformation from a rural town to a bustliing industrial city to washed up slums to a renovated biotech metropolis" isn't a narrative arc. It's the function of probability and mouse clicks. Player-directed actions and consequences might make for fun games, but they don't make for good narrative art. I'm not trying to be pessimistic (I wouldn't be writing about video games if I didn't love them, plus the King of All Cosmos would punish me), just trying to point out that there's still a ways to go and that clinging to the notion of Miyamoto as Kurosawa prevents us from accepting that reality and moving on.

Josh Korr | January 11, 2006 12:08 AM

Agreed entirely on the collaboration, chmollaboration point. However...

"See this post for why the nonlinear-path/player-created theory doesn't hold up:"

I've heard the argument before, but just don't agree with it. Off the top of my head, architecture is an art-form and sacrifices complete authorial control. Is it a narrative art form? - well, you know there's architects who'd argue just that, but it's kind of beside the point. Is it a different form of narrative? Well, *obviously*.

In games, the authorial control is in the bounds of the simulation the game creator has chosen to invent - the matrix of choices and expressions available to the player and the responses they want to create in the gamer with them. It's obviously not the same sort of authorial control as film, but to argue that it isn't is bizarre, strange and doesn't engage with the form.

Getting to the end here... I don't think we actually disagree here. I'll agree that the idea that a direct and serious comparison between games and films serves no-one, and distracts us from what's actually interesting about games.

KG

Kieron Gillen | January 11, 2006 3:21 AM

I think we're talking about two different kinds of games Josh. One emphasizes the linear storyline, and the other is a sandbox. If we're talking pure linearity, there are a small number of interactive fiction games that I guarantee english phd students will be dissecting in fifty years as 20th/21st century lit. Grim Fandango comes immediately to mind as a shining example of highly creative game linearity ("Are you in love with her Manuel?" "Love? Love is for the living."). I'd mention Full Throttle too, if I weren't going to sound like a Schafer-ite. Nevertheless, there are a few games that I think have, perhaps arguably, Wellsian moments.

But for the most part, when we're talking about linear games, you're right. Video game plots suck ass. Halo's, which I guess isn't bad, is just rehash. Even the recent Indigo Prophecy, hailed for its creativity, is just a scifi comic book geek's wet dream in video game form. So, I'm with you there.

But when it comes to sandbox games, you're missing half the picture. You're looking at story as defined by the medium of book and film, and that doesn't work. Do you apply the same criteria to a painting or a sculpture? Can a painting tell a narrative? Sure it can, but it tells it in a very different way than a film or comic book. Even things that work for books simply cannot work for film, and vice versa. Kieron makes a great point about architecture. But US interstate highway designers believed in creating stories (this is true) with the highways, about hiding the city's downtown until the last moment and then bam there you are, all while avoiding the blight areas of town. But can you say there is an Orson Wells moment in a highway? No, because the medium is radically different.

I am not at all suggesting that video gaming has not matured. I think we would both agree that video games are in gestation. But I thnk you're going to miss the boat when it leaves by expecting games to look like film. The article you linked doesn't even discuss emergent moments in games, those times when the player creates something that the producers of the game never could have.

As far as my generalization, it was semantic in nature, as much as your's was anyway. Of course there are hundreds of people behind a movie director, each shaping the movie. And, if we were in a phd level english class, we'd be talking about reader/text, and how people interpret a singular text like a film or book in extremely different ways.

But games as a medium turn the reader/text categorization cleanly on its head. Players become producers of the narrative, as much as the game's designers were. (I'm not saying this attribute makes games better than film/books, just radically different.) And I'm not sure why the SimCity narrative I described is not a narrative. Saying it's a production of calculations and mouse clicks is like saying that The Wire, which in a way shares subjects with SimCity (urban problems), is a collection of videotape and 4 hour actor shifts. That comment tells me that you're looking too narrowly at narrative, and therefore at games. The article you pointed me to neglects sandbox games like SimCity, The Sims, or MMORPGs altogether. How do you define narrative Josh?

I mentioned BF1942 because I was thinking of a specific moment when myself and two friends were playing. My third friend, Wally, had just spawned nearby, but John and I were already running to a plane. As the two of us jumped into the plane, not knowing Wally is running to catch up, lag in our video chat delayed Wally's, "Hey guys wait for me!" until the prop had already started off. In the gunner position facing backward, I watched as our plane slowly left the runaway, and Wally instinctively executed on short jump, as if to say, "Hey guys..what...about..me." It was not a Wells moment, but it was certainly as good as any Hitchcockian-The-Problem-With-Harry-humor moment. We produced a narrative, (which I can spell out if you disagree).

For better proof, read "The Great Scam," if you have the time. It's long, but it's clearly a player-produced narrative that even moves outside of Eve Online and into libraries and dorm rooms. Is it Wellsian? Well not to us, because we're reading an experience in linear, written form that was originally in video game form, like reading a script of a movie, or an author's unwritten idea for a book. Nightfreeze's language is more haxxor than readable, but adaquete, and so the experience has been diluted. But you can see Wellsian intrigue, betrayal, friendship, and humor behind the veil. Is it within the framework of a cliched space trader experience? Sure, but the players created a narrative that the game's designers probably never even imagined.

You seem to be a huge Gaimen fan, and rightfully so. But Gaimen's work is so great because the stories _are_ comic book. They fit the comic book so well, that it remove it and place it in a new format, like book or film, is to in the very least radically change it. Film and books are the same way. You should be affording the same criteria to video games, which are quite possibly one of the most different kind of story-telling medium we've had in a long time.

I'm glad you wrote what you did though Josh, because I really like thinking about this and discussing it with people who have thought even more about it than I have.

John Beeler | January 11, 2006 8:55 AM

p.s. What's an American Mcgee? :)

Josh Korr | January 11, 2006 2:53 PM

These are some great comments and thoughts, guys. I tried to respond a little more clearly (and a lot less snidely, sorry!) in 2 new blog posts today. Just click on my name for the link.

Josh Korr | January 11, 2006 2:57 PM

Such a great discussion.

I am very excited that one brief comment by R. Ebert has sparked such a lively discussion about the state of games.

One thing I would like to add is that part of the reason why gaming may be facing an uphill battle on getting it's due as legit ART is that at this point - statistics seem to show that regardless of the large number of sales gaming is still not really mainstream.

That is a majority of gamers generally fit into a specific group - geeky white males between the ages of 10 and 35. There are obvious exceptions to this... but gaming culture has not changed in the past 20+ years.

It was started by geeky men with geeky fantasies of guns, racing cars, fighting and large chested women - and for a large part it continues to be sustained by geeky men with geeky fantasies of guns, racing cars, fighting and large chested women.

Every now and again we see slight variations on this theme but not so much that anyone other than us notices.

So the question that I've yet to hear answered is do most game designers really consider what they're making art? Are they trying to make some sort of statement with what they're doing? I know that there seems to be some sort of agreement that the creators of Pschyonauts, Beyond Good & Evil, and perhaps even Myst seem to be trying to make sort of artistic statement - but are the d00ds making GTA or SSX or Gun really trying to make anything other than something that is cool or fun?

I would LOVE to hear some of them chime in on this so they can clarify what their artistic vision is beyond just making something cool.

shannon barrett | January 11, 2006 4:33 PM

A lot of great points have been raised here, and I think I'm coming down on the side agreeing we can't judge games by other mediums. I also think that even if we do that, we still don't have the auterism we're apparently craving, because the medium simply isn't old enough yet. It took films a while to develop out of "What The Butler Saw" into becoming acknowledged art. A lot of that comes from the generation shift as much as anything, and as with all this legislation cropping up, we will just have to wait until gamers are the older generation.

Anyway, the brief point I wanted to make, in my own geeky way, is about roleplaying. Sure, no-one is going to pretend that a D&D adventure is the work of an auteur, but adventures pretty obviously follow a story - they have to, else where is the interest? The dungeon master comes up with a plot, and the player characters follow it through their choices. They hold an incredible power to mess up your plot and ideas to no end of frustration. Because the players can decide what they will do and when, does this mean there is no narrative? Not at all. It just changes the nature of the narrative from something pre-planned and concrete to a more fluid creation, where the DM has to react and guide. Narrative changes from a task of showing a story to showing your players how to hear the story, almost. It becomes a more interactive experience because you have to shape your players to think in the way the narrative demands, but you have to do it in a very subtle and invisible way so they still feel like they are making choices.

In a way, game designers have this even harder. While a DM in a game of tabletop roleplay can see what the players are doing, prepare himself to react and improvise, a game must know beforehand what a player can do. The planning and forethought that has to go into a game is incredible. Not all (read: barely any) games manage this at the moment, but those that give you real freedom are as good with narrative as any book you can care to mention. Maybe the writing style isn't always ideal, or the plot original, but the sheer effort that must go into covering all paths far outweighs that of a static structure like a film or book.

To pretend that there is no narrative in sandbox games like SimCity simply because the creators didn't stamp their own structure on is just backwards, in all honesty. It's not embracing the new possiblities we're seeing now, it's trying to take games back a step to fit into what we know already, when we should be seeing what we can do with this thing when we pick it up and run with it.

Matt Dovey | January 12, 2006 6:48 AM

More good comments. What the D&D example really crystallizes is how we're talking about video games in two different contexts: in terms of art (which in this context is basically movies, books, TV and the like), and in terms of games. I've written another post trying to tease out what this means. Click on my name for the link.

Josh Korr | January 12, 2006 12:40 PM

I think the distinction between games and art is fuzzier. I was listening to a This American Life the other day, a popular NPR radio show, and its host, Ira Glass, suggested that basically all fiction was a mystery. We love mysteries, even if that mystery is, "Will Jane fall in love with Jack?"

So, in that context, even film or a TV show is game between the watchers and the creators.

The internet has made this process more visible, but it's just now that content creators are figuring it out. Lost is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Thanks to the net, the creators of Lost are well aware of the dissection of each episode, so they put well hidden hints and clues.

We're all sane people, so it's going to do us no good to waste that sanity on a discussion of what art is. Nevertheless, isn't it possible that you're equating great narrative with art?

How do paintings and sculptures fit into that framework? Maybe games - particularly sandbox games - are more like paintings than they are movies?

John Beeler | January 12, 2006 8:29 PM

Whew. Ok, I was going to respond but it turned into a longish post (again) so I put it on my blog. I think it's a pretty good wrap-up of this very interesting discussion (or at least of what I have to say about it). Here are the nut grafs, but it's worth checking out the whole post:

I think the key is this. In judging movies, TV, books, comics -- what I've been calling "narrative art" -- the quality of the narrative (in terms of all the different elements I described in the last post) is paramount. In talking about games, the fact that the narrative is happening at all -- the inherent interaction and player control -- is what's important. Don't say to Ebert, "You're wrong about games because player-created narratives are just as good as anything the movies have to offer." Say, "You're wrong about games because games give players control -- and that is enough." On the surface this is just semantics -- isn't that what people are saying to him already? I don't think it is. I think largely because of the defensiveness long-suffering gamers have, the mindset is that we can't defend games on their own terms.

Ultimately, then, I think we're all saying pretty much the same thing. What I am saying, somewhat presumptuously (or just plain obnoxiously), is that we really need to mean it.

Josh Korr | January 12, 2006 11:45 PM