GameSetLinks: The King Of Truth
Aha, time for a few more GameSetLinks, we fear, and among them as Jason Scott's steely rant on why documentary The King Of Kong sacrifices truth for a good story. And you know, having seen the movie on DVD at the weekend finally, I think he's at least partly right.
The whole concept of 'dramatized reality' seems to be getting increasingly common - see cunning cuts on reality shows like The Amazing Race to make it seem like teams are closer together, and especially the faux-reality of shows like Laguna Beach.
And now, there's a video game documentary that's almost as selective, but incredibly entertaining because of that. It's bittersweet for me, because I was entertained - but still felt like I'd maybe been cheated out of what really happened. Still... maybe it's closer to objective than we think, mm?
But onward to the links:
Hollywood Reporter: 'And the award for best video game writing is ...'
The main bar to entering the WGA awards is that you have to be a WGA member (or have applied to be one) - not made totally clear here!
Romance Novel Reviews: 'On Books That Make You Dumb, and Reading Pornographically'
Shih Tzu points out this odd musing 'on the connection between bad literature that one enjoys anyway and an epiphany had during a video game music concert.'
The Cut Scene - Video Game Blog by Variety
Newish blog, good stuff, too.
ASCII by Jason Scott: The King of Wrong
Watched this at the weekend, loved it but felt like it was skewed, a la M.Moore. Not sure how far, still.
YouTube - Half life: Full Life Consequences
Garry's Mod + crazy people = scary
Mechanically Separated Meat » Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics
Yikes, Mario madness.
Eegra : A Trouserful of Melody: Fami-mode 2008
A neat YMCK, 6955 concert in the Japan, all NGJ-ed up for your pleasure.
Spectromancer - online CCG in open Beta
Co-developed by Magic creator Richard Garfield - via The-Inbetween.
Emily Enough: Imprisoned - Introductions and Asides | The New Gamer
Examining an intriguing indie adventure title.
Play This Thing! - Game Focus Germany event report
Thanks to some good speaker wrangling from Jurie Horneman, this was an interesting event.
Comments
I found the blog post on King of Kong interesting, because I wrote a post a while back that was more or less the complete opposite of his opinion! [The link is in my name.]
It's interesting, because I don't disagree with him, I just wasn't annoyed because I have seen more than enough documentaries to know they never offer an objective truth. I know the audience of most documentaries aren't then going to go out and research what they saw to learn more, but for some reason I don't blame the filmmakers for that.
Posted by: mathew | February 7, 2008 7:27 AM
I think we're on completely opposite opinions because when you see a documentary mistreat its subjects or offer them for ridicule via creative editing or other methodology, you shrug and consider it part of what documentaries are, while I see every film like this as one more case where people distrust the work I do in documentary film, and the genre of documentary becoming that much less appealing for me to work in.
Posted by: Jason Scott | February 7, 2008 7:45 AM
I consider that a completely fair opinion - It must be hard to try and make fair, objective documentaries when people like me, so familiar with TV and film lying to me, that I shrug and, if I care enough, research what I saw to get the "real" story.
It's all Michael Moore's fault!
Posted by: mathew | February 7, 2008 12:01 PM
I was pretty disappointed after seeing King of Kong and reading about its falsifications. Such a good movie, and then you find out it isnt real.. I dont know.
Posted by: Red_venom | February 7, 2008 11:39 PM
Oh, I only just now saw this. Thank you for the kind reference!
Posted by: Jurie | September 16, 2008 7:20 AM