Making Movies

Yeah, yeah, okay, so this is nice:



But you know what would make it even better? Imagine if it was an animated movie with Tim Burton at the helm, infusing the production with a quirky, offbeat sensibility. And we could get a real actor -- Johnny Depp? Just throwing that out there -- to play Manny. Now we're in business.

I'm using sarcasm to make a point and be a dick. Film has become the final destination of any work of fiction; sort of a pop culture meridian. That's great for the author whose book was optioned for a cool seven figures, and great for the studios and everyone working on the project but I have no idea why consumers get at all excited at the prospect of a video game being made into a movie. I don't understand the people who actually want to see a Monkey Island film. The story was told pretty well the first time. Who wants to watch that?

Translating a novel into film makes some sense because there's a visual and a sonic dimension being added, but games are already so cinematic as to render the translation pointless. A video game narrative is the closest thing to movies that any medium's got going. In fact, cutscenes are movies.

In exchange for seeing something we like up on the big screen, we have to cut five-sixths of Planescape: Torment and remove what's interesting about Half-Life. Doom and Super Mario Bros. are going to need a story and so the producers will use the template that came with the scriptwriting software. It's not 1990. Games these days are pretty good with cinematic techniques and they're using talented actors and for the most part they know how to structure a story, so I am moved to ask: what's the point? It's a cynical cash grab and that lack of inspiration is reflected time and time again in the product itself.

It's unfortunate that video game movies have, with depressing consistency, been some of the worst pieces of celluloid trash ever; the province of the special effects guy making his directorial debut. That's bad luck and the movies will get better. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Max Payne look like they'll reach a basic level of filmmaking competency. Although Max Payne is a fan letter to film cliché to begin with; it's going to be very exciting when that's all filtered out, leaving the story of a tough-as-nails cop who plays by his own rules.

It's not even about whether the movies are bad or not. It's about gamers thrilling to the very possibility of a movie adaptation, and apparently assuming the cinematic treatment will somehow unlock the game's heretofore unrealised potential.

What's the reason? Is it that a wider audience will be exposed to Metal Gear Solid and we'll be all I-told-you-so. You see, we weren't engaging in meaningless first-review hyperbole when we claimed this was an "Oscar-worthy story". You made fun of me at the time but didn't that thing with Aeris move you more than you ever thought possible?

Do we want to live vicariously through a game's second life? Are the people photoshopping the Firefly cast onto a movie poster for Mass Effect looking for the satisfaction of having their fannish wish-fulfillment writ large? Are we trying to validate the artistic merits of this medium to a mainstream audience by, ironically, repackaging it in an already established and acceptable format?

The advantages and the reasoning elude me. The aesthetics of the major leagues seem fine but we do some things okay. There's the red carpet and there's gold statues, but right now I'm actually pretty content with video games.

P.S. You almost surely read this post as a response to the recent announcement of a BioShock movie, when in fact I had this idea three weeks ago. I blame the news cycle for detonating my post's time-sensitive originality and making me out to be some lousy op-ed writer who just riffs on the day's headlines. Gore Verbinski, how dare you. This isn't over. You're going to feel what I feel. I swear I'm going to find your BioShock script and I'm gonna leak it. Don't mess with me.

Headshot

Here's a thought-provoking piece of trivia from my other life. United Nations peacekeepers wear berets instead of helmets because while the latter affords considerably more protection against getting shot in the head, the less obtrusive headgear better emphasizes the target's face; their vulnerability, their humanity. It's psychologically harder to kill them if they look less like a soldier; in which case the response is automatic. It's like a tactic to combat military dehumanisation. Sometimes snipers are even moved to tears. Then I guess they shoot them anyway.

I don't know if that's actually true. I read it a year ago and I might have since invented some of the details. Nonetheless I can feel my thoughts being provoked even as I type.

I'm still bothered by what Chris Taylor (Supreme Commander) said at his GDC panel: that he got uncomfortable with the idea of video games being about killing thousands of people so he took out the blood and made them all robots. We don't feel empathy for robots and we're not grossed out by their corpses, so we're happy. Problem solved and we can keep on fighting with a clear conscience; just like those guys who are conditioned to recognise that the man holding a gun and speaking another language is an enemy combatant, not a civilian, and so different rules apply.

I neglected to mention that in my other life I am apparently an anti-video game crusader. Games do this all the time, though. We fight zombies, mutants and suits of armour as often as we fight humans. Enemy troops are caricatures; needing three bullets in the chest to take them down. Life and death are binary states. There's no pain and not much blood.

When we play games we sign up to kill people and the game abstracts the process so we can deal with it. Otherwise we might freak out like the guy in Munich did. It works like this scene from Call of Duty 4, which, incidentally, is based on a real-life detachment mechanism:



We don't want to see their brains blown out on the street. When we shoot the bad guys we want them to lose hit points, not scream, bleed and defecate. We want to look into the familiar, robotic eyes of NPC_Face_Generic_2, not someone with a family. Condemned or Soldier of Fortune makes us uncomfortable because we don't want to be disturbed by the violence we have to cause. And that's fine. That's the only way it's going to work.

I don't know why we're so accepting of the premise that our video gaming duty is to kill the enemy; that it's our only way to win. Half-Life and Oblivion aren't necessarily about being a soldier but that's the role we play. It's the role we almost always play. Developers who don't like it instead make it easier to stomach. We're built to shoot. We do it all the time. We go into war zones like the experienced professionals we are and eliminate the opposition. We don't broker cease-fires or reconstruct occupied territory. We don't know how to do that. We're meant for one thing.

It's at least a little creepy, right?

Bad Day

It's a very good title because there is no game so guaranteed to make a bad day even worse.

At this point in their maturity as a medium, video games can satisfy many of our social functions. We can go to the movies.


We can go to art galleries.


We can be in a relationship.


But even in this golden age of $400m openings and hot next-gen narratives, there's one thing games can't do. They can't cheer me up.

Seems like it should be easy, right? Games are built on power fantasies and pleasure principles. They're designed to reward the player. None of them do what I want them to do right now, though, which is stop me feeling sad. Epic campaigns are too slow, too involved. I don't have the patience for funny dialogue. Shooting dudes doesn't make me feel very good about myself.

Legally, you're not allowed to call them "party games" if you're the only one at the party. Those are in fact "lonely games." And I don't want to be challenged, especially when that means exacting difficulty and making jumps with pinpoint precision. On the other hand, something like Endless Ocean is way too meditative and forces you to think quietly about being miserable. I'm not asking for a lot. I'm asking for a happy distraction. I guess I'm looking for something full of really bright colours and pictures of smiling babies. That'd do the trick.

I tend to fall back on the classics. The mindless simplicity of Tetris worked for a while but there was something uncomfortably literal about always ending in crushing failure and death. I did like this web version because I figured out how to cheat. I can win TypeRacer legitimately, but if I play it at work I can't actually tell the difference. Line Rider was nice until that little guy sailed into the air and snapped his neck on a line that I drew. Crayon Physics comes by far the closest. It's pleasant and tranquil and it lets me do anything I want. Problem is it's not out yet so I'm stuck with the proof-of-concept. Likewise, I have a 60-second trial of Puzzle Bobble on my cellphone and sometimes I'll just play that one demo over and over. This is not a fulfilling existence.

P.S.: Understanding what that Sonic thing is all about will also cause many bad days.