Game Lessons Learned from the Films of 2014

This week on PopMatters, I've found another opportunity to talk about film!

I always find if valuable to think about games in relation to film. Despite the best effort of many to isolate games as some magical realm ne'er to meld with that of cinema, there is a whole lot to learn about storytelling when we cross mediums.

Now let's talk for a second about Interstellar. It almost earned a last minute addition to my list of five important films from 2014, and not because it's good. It isn't. There is enough plot contrivances and overly sentimental dialogue to make four mediocre sci-fi movies. Interstellar isn't all bad. Nolan certainly has a way with grandiose action and I, for one, enjoyed the occasionally oppressive score for all the intensity it created. Even so, it failed to pick up its various messy piece and convey the sense of wonder is tried so hard to create.

It almost made my list not for the thematic contents of the film, but for its scale. The film takes place in the near future, but stretches into the far distant future. Even though I am not the biggest fan of the film, I still think it's a unique viewing experience. There are not many film makers like Christopher Nolan, and even fewer who are freely given the amount of money it took to produce such an experimental work. Interstellar is still a daring exercise in grandiosity. Ultimately Boyhood satisfies that to some extent and thus appears on my list, for an even more epic attempt telling an expansive story, Interstellar still offers valuable lessons for games.

Lock and the Cinematic Game

I watch a lot of movies, and sometimes they make me think about game design.

This week on PopMatters, I think aloud about Locke, a single-room film by Steven Knight that takes place entirely inside of a car. Nothing particularly exciting happens to the car or the passenger. The vehicle is not a robot in disguise, it never goes over a sweet jump or careen through a crowd of pedestrians on two wheels. A man, Ivan Locke, goes for a drive. That's it.

Even so, the movie is excellent for many of the same reasons the most exhilarating or intensely compelling films are. If cinema can reach evoke a variety of emotions with such extreme limitations, it seems pretty clear that the phrase "cinematic" in the games space is, by and large, a useless term.

Of course many of you have known this for some time now, but I don't want to brush aside film because games are somehow entirely unique. Rather, I think we can learn a lot about how to create specific aesthetics with our own extreme limitations by asking the right questions about a film. Knight's work accomplishes so much with so little, and while some might find it gimmicky, I find it inspirational. For those with little budgets or small teams, clearly you can accomplish amazing "cinematic" feats. We need not look exclusively at games for these lessons.

Zero Dark Thirty and Morally Engaged Players

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

My latest PopMatters article is now live: Zero Dark Thirty and Morally Engaged Players

Before you do anything else, I implore you, read Jeff Reichert's article on Reverse Shot, "Desert for the Real." If you miss how critically relevant this article is for game players and critics, then you are missing out on something. Reichert even makes a narrative argument based upon the form, not just the content, of Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty. Even in a medium defined by interactivity, procedural arguments, particularly those that pertain to politics or ethics, are few and far between.

In my article I mention a few outliers. Michael Clarkson, of course, wrote an excellent article on the procedural claims of Far Cry 3, something was thrilled to read after I finally gave up on the game myself. More work that engages with the messages in design can pretty commonly be found in the works collected by Critical Distance. Of course many of the works referenced, including and admittedly my own, explore procedural rhetoric too shallowly, particularly when there are hot-button surface issues to criticize. Sometimes, that's ok too though.

If there is one thing I want to express more clearly that is perhaps less strong in my article, it is this: Game critics (and players) should expand their entertainment horizon and, with no hesitation, participate in the conversations around film, television, and literature. I know we all have busy schedules, but there are conversations happening on a regular basis that, without a doubt, pertain to both gaming culture and society at large.

Pardon yet another tangent, but to give a great example, read this excellent article by Lesley on XOJane: "The Audacity of Lena Dunham, and her Admirable Commitment to Making us Look at her Naked." You don't even have to watch Girls (even though I think you should), to understand the conversation. Lesley isn't just talking about the quality of the show - in fact, that's barely the issue, she is talking about the popular discourse around the show. The often mixed, and downright nasty, reaction to Lena Dunham's nudity in Girls reveals exactly why the nudity is audacious and important! The issues addressed in the article mirror some of the same raised in discussions about Ellie from Borderlands 2. It can also help map out a trajectory for what we want in non-traditional characters and what we might expect from audiences when these characters see release.

The industry isn't wearing diapers any more. We can apply lessons, from across mediums, to both the creation and analysis of video games. If we miss out on the myriad of conversations that are happening across the pop-culture landscape, we risk retreading old ground and making the same mistakes again.