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Games and the Auteur
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingrevie
It's an interesting read - I think he hits a lot of nails on the head. Oh, I could kibbutz about how quality indie games have actually been around the last 5-10 year - I think he's discounting the huge text- and graphic-adventure game genres, but those genres came earlier, so the tools for those got simpler first ("Quod erat demonstrandum," said Traffik like the literary fuckwit he is).
The indie games movement has produced some stunning works that have challenged the mainstream establishment in some fundamental ways. Without some of the popularity of casual games on the internet I doubt we would be seeing some of the movement to simplify a number of mainstream releases (Katamari Damacy, anyone?). That said, I think there is a point he missed.
Part of the game experience, at its height, draws the player in, in a way both similar and yet different to a good movie or good music. It's been said before, but we appreciate music and movies as spectators, enjoying the material on both artistic and populist merits as audience. A good game, however, draws us in as a participant, makes the experience more personal, even if the illusion of choice is simply that, an illusion.
It's that personal connection, I think, that drives the auteur. They feel it when they experience good art, but in something that involves their choices on a personal level it grabs them, sticks its hand up their bottoms and the wiggles them around like a old sock puppet.
Now, while you're trying to wash that image from your mind (good luck), perhaps I can bring this to a point of sorts, that being that the more that personal connection is felt, the more the auteur demands the tools with which to create their own vision of that experience, to drive the form in new and different ways.
The article marvels that it took only 25 years (15 by my count) to put out the tools needed for the talented layman to make their own. Personally? I'm surprised it took that long.
It's an interesting read - I think he hits a lot of nails on the head. Oh, I could kibbutz about how quality indie games have actually been around the last 5-10 year - I think he's discounting the huge text- and graphic-adventure game genres, but those genres came earlier, so the tools for those got simpler first ("Quod erat demonstrandum," said Traffik like the literary fuckwit he is).
The indie games movement has produced some stunning works that have challenged the mainstream establishment in some fundamental ways. Without some of the popularity of casual games on the internet I doubt we would be seeing some of the movement to simplify a number of mainstream releases (Katamari Damacy, anyone?). That said, I think there is a point he missed.
Part of the game experience, at its height, draws the player in, in a way both similar and yet different to a good movie or good music. It's been said before, but we appreciate music and movies as spectators, enjoying the material on both artistic and populist merits as audience. A good game, however, draws us in as a participant, makes the experience more personal, even if the illusion of choice is simply that, an illusion.
It's that personal connection, I think, that drives the auteur. They feel it when they experience good art, but in something that involves their choices on a personal level it grabs them, sticks its hand up their bottoms and the wiggles them around like a old sock puppet.
Now, while you're trying to wash that image from your mind (good luck), perhaps I can bring this to a point of sorts, that being that the more that personal connection is felt, the more the auteur demands the tools with which to create their own vision of that experience, to drive the form in new and different ways.
The article marvels that it took only 25 years (15 by my count) to put out the tools needed for the talented layman to make their own. Personally? I'm surprised it took that long.
