Comments on: More Than Just a Game

By: jimgroom

jimgroom — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:00:43 +0000

Great stuff, Joe. One direction a course like this may consider, given your comment, is how the technical/graphical evolution of gaming impacts the development of narrative in gaming. Interestingly enough, role-playing games with dice and figurines were the most popular technologies that may have had constitutive influences on film narrative during the late 70s and early 80s. So the Atari vector & 2600 games suggest a moment of emerging video game narrative within a competitive market. A great question to consider,that you suggest, is how does “deep storytelling” correspond to the technologies available? Is there necessarily a direct relationship between more complex technology and more complex narratives? I don’t know the answer to this question, but I think we all might make some quick assumptions. Examining these assumptions might prove generative for such a course.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:47:27 +0000

Hey Jim,

I like the reading list, but I think a course like this would be better if you picked games with a stronger narrative. Star Wars for Atari is fun, but it doesn’t have a narrative that we can think critically about.

Check out Zelda, and the Final Fantasy series. They fall into the same deep storytelling that Half-Life 2 does. Otherwise, I think this is a great idea.

By: jimgroom

jimgroom — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 02:01:00 +0000

Mikhail,

Right on, I wanna take that class. A theoretical model is key to placing video games and cinema in a more focused relationship. The model of spectatorship and the role of the player as spectator and actor is fascinating.

As for The Thing, I guess you know it is one of my favorite movies of all time, but the game leaves me empty. Not only was my copy a dud, but the game play was less than innovative, bordering on boring. Yet, I entirely agree with you about the game’s ability to extend the world of the movie. I guess this is why The Warriors is on the “A” list. I think this game is really groundbreaking in that it gives you exactly what the movie did not have the time or space to offer: a more intimate look at each of the gangs. Maybe the funnest moment in gaming I have had to date was the writers’ showdown in SoHo where I was able to trash Chatterbox’s personal art gallery. I loved the fact that I could graffiti “art” in a Soho gallery, no less kill the artist responsible for it. All my anger over gentrification, the exponential rise in real estate prices, and the Soho “artists” that perpetrated this fraud found its escape in that beautiful moment of game play:)

Anyway, this class obviously needs to be team taught. So let’s finish soon.

By: Mikhail

Mikhail — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:24:52 +0000

I imagine myself someday teaching with video games in a film studies course which considers the modes of address the two media depend on — the ways in which films and video games interpolate the viewing/playing subject. So I would probably deal quite a bit of theories of spectatorship in film and, I suppose, conceptions of the player in considerations of gameplay, as a central concept in gaming.

I would probably want to deal quite a bit with video game adaptations of commercial films and film adaptations of games (rarely successful in any sense). So I would of course talk about the movies and the game adaptations you mention, Jim, but I would also throw in John Carpenter’s The Thing and the PS2 game from a few years back. Although I know you will agree that it is by no means a great game, it was the first I played that made me think about the game as sequel or adaptation rather than simply licensed merchandise — maybe that had something to do with the PS2’s graphical capabilities as well as the positive aspects of that game (there were a few).