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The Firing Line #6 July 15, 2003 Brett Todd |
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Summary:
Flash, noise, and junk we’ve seen many times before
Brett's got a real problem with genre-mixing games, and he doesn't feel he quite let out the aggression last time. So, today he takes a deeper look at why we have mixed genres, why it sucks and how we arrived at this stage. Where does Brett lay the blame? Read on and find out!
 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Crap | Page:: ( 1 / 4 ) |
Brett Todd on The Firing Line:
Flash, noise, and junk we’ve seen many times before
Flash, noise, and junk we’ve seen many times before
A.S. Byatt doesn’t like J.K. Rowling. Shared love of that gender-neutral predilection to use initials instead of given names aside, Antonia Susan doesn’t have much use for Joanne Katherine and her kiddie-book revolution. Last week, the author of such celebrated doorstops as Possession: A Romance and Babel Tower slammed the creator of Harry Potter in the New York Times for writing down to dullards who lack “the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing.”
Well, duh. Even though I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in two sittings and have often hovered my mouse over the Buy It Now! button that would order me one of those neat Gryffindor rugby—er, Quidditch shirts, the books have been written for the great unwashed. Byatt may be a crotchety gasbag motivated primarily by jealousy over reports that Rowling can afford more Corgis than the Queen, but she’s dead on in her assertion that the Potter books speak “to an adult generation that hasn’t known, and doesn’t care about, mystery.” That they’ve been written for “inhabitants of urban jungles,” not those who know of “the real wild.”
That’s a good point, no matter what you think of Byatt’s upper-crust background and the unavoidable fact that she’s barely set foot outside of a university campus her entire adult life. Modern entertainment is about repackaging the familiar. Rowling may have written the first Harry Potter book for her daughter while on the dole, yet somebody in the process was remarkably tuned into children’s fantasy archetypes. Either Rowling was a lot more savvy than the press reports let on, even while scratching out Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone with one hand and rocking a pram with the other, or an editor made the changes necessary to turn book into blockbuster. No matter how you look at it, the whole concept was carefully calculated. It was conceptualized from first to last, just like a big new movie, a big new herbal shampoo, or one of those big new feminine hygiene products with those vaguely disturbing TV ads that make me channel-surf more than usual.
Or a big new game. A gradual Hollywoodization is taking hold of just about everything that we consume, so computer games have to be included on the list. It’s particularly noticeable in what we read, watch, and play, largely because we still don’t expect to see market forces in creative endeavors. Gaming has been quietly swallowed the past few years. Independent developers and publishers have all but vanished and a production line mentality has replaced creativity as the guiding force behind design.
Seeing as it actually takes a production line of sorts to produce a game, that’s somewhat excusable. But the creative philosophy has changed as well. Games are now mostly produced by faceless companies with huge budgets that make them beholden to attracting everybody with disposable income. Although star developers like Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds are still out there, the focus has switched to bigger and better. So many people influence game designs now that it’s hard to get any sense of coherence from the finished products. Games are more the product of committees and focus groups than an individual’s imagination. We’ve come a long way from Al Lowe’s Leisure Suit Larry. Or Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford’s Star Control. Or David Jones’ Lemmings. Or even Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.
SIDEBAR: A.S.Byatt’s Possession: A Romance won the Booker Prize in 1990. Despite this accolade, my four attempts at reading it have proven unsuccessful. This is probably because I’ve always lived in the urban jungle, though I still think it’s got something to do with the crappy Victorian poetry.
| Glimpses of Creativity | Page:: ( 2 / 4 ) |
RoNning away
We still see how things used to be in spots, especially with ostensibly creator-driven projects like Rise of Nations. Glimpses are generally all that we’re allowed, though, as there is too much of a kitchen-sink mentality in vogue to allow for much individuality. As I mentioned in my last column, this has resulted in a blurring of genres. Instead of creating new games, developers are sticking to core concepts augmented by random stuff thrown in without thought. Like a blowsy 50-year-old with a boob job, the results aren’t attractive. We get Pipe Dreams-inspired puzzles in Star Trek: Elite Force II. Wonders in Rise of Nations. Sneaky Thief stuff in Splinter Cell. D&D-detailed character classes in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Cutscenes more suitable for The Longest Journey in No One Lives Forever. The games are often still entertaining in spurts, although there’s a stagnancy here that reeks of Hollywood. And of the Harry Potter books themselves, which are predictable from first to last no matter how much entertainment they provide on the surface.
There is some innovation at work here, but it’s the same sort of innovation at work when the screenwriter for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen moves adjectives around to create action-hero quips for Sean Connery. Or when Ang Lee gives a new spin to superhero movies by using maudlin weepies lifted from the Bill Bixby TV show in The Hulk. Or of course when J.K. Rowling sucks up to downtrodden kids everywhere by making Harry Potter go from abused child to Quidditch star and BMOC. There’s a lot of flash, a lot of noise, a lot of pandering to comfortable stereotypes, and a lot of junk we’ve seen many, many times before.
Yes, there are more game options than ever. Feature creep has grown to cover the industry like it was the outfield wall at Wrigley Field. Yet there isn’t a whole lot of truly memorable gaming going on. Like the summer flick you forget before your head hits the pillow, games come and go. One week it’s Unreal II: The Awakening. Next comes PlanetSide. Then move on to Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. Then to Star Wars: Galaxies. At times, playing games feels like continuing with a pastime for no good reason beyond the fact that you used to enjoy it and you’re used to it. There are moments when I catch myself playing games that I don’t really enjoy, turning to them in idle hours out of the same kind of misguided loyalty that keeps me buying Sun Chips and Ozzy Osbourne albums. So, color me beige. I haven’t experienced anything really vibrant in a long time, played a game that didn’t remind me of a dozen other games even in the good moments.
We need something to shake up the industry. An indie-film attitude with off-the-wall games produced simply because the creators thinks that they’re good. I hoped that computer game publishers would get more creative a few years ago when faced with the console onslaught of 2000, though all that did was constrict design docs and make everyone even more conservative. So my hopes aren’t particularly high that things will turn around with the current generation of consoles going gently into that good night. There are some real potential positives out there, though. Valve is about as far away from the computer gaming mainstream as a hit developer can be, and Half-Life II looks just as revolutionary as its predecessor. id’s never given a damn about current trends either, so I’m expecting good things from Doom III.
Whether the new wave of games will pump fresh blood into tired veins is anybody’s guess right now. It’s in vogue to dismiss A.S. Byatt as a envious crank at the moment, and there’s probably a kernel of truth in that assertion. But there is some validity to the whining. And I think we’d all be better off if the people who work at entertaining us—no matter what medium, whether it be games, movies, books, or music—took a few key points to heart.
SIDEBAR: Hollywood’s star system died in the 1950s, along with the major studios’ dictatorial control over movie-making. The Best Picture Oscar in 1959 went to the traditional epic Ben-Hur, while in 1969 it went to the X-rated, druggy, nude Midnight Cowboy. Everybody’s talkin’ at me, indeed.
| Return Fire | Page:: ( 3 / 4 ) |
Return Fire
How the hell am I supposed to argue with a column that sums up what it’s like to make pastries in Star Wars: Galaxies? As someone who prefers take-out menus to recipes, and isn’t the slightest bit interested in cooking for Corellians, I’m hardly qualified to comment. I’m actually not interested in doing anything online with space cakes, stormtrooper armor, or whatever else is helping to pay for the pricey digital cameras lensing Star Wars Episode III: We Haven’t Come Up With A Stupid Enough Subtitle Yet. Sci-fi boredom may have me replaying Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast at the moment, but I’m not desperate enough to try Star Wars Sims.
I do think, however, that somebody’s qualified to comment on the thing. Right now. Although Tom makes a good point about massively multiplayer games in their early stages being little more than social experiments, you can still review them without flipping over the calendar. The moving target he cites as the best reason to steer clear of a Star Wars: Galaxies review until Xmas is really the strongest indication that you should crank out a review as quickly as possible. Anything that you write on Monday might be out of date by Friday. As massively multiplayer thigamajigs are continually changing and evolving, there’s no point waiting for some sort of Air-Cakes epiphany before beginning a write-up. You can get the job done like you would any other game review. Just don’t pretend that you’re penning the usual epitaph. Feel free to throw in a lot of previewese about where the game might be headed. And forego listing your personal experiences for more detail about all the options, as you can’t be fair to such big games by going all Ang Lee and fervently detailing inanities on the one or two career paths you had time to explore.
Yes, this is a really wimpy way to write a review. But what can you really do with this genre? Massively multiplayer games are massive. They’re so loaded with content that they force you to embrace generalities. Focus in too closely on what you’re doing and you miss the big picture. Getting down all of the intricacies about becoming the Mon Calamari Martha Stewart just tells me that Star Wars: Galaxies has at least one really idiotic character class. Beyond that, I’m in the dark.
Of course, it’s also pretty easy to lapse into box-cover paragraphs sprinkled with banalities about graphics and sound. Or waste two-thirds of your word count on technical mumbo-jumbo about connection speeds. Covering these games is a tricky business. On that point, I’m in full agreement with Tom. You’ve got to walk a fine line between recounting those thrilling exploits in the Mos Eisley bakery (I think it was next door to the cantina) and simply telling readers what’s possible. You may be an expert reviewer, the only man in America capable of telling the truth about Deus Ex and Flying Heroes. You’re still just one of a couple hundred thousand subscribers and there’s no guarantee that your experiences will mesh with anybody else’s. That’s why I’m staying far, far away from Star Wars: Galaxies and all of the other pay-to-play extravaganzas for the moment. At least as a reviewer. I’m not sure how long I can suppress my inner R2-D2 and resist wandering the deserts of Tatooine, even if I’ve gotta bake a few cakes along the way.
SIDEBAR: I indulged my inner R2-D2 last month by spending a stupid amount of money on a softcover collection of godawful Marvel Star Wars comics from the 70s. Visiting eBay is not a good thing when you’re intoxicated on childhood nostalgia and Guinness.
| Shot of the Week | Page:: ( 4 / 4 ) |
Disciples II: Servants of the Dark
New art and spooky recruits like the Ghost make Disciples II: Servants of the Dark a treat for fantasy strategists who like life on the dark side. Here are a couple of shots from the standalone expansion pack, slated to hit stores this coming week with two extensive campaigns featuring the Legions of the Damned and the Undead Hordes.
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The Firing Line strikes again. We’re not sure what Brett hit this week, but he still seems to be hating genre-bending games. We think it’s because he had a Tucker Max-like experience with a post-op transgenre game, but could be wrong. But seriously, he does raise some good points about the hollywoodization of the gaming industry. Heck, the way entire teams are being sacked the day after a product goes gold is not unlike the way crews disperse after a movie’s been filmed. Perhaps it’s natural evolution. Or perhaps it sucks. You decide, then Sound Off! and let us know!
SIDEBAR: I like to wear my Disciples II: Dark Prophecy t-shirt around the house. I won’t go out in it, though, because the big devil on the back makes me look like a dork.