Braid Creator on Games as "Sh**ty Action Movies"

[The Wooster]

Braid Creator on Games as "Sh**ty Action Movies"

Intelligent-gaming messiah, Jonathan Blow, has returned to save us from stupid games.

Since releasing Braid back in 2006, Blow has been dividing his time between work on The Witness and vocal criticism of the gaming industry. Blow's comments are usually relentlessly self assured, vitriolic, and dryly funny; his recent comments to The Atlantic are no exception.

In a profile piece entitled The Most Dangerous Gamer [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/8928/?single_page=true], Taylor Clark paints Blow as your typical grumpy genius, and Braid as the sole beacon of intelligent gaming in an ocean of mindless shooter sludge. Framed with a picture of Blow looking all austere (though the picture's effect is diminished somewhat by his uncanny resemblance to New Radicals frontman, Gregg Alexander [http://youtu.be/DL7-CKirWZE]), the piece is hilariously dismissive of gaming as a medium - my favorite line: "the form remains an artistic backwater, plagued by cartoonish murderfests and endless revenue-friendly sequels," - but that's down to Clark, rather than Blow himself. Filtered out from the smug, Blow's comments are quite insightful.

Harsh, but insightful.

"If the video game is going to be used for art purposes, then it has to take advantage of its form in some way particular to that medium, right?" he told me. "A film and a novel can both do linear storytelling, but novels are very strong at internal mental machinations - which movies suck at - and movies are great at doing certain visual things. So the question is: Where are games on that same map?"

Later, he discusses gaming's relationship with cinema:

"The de facto reference for a video game is a shitty action movie," Blow said during a conversation in Chris Hecker's dining room one sunny afternoon. "You're not trying to make a game like Citizen Kane; you're trying to make Bad Boys 2." But questions of movie taste notwithstanding, the notion that gaming would even attempt to ape film troubles Blow. As Hecker explained it: "Look, film didn't get to be film by trying to be theater. First, they had to figure out the things they could do that theater couldn't, like moving the camera around and editing out of sequence-and only then did film come into its own."

Personally, though I agree with Blow in theory, I've aways found his criticism really only applies to mainstream titles, and even then, only partially. I don't mean to diminish Blow's accomplishments, but independent developers (and even some non-independent ones) were making intelligent games with strong authorial voices long before Braid was released, and they've continued to make them since.


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[Albino Boo]

The big problem is that gamers, like movie goers, prefer action moives and shooters rather than Citizen Cain. For every one person who watches a Visconti film there a 1000 that watch a Michel Bay film. If you had to put up 50 million of your own money where are you going to put it? There are indie films and indie games but they are never going to be the mainstream. Sure there is going to be a breakout hit now then, but by and large its only ever going to be a niche product.

What the gaming industry is lacking is a golden era like the 70s for moives. There are no gaming equivalents of the Godfarther or Taxi Driver. Stories with enough sex and violence to keep the blockbuster crew happy and enough character and emotions to appeal to the indie crowd. Now I'm sure theres going to half dozen posts saying that this games has a great story or that game, but lets be truthful they aren't. Most games plots are rather clichéd and run along the rails of expectation. I'm not saying they are bad and I don't enjoy them, I'm just saying they are not great.

 

[scotth266]

This comes from a guy whose only game was kind of mediocre.

Braid was nice to play and had pretty visuals and concepts, but the storytelling was an asshole to you at the end. Oh, you didn't know you had to collect those stars to get anything resembling a coherent ending? And if you don't do things exactly right you have to start over? And one of the stars takes two hours to get?

Pfffft.

Gaming is just as artistic now as it was the day Asteroids came out. There are some games that are good art and there are some bad ones. Saying that the medium is a "artistic backwater" betrays either serious ignorance or stupidly high expectations of what can be considered good art.

 

[Doclector]

I don't know. This is a little harsh and overly focused on Call of duty and it's clones (C'mon, we all know what he was talking about). When he says citizen Kane, I think of videogaming's anti-capitalism magnum opus, "bioshock", but the thing is that in the cinemas, bioshock would essentially be a "s***ty action movie", only one with a message, and a unique stylised setting. Point is, games can be those action movies whilst still being works of art.

 

[Fasckira]

I would have said a part of the issue is when game devs generalise their games into movie categories rather than try and define them...

What does Braid fall under in his sweeping generalisation? One of those straight-to-dvd titles that you find in the bargain bin at Blockbuster?

 

[Vault101]

shitty action movies?

other way round actually

a decent action game lets me actually have some fun

a shitty action movie has a few explosions....

also action does not= shit

 

[octafish]

Games are like shitty action films? Shit just got real.

 

[LilithSlave]

It may not be popular to say, but it's true. At least, for a lot of mainstream titles it is.

That's why I like games like Terraria. It makes very good use of video games as an interactive medium, by allowing you to interact with every object in the game. I personally, am in the process of trying to completely obliterate the Underworld biome as best I can. With gigantic water duplicating resivoirs in the sky(that reach the top of the screen and make it down to be the bottom half, and drop down gigantic hellevators in both sides of the screen, probably 300x times more water than the entire map normally comes with), so that I can perpetually flood hell more than it can evaporate, and loads of homes down there(which doesn't appear to have slowed down evaporation much, sadly) and attempting to make several artificial dungeon and meteorite biomes down there.

Because that shows truly interactive qualities in gaming, to be able to literally cultivate an entire fictional island to your liking. And there's nothing like a "bad action film" about that. Just exploration and creation.

... I will destroy that Underworld biome yet... by hand! I'm going to find a way to remove every last drop of lava from there. And keep permanent oceans of water that never evaporate. Somehow. I will destroy you hell, I'll destroy you yet. You will be my ocean. And full of snow, too.

*ehem*

Sorry for talking about Terraria so much. I also think that Chrono Trigger is a flawed, but very intelligent take on time travel in media. If there were a list of games I think should be up for the "Citizen Kane" of gaming, Chrono Trigger would be among them. Personally, I'd give it the first spot. And Chrono Cross is practically a deconstruction of Chrono Trigger. It obviously deserves some mention.

I wouldn't consider the Legend of Zelda games "bad action movies" either. Not A Link to the Past, not Ocarina of Time, not Majora's Mask, not Wind Waker, not Twilight Princess, not Skyward Sword, none of them.

And Katamari Damacy doesn't come even close to being a bad action movie.

Oh, and let's not forget games like Journey.

What it means to me is, I'd like more games along these lines.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I think the word 'art' should be abolished, at least when it comes to talking about videogames. I've never been more sick of hearing about the "games are art" discussion then I am right now.

At this point I'm honestly getting more annoyed with all the people claiming that mainstream games are just "shitty action movies" than with with the actual shitty action movie games themselves.

 

[The White Hunter]

I think the word 'art' should be abolished, at least when it comes to talking about videogames. I've never been more sick of hearing about the "games are art" discussion then I am right now.

At this point I'm honestly getting more annoyed with all the people claiming that mainstream games are just "shitty action movies" than with with the actual shitty action movie games themselves.

The games as art thing is annoying me too. To be honest games that put being artistic and having a message before being, idk, fun to play, are stupid in my opinion.

I'd rather play a fun action game than a boring game obsessed with its' own pretentious messages.

Then again I found Shadow of the Colossus to be like watching paint dry so my opinion is invalid according to alot of the more vocal community.

 

[Zeckt]

To me he just comes off as someone smarter then me going out of his way to insult me because I get frustrated by puzzles in artsy games and feel dumb when I can't figure them out taking away all my enjoyment out of playing games to begin with.

I'm at least honest, and I will go one step further and call him out as being an arrogant snob. If he wants to make his "artsy" games then let him, but by alienating gamers by insulting them with his crap it will do him no favors.

Intelligent-gaming messiah huh? that does not excuse him for being a douchebag. I hope all his games bomb badly.

 

[RA92]

Edit: Mispost

 

[Casual Shinji]

I think the word 'art' should be abolished, at least when it comes to talking about videogames. I've never been more sick of hearing about the "games are art" discussion then I am right now.

At this point I'm honestly getting more annoyed with all the people claiming that mainstream games are just "shitty action movies" than with with the actual shitty action movie games themselves.

The games as art thing is annoying me too. To be honest games that put being artistic and having a message before being, idk, fun to play, are stupid in my opinion.

I'd rather play a fun action game than a boring game obsessed with its' own pretentious messages.

Then again I found Shadow of the Colossus to be like watching paint dry so my opinion is invalid according to alot of the more vocal community.

It's not so much the games themselves that I have a problem with; If they're good, they're good.

It's just the constant yammering by indy developers and everyone else that games should be so much more then what they are now, and that to be taken seriously as a art form, yadda yadda yadda...

For a billion dollar industry, the games world has such a low self esteem.

 

[hazabaza1]

"Hazabaza1 on pretentious indie game twat."
Your game wasn't even that good you prick.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I'd probably care about what this guy had to say if he actually made any good games.