Dreamfall Chapters Dev Disputes George Lucas' Gaming Views

[Proverbial Jon]

Lucas even suggested that when players pick up a controller, "something turns off in the heart, and it becomes a sport."

Lucas sounds like every other person I have spoken to who has never played a video game before. They fail to understand that the popular idea of video games being nothing more than shooting galleries for children is outdated and no longer applies to every game ever made.

Video games have arguably moved on, matured and become more sophisticated far quicker than any other artistic medium I know of. Why are they always dismissed so fully with regards to their ability to convey an emotionally engaging experience?

 

[Something Amyss]

Why would any game aspire to emulate Titanic's level of storytelling? It was an excellent film in terms of special effects, but the story was a cliched bore-fest.

Keep in mind it was George Lucas talking. A man who once wrote Star Wars Episode II. A man who is best known to the public for creating a bunch of fun samurai westerns for kids. His best works have the emotional depth of a fourth grader. To him, Titanic's love story is probably about fifty steps up.

I would take this point better from Steven, a man whose name has been attached to far more touching moments in film history, but even then....

Regardless, games are going to evolve along a different path because of their time, and this is all kind of ridiculous in the first place. In fact, I wish gaming would stop trying to achieve cinematic parity.

 

[Flutterbrave]

Am I the only one who read the title and thought 'the developer of what now?'

 

[an annoyed writer]

Why the fuck would we want our own equivalent to Titanic? That movie was terrible. If you want to talk about lack of depth, that movie is the embodiment of it. I've played games FROM ITS YEAR that were more emotionally engaging and moving than that shoddy film.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I have to say that I was hugely impressed with the Escapist's threads discussing the plot of The Last of Us.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.819183-The-Last-of-Us-Plot-Ending-Discussion

This thread wasn't about how great the gameplay was or what texture resolution the graphics were, it's about the characters of the main protagonists, and how well their choices at the end of the game reflect the characters they've established over the game, and why the seemingly bad, immoral, or questionable choices were justified in their minds.

It's as in-depth as any book or film discussion will ever be on their artistic themes, and we also had these same discussions on the themes in Bioshock Infinite, and Spec Ops the Line.

These forum threads prove exclusively that videogames have reached their potential as artforms to make the player think about their own actions that they took and how it reflects on them, as well as the actions of other characters and how their beliefs, needs, and struggle to survive shape their choices and actions.

Gaming has reached its potential to be as artful as any movie or book can be, but Spielberg and Lucas couldn't actually know this unless they actually were to take an interest in the medium and play these recent games, instead of what they have most likely done, which is base their opinion on the TV advertisements of COD and Battlefield, and Fox news broadcasts of the latest moral outcry from the last disaster-in-close-proximity-to-a-videogame scenario.

 

[Olrod]

Somebody's never played Final Fantasy VII, or even Mystic Quest/Final Fantasy Adventure* on the original Gameboy.

(*Same game, different names.)

 

[Shinsei-J]

Well somebody doesn't play videogame...
Hmm, George?

Emotionally engaging games aren't even all that new.
Look at Buldur's Gate, Fallout 1&2 and Final Fantasy VII.
Jeez, someone needs to send this guy a copy of Spec Ops just to prove him wrong and to make him feel bad at the same time.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I'm with Tornquist on this. Saying that as soon as an interface is involved all emotion attachment is lost is bullshit.

Although I don't particularly think Titanic is the most moving film either. In fact if gaming's equivalent to Titanic came out I don't think I'd want to play it.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

The man's name is Ragnar Tornquist, he wins any argument by default.

Seriously, that name probably eats 'George Lucas'es for breakfast.

 

[Frotality]

because an over-budgeted manipulative romance plot is the pinnacle of storytelling all media should strive to emulate.

add two more self-absorbed ignorant "artists" giving opinions of mediums they know nothing about to the pile.

 

[Vylox]

Just the thing folx, let's compare 2-3 hours of story (movie) to 6-12 hours of story mixed in with mechanics/game play and the myriad of other things involved with a game.
Good job.

Lucas and Speilberg owe me 15 minutes of time, each.

 

[Steve Waltz]

I like how Tornquist is so modest to give Journey and The Last of Us as example for emotional games. The Last of Us pulled a few strings and got me welling a bit, but when I was 14 years old Dreamfall: The Longest Journey made me cry all over my Xbox controller. I had empathised with Joel too much and I found the ending of The Last of Us to be a happy one, but by the end of the credits for Dreamfall there were used tissues discarded all on the floor. The only other game I would put even remotely close to Dreamfall would be Spec Ops: The Line, but the fact that it took so long for a sequel to even be announced I had assumed that absolutely everyone had died which haunted me even after the game was done.

If there was any person that has the rights to defend the emotions that games can bring it's Tornquist, but I really would to suggested that if Lucas and Spielberg care, they play Dreamfall: The Longest Journey to get a clue (and give them an FAQ because some of the puzzles are absolutely bonkers).

 

[RJ 17]

Haven't people noticed yet that Lucas' voice has been coming out of the back of his pants for years now? The guy does nothing but talk out of his ass. I don't know about you, my fellow Escapists, but I can say with confidence that in the past five years more games have made me misty-eyed (in a couple cases, brought me to full-on tears) than movies have.

 

[somonels]

Coming from the emotional geniuses that brought you such masterpieces as the Star Wars prequels and .. the Goonies? Dunno, never witnessed any of the movies Spielberg wrote.
Sounds like they are feeling pressured by their audience beginning to favor mediocre multi-hour interactive ways of wasting their time instead of paying 10ish to experience maybe two hours of audiovisual distraction in a small greasy seat and near "people".

 

[therightpirate]

I thought everyone was aiming for Citizen Kane?

http://thecitizenkaneofvideogames.tumblr.com/

Please let's all remember that even Citizen Kane wasn't considered the greatest film of its time. It lost the Oscar that year to another classic, and a film that to be honest I kind of prefer, John Ford's How Green Was My Valley.

But why does the video game world need to make a Citizen Kane. Video Games create way more immersive experiences that films can never hope to mimic. Games allow people to be their own directors to some degree and shape their own stories. A film can be rewatched a million times but will remain the same each time. A good game will allow me to approach it different ways, perhaps wandering the same corridors, but in my own speed, my own way. As I've gotten back into video games I find it appalling how poorly I get engaged by films. And I studied cinema, did an undergraduate and graduate degree in it, but I find it far more boring than the possibilities of video games.

It's sad to see a group of old men declaim that the new art is a poor art. 100 years ago film used to be considered a poor art, for the populous and now it's beloved and raised to high acclaim. Rock & Roll was considered a bunch of loud horrid noise and even Jazz was thought to a lesser form of music at its infancy. It's utterly sad to see men like Lucas fall on their swords. Here's a man who once made a film that created a global following only to entirely forget how to make memorable believable characters 20 years later with its horrid prequels. He's gone so far as to stop making films entirely and to even sell his beloved franchises to another company so he can retreat into a cave and pretend that the world hasn't entirely moved on without him. It's a shame that in its final years his only decent surviving creative company, LucasArts, created the awful, soulless SWTFU II.

In any event I don't know why people pay attention to people like Lucas. Creativity is like a shark, it needs to move or it dies. If Lucas doesn't want to progress into the future then the world will just move on without him. Seems like it already has. It's just a shame he hasn't quite realized it yet.

 

[sturryz]

Bold words from men who haven't created something with artistic merit in YEARS.

They just want excuses to push more silly gimmick controls, of which YOU know they don't work, THEY know they don't work. it's just an excuse to put big names in front of a product to get it sold, they don't care about the artistic merits of video games, they just want more $$$, the thing that makes this sorry sap world go round!

How DARE they question anything without having all the information. People pushing something tend to ignore facts, like game's such as The Walking Dead, a game KNOWN for being filled with emotional situations and deep engrossing, movie like qualities (although, we know that it surpasses most movies anyway.)

A bunch of old man, sitting around with cue cards, reading off and getting paid for things they understand not!

 

[mdqp]

Since video games are an interactive medium, they require the audience to have an active role of sorts. It might be something trivial (like in visual novels) or it can be way more complex, but it inevitably requires them to get past an interface of some kind. Of course if you aren't used to it, the experience is going to be lessened for you, but claiming that the games themselves are lacking is dumb, quite frankly. It's like saying: "I don't speak japanese, therefore untranslated japanese movies are devoid of value". The fact that you lack a skill or a certain knowledge required to enjoy a piece of art, doesn't invalidate the experience for everyone. We accept way more obscure ways to interact with the audience from modern art, but nobody would dare to look down on the whole art movement, it just doesn't work that way.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Oh god, Spielberg AND Lucas said shit like this? I knew they had a conference, but didn't know what they had said. Neither of them know what they are talking about.

Coming from the emotional geniuses that brought you such masterpieces as the Star Wars prequels

Sums it up really. If Lucas really wanted to show how much he cares about videogames, he'd have done something about Lucasarts having zero talent.

and .. the Goonies? Dunno, never witnessed any of the movies Spielberg wrote.

Hey man, the Goonies is legit. Thank god Spielberg only wrote the story.

Sounds like they are feeling pressured by their audience beginning to favor mediocre multi-hour interactive ways of wasting their time instead of paying 10ish to experience maybe two hours of audiovisual distraction in a small greasy seat and near "people".

It's a good thing their industry is never the target of piracy.




Yeah, I know that was a bad joke.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

M'yes because Boom Blox was so deep and complex, but the recent Star Wars have definitely moved me to tears. Not in a good way though.