Jimquisition: Emotions, Polygons, and Ellen Page

[ConanThe3rd]

What point is there to be made? David Cage is a hedonistic pain in the backside who's nonsense does for Video Games what DmC did for the medium's self respect.

 

[Seneschal]

Oh, Jim, I love it when you're borderline slanderous. I've played Fahrenheit; it begins promisingly and intriguingly, and then it devolves into self-important wank (and a jarring turn from gritty supernatural mystery into silly-cults-and-superpowers that almost gave me a whiplash).


http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mejjp2GdXD1rrfbqe.gif
He just doesn't know.

 

[Random Argument Man]

Too bad that David Cage makes impressing demos and not impressing games....

I mean, "Project Kara" still manages to get me everytime.


Looking forward to Valorie Curry's acting career. Would've love a game where you play a robot trying to survive in this cruel cruel world. Themes of "living", "meaning of life" or "birth and death" would've been impressive...

 

[Piorn]

I wish I had emotions, like my video games.

Also, where was Jim? I thought he was the host of his show. You can't just invite a guest and let him do the entire show, can you?

 

[cynicalsaint1]

That was quite the emotional burn.

Add to all those emotional pixels Willem Dafoe, and we will finally achieve world peace.

Some examples from Heavy Rain, spoilerish obviously:

Spoiler

So there's a mystery going on about a serial killer who kidnaps and murders children. There's a big red-herring about one of the main characters possibly being the killer mostly linked to these weird blackouts he has. So a couple of things:

1. Killer has been active longer than he's been having his weird blackout problem.
2. Dude doesn't make any sense as a suspect because he was in a fucking coma last time the killer was active.

Apparently have an alibi for all but one of the serial killers killings makes you the perfect suspect.

Furthermore the only purpose these blackouts have is to set him up as a possible suspect (again despite the fact this makes literally no sense). Once his kid is kidnapped they literally just magically stop happening and are never really talked about again except as proof that the dude is the killer. The plot thread is started then completely forgotten about.

There's also the most retarded cop ever - he goes in to question a psychiatrist about one of his patients - pretty much the first thing he starts doing is trying to beat information out of him without any real provocation. The shrink isn't a suspect or anything.

So much of the plot hinges on terribly presented narrative, and cliched caricatures of characters. Random thug the two police officers want to question? Of course he's going to lead them on a big chase and attempt to murder them despite the fact that he has nothing to do with anything, and the police literally have nothing on him - because that's totally the way human beings actually act.

The thing is - its not all bad, individual scenes can be well written and executed, but for the few great moments, to me at least, it felt like most of the time he was just trying too hard to make a scene exciting or emotional. And when you try to put the whole story together into a cohesive narrative it just falls apart. The more you think about things the less sense things make - and that's rarely a good sign when you're talking about a murder mystery story.

 

[Alar]

Hmm, I liked the subject matter, and it was a good parody, but I think it'd have worked better if perhaps the David Cage mockery was done for maybe the first minute or so, then the rest as normal.

It was good, I just felt the joke was wearing a little thin by the end.

It´s always been fun how you could play a game like Yakuza or Catherine, where the characters looks like humans and actually expresses emotions, but when you play one of Cages brilliant games, it´s nothing but a freak show where you are starring into the uncanny valley. He uses so much money to try and recreate reality, though it might be quite impossible, while smarter companies characterises the faces slightly and achieves a lot better results using less effort.

That's actually why anime characters have the faces they do. So emotion can be shown a lot more clearly. They don't look realistic, but to me this:

Spoiler

expresses a hell of a lot more emotion than this:

Spoiler

Anime -is- a good way to show emotion. I'm also rather fond of books, and can get hit pretty hard by them as well.

This was a very amusing parody. POLYGONS IS EMOTION.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

I don't understand all the hate for his games. I thought heavy rain was great, and the niche he fills isn't one being filled by any other triple AAA developer. Would you guys prefer if Quantic dream just made another spunkgargleweewee games? Of course he's passionate about the games he makes and the style he makes them in so by what right do we have to be so cynical as to say that it's wrong. I don't want every game being like Heavy Rain but neither do I want every game being like my personal favorite genre, a RTS.

Its not so much about his games that are the issue, its more of his opinion that we cant have emotional and good stories because of technological limitations, which is horse crap and he paints himself as a gaming messiah and decrys every other genre that isnt trying to redo the wheel.

If I want to get a sterling opnion on emotional characters I'll go listen to Ken Levine, Dacid Cage tends to turn into the adults from Charlie Brown after a while. I went to GDC last year and he was supposed to give a talk on emotional experiences, but for the most part it was a glorified tech demo.

 

[zombiejoe]

That certainly was an interesting video to watch. Pretty funny, all things considering.

I see what you're saying, and while I may not dislike Quadratic Dream's work, I do support testing the boundaries of graphics, I fully agree with you that you don't need graphics to tell a compelling story.

 

[AlexLoxate]

That about sums up David Cage.

 

[RTR]

Jim is the Michael Myers of game journalism

 

[Trishbot]

I just know that FF6's 16-bit sprites made me feel more emotional than the entire library of David Cage games have combined. AND they were more enjoyable to play too!

David Cage's games are... different. What they are not, however, are "good". As games, they are subpar. As stories, they are badly written. As movies, they are badly paced. As emotional experiences, they are hollow, cloying, and shockingly artificial.

Someone best described David Cage like Data from Star Trek, where he THINKS he knows what emotions are and tries to replicate them, but because he has no true understanding of emotion, it never actually works and he gets it utterly wrong.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Well, that was weird. But good job on riffing on Cage's creepy obsession.

Do you even emotion?

That's the definition of irony right there.

 

[Xanadu84]

I have 2 thoughts on this.

1) Graphics get a bad rap. Of course, it gets a bad rap amongst the communities that don't translate into the big bucks for major publishers in the short term whilst being exaggerated in importance by the kinds of people who make stock prices go up, but still. Graphics are a tool. Better tools are good to have, and open up opportunities that didn't exist. "Games" arn't better for pushing photo-realism, but SOME games are. Cage's games are probably better with more photo-realism. His problem is not being off his rocker, his problem is that he is thinking far too narrowly.

2) I think that its not uncommon that you get someone who is kind of a douche in just the right way to take things forward. Heavy Rain has it's flaws, and the idea of photo-realism being required for "Emotion" is laughable. But then again, Heavy Rain is the rare example of a mainstream title that focuses on the little character points, choice, and generally plot instead of the power fantasy. And the world of games is probably better now, both for the successes AND failures.So it seems unnecessary to drag him through the mud. Maybe you have to be kind of a pretentious douchbage to get certain things done.

 

[MrBoBo]

This 2003 source engine demo has more emotion than any David Cage generated charecter. It's also a hell of a better tech demo than the borefest at the ps4 confrence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHH5L39YtDE

Of course David Cage doesnt play games so he wont be aware of this.

 

[Mr_Terrific]

Okay, actually watched the video in question that this was parodying, and I have to say... David Cage is actually right.

I mean, he leaves alot of room for people to make a strawman out of him, but he's right. The advantage of having technology is that you now have the power to, if you so choose, emulate emotion on a character's face without resorting to exaggeration. This is excellent for breaking down another wall in immersion. It wasn't stated, nor implied that better graphigz and moar poligonz equalz moar emotun, just that they give the developers more power to create it. It's well established that if you want to convey emotion, you need to give your audience a reason to have feelings for what you create, usually in that they can relate to it somehow. Cage never said that you can now skip that entire process of creating believable characters and employing drama into your work due to the better super graphics polygons emotion.

The focal point of that presentation, however, WAS the graphical capabilities of the PS4, and the argument was that graphics r gud, which is true, but they're not a necessity. It sounds to me like Cage was just excited that, hey, they got this new tool, and now, suddenly, they can start broadcasting in color versus black and white.

And yeah, developers will pervert it. But do you know what? I have a hunch that, among those list of developers that do so, going straight for moar polygonz (omg) and nothing else, Quantic Dream will not be on that list.

I completely agree and this video, as well as various other sites that are currently bashing Cage for stating something that should be obvious.

Hell, even Jim Sterling agrees... http://www.destructoid.com/review-l-a-noire-201203.phtml

"I cannot express enough how impressed I am with the facial animation, and how it's been used not only as eye candy, but as an invaluable part of the gameplay itself. It's a joy to interview suspects and watch them talk in such a realistic fashion, using their movements to inform your own decisions. Without the animation, the game simply would not work, but I'm thrilled to report that it works beautifully.
"

LA Naire is exactly what Cage is talking about, but Jim and (predictably) the boot lickers sum up a decent demonstration about how improved technology makes it easier to convey emotions into foolishness. So instead of talking about Cliffy B's bullshit stance on micro-transactions from 4 days ago, we're doing a parody of David Cage who's only guilty of trying to move the industry forward.

I sure hope someone else at Dtoid reviews Beyond, because we already know how Jim feels about it.

 

[Gunjester]

I don't understand all the hate for his games. I thought heavy rain was great, and the niche he fills isn't one being filled by any other triple AAA developer. Would you guys prefer if Quantic Dream just made another spunkgargleweewee games? Of course he's passionate about the games he makes and the style he makes them in so by what right do we have to be so cynical as to say that it's wrong. I don't want every game being like Heavy Rain but neither do I want every game being like my personal favorite genre, a RTS.

No one said that we want him making RTS or spunkgargleweewee, Jim is saying that he doesn't understand what he's talking about, has a huge ego and needs to improve his writing.
Parody and criticism is how you change things without taking radical action, if we just leave artists be to make whatever they want they'll lose sight of the point, that if you sell people mass-produced versions of your art and get rich off it, you should be making a quality work of art and that it should be focused on the audience's enjoyment, not your ambitions. If we don't criticize then things won't improve, David Cage isn't crying into his pillows at night about the hate he gets, so why are you?

 

[MrBoBo]

Personally I think David Cage comes across as outright insulting to other people in the field. His Playstation 4 analogy with film was just plain stupid and seemed belittling and pretty condescending. Piss off and get over yourself. I'm surprised no developers called him out.

 

[JuliusMagnus]

I'm not a part of the Publishers Club so I saw a distinct lack of emotion in the whole video. Even that fragment from this supposed "Most Emotional" film, The Hobbit, looked devoid of any emotion since from my perspective it lacked emotion enhancers like HD and 48fps.

 

[Gatx]

I've always wondered how actors can keep a straight face doing that mo-cap stuff. I mean stunt work and what not, okay, but for capturing subtle facial motions and what not like you see in this video - can't be easy trying to be serious with a face studded with dots and wearing a skintight one-piece, and looking at someone whose dressed in likewise has to be hard.