Why are there no romantic comedy games?
Now before I continue let me explain my reason for asking. I am a huge follower of the 'games as art' discussion that seems to have really picked up in recent years. I've done all my philosophizing in (relative silence), and it all leads me back to questions like this.
The majority of games are centered around actions. You drive, you shoot, you solve puzzles, and so forth. The top-tier games are the ones that approach this with a 'singular vision'. You get to choose who you kill and why. You have to climb the thing, and THEN kill it, and there's pretty beams of sunlight everywhere and epic orchestral music.
What I'm basically trying to say is that the majority of games in general could be reduced to pretty B action movies.
Now let's take a movie like, I don't know, 'Something's Gotta Give', with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. For those of you (read: all of you) that haven't seen it, this was a movie that introduced us to two older characters, one a raging sex-crazed libertine (Nicholson) the other a frigid, irritating shrew (Keaton), but both of them entering their golden years and (almost coincidentally) discovering they were in a romantic comedy. Now I'll leave the judgments of whether or not this was an interesting idea, a funny romantic comedy, or even a 'good movie' up to you. But here's what I'm getting at: there's a scene in this movie where two old people who have not had sex in a long time have sex, and it is every bit as cute, self-parodying, and disgusting as such a scene should be.
Why can't games do something like this? Now I'm sure I'm going to get flamed with comments like 'a game where you make old people have sex
lol your gay'. But I think you get my point. In a medium which professes itself to be an interactive art form, why is the acceptable norm (immersive, detailed, beautiful, stunning, excessive, repetitive) destruction?
For a more accessible metaphor, take No Country For Old Men. The movie was about a man who has done a stupid thing, and is running from the consequences. Simultaneously, the movie is about the agent of those consequences: a merciless creature with no value for human life, and out for blood. The movie was a slow burn; moody, atmospheric, filled with a palpable sense of dread.
If they made a No Country for Old Men game, it would be a first-person shooter. It would boast that you get to switch perspectives between the main character, playing like a stealth game, and Anthon Chigurh, who likes to shoot things. It would have lots of shooting mexicans. The five-minute car-chase in the desert would involve a gun turret. Tommy-Lee Jones would have little forensic investigation scenes where you have to shine a black light at dead bodies.
And this, of course, is if it was made into a 'good' game.
I'm sorry if I tend to ramble, but here's the central point:
In the 'games as art' argument, we like to boast that we offer immersion in a way no other medium can; that you can get inside a character's head in a way nothing else would allow. I don't know about you, but it seems to me like the only character's heads gaming lets me get inside are destructive psychopaths and grizzled soldiers (never very far apart). Meanwhile movies, books, and tv are putting me in the heads of wrongly-accused men, cynical supernatural investigators, and Batman.
Now before I continue let me explain my reason for asking. I am a huge follower of the 'games as art' discussion that seems to have really picked up in recent years. I've done all my philosophizing in (relative silence), and it all leads me back to questions like this.
The majority of games are centered around actions. You drive, you shoot, you solve puzzles, and so forth. The top-tier games are the ones that approach this with a 'singular vision'. You get to choose who you kill and why. You have to climb the thing, and THEN kill it, and there's pretty beams of sunlight everywhere and epic orchestral music.
What I'm basically trying to say is that the majority of games in general could be reduced to pretty B action movies.
Now let's take a movie like, I don't know, 'Something's Gotta Give', with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. For those of you (read: all of you) that haven't seen it, this was a movie that introduced us to two older characters, one a raging sex-crazed libertine (Nicholson) the other a frigid, irritating shrew (Keaton), but both of them entering their golden years and (almost coincidentally) discovering they were in a romantic comedy. Now I'll leave the judgments of whether or not this was an interesting idea, a funny romantic comedy, or even a 'good movie' up to you. But here's what I'm getting at: there's a scene in this movie where two old people who have not had sex in a long time have sex, and it is every bit as cute, self-parodying, and disgusting as such a scene should be.
Why can't games do something like this? Now I'm sure I'm going to get flamed with comments like 'a game where you make old people have sex
lol your gay'. But I think you get my point. In a medium which professes itself to be an interactive art form, why is the acceptable norm (immersive, detailed, beautiful, stunning, excessive, repetitive) destruction?For a more accessible metaphor, take No Country For Old Men. The movie was about a man who has done a stupid thing, and is running from the consequences. Simultaneously, the movie is about the agent of those consequences: a merciless creature with no value for human life, and out for blood. The movie was a slow burn; moody, atmospheric, filled with a palpable sense of dread.
If they made a No Country for Old Men game, it would be a first-person shooter. It would boast that you get to switch perspectives between the main character, playing like a stealth game, and Anthon Chigurh, who likes to shoot things. It would have lots of shooting mexicans. The five-minute car-chase in the desert would involve a gun turret. Tommy-Lee Jones would have little forensic investigation scenes where you have to shine a black light at dead bodies.
And this, of course, is if it was made into a 'good' game.
I'm sorry if I tend to ramble, but here's the central point:
In the 'games as art' argument, we like to boast that we offer immersion in a way no other medium can; that you can get inside a character's head in a way nothing else would allow. I don't know about you, but it seems to me like the only character's heads gaming lets me get inside are destructive psychopaths and grizzled soldiers (never very far apart). Meanwhile movies, books, and tv are putting me in the heads of wrongly-accused men, cynical supernatural investigators, and Batman.
