Many of my colleagues have disputed me -- and fairly -- when I suggest that one of my aims in discussing games is to try to evaluate them according to what the developer's intention might have been and how well the game achieved it.
"You can't review a game based on intention," one of my cohorts told me.
Nonetheless, intention's something I always try to keep in mind when I critique games. Blame my theatrical background -- we were taught to read plays in part, at least, in the context of what the playwright is trying to say. The intention of a narrative often plays a role in how we think about the success or failure of novels, too. And, y'know, it might not be something that I can plug into the Metacritic scores I've assigned, but I like doing it anyway.
I have read interviews with thatgamecompany regarding Flower wherein co-creator Kellee Santiago says that the intention of Flower is to create "an emotion." I heard this objective most recently in a highly laudatory Slate article about the game; writer Chris Suellentrop says Flower made him feel "relaxed, peaceful and happy."
It made me feel that way, too, and judging by SVGL commenters' responses yesterday, most of you agree. In that respect, Flower can be said to succeed at its intention, yes?
Except that the deliberate intention of creating emotion is manipulative.
Again, I think of theatre. Picture an amateur actor, ready for her debut; backstage, she waits, considering her audience. "I'm going to make them cry," she whispers to herself. She sets a goal to transport the audience, to make them feel. But, continuing with the example, acting is about objectives. That's the most basic tenet of the craft.
An actor's meant to adopt and empathize with the objectives of the character he or she's portraying and believe in them fully. If the actor can't become immersed in that; if, while waiting in the wings, the actor is thinking about making the audience laugh or cry rather than considering what his character wants in a given scene; if they want to shortcut the work itself to get right to the reaction to the work, the performance is hollow.
The result is a preciously self-conscious play for attention on the part of the actor, not a genuinely meaningful immersive experience. I once wrote a column on how acting and game design don't seem to me to be very far apart -- and I still believe this is true.
So you see what I'm getting at, right?
Flower's a beautiful game. It transfers that sense of peace and beauty to the player. But it's about as sophisticated and sincere as a high school musical.
The game's transition from pure, humble nature through the frustrating barriers of technology's presence to its climax's glorious rendition of the balance between nature and man is lovely because of the way the design has meticulously engineered the emotional response; as one commenter said in yesterday's discussion, those frustrating gameplay sections that many dislike are necessary to make the final sections feel liberating.
But these are design principles, not transcendental philosophical threads, not transporting narrative elegance. The narrative of Flower is so insipid as to be unbelievable -- inside the dream of a flower -- the dream of a flower -- the power of nature beats up the bad oil well things, the sparkling magic of flowers brings man into balance with his environment, the end?
...You serious? This is your transformative experience? How come it didn't transform you when you saw it in an animated after-school special?
I wrote yesterday about how Flower's very game-like, very design-deliberate, and this is fine, even valuable. But a manipulative intention and a shallow "meaning," coupled with manufactured design? How is it that we can still claim Flower is about "art" or about "emotion", about naturalism or fluidity -- when it so obviously adheres to what has been done before, and in many cases, done to death?
This schism, to me, disrupts the "emotion," not enhances it.
Why is the audience being deceived by such an easy play for its emotions using such a trite, derivative theme? Because it wants to be, and because it believes it needs to be. We'll finish the discussion tomorrow.
Yes, I realize I said "tomorrow" yesterday and am now squeaking in half an hour before midnight my time. I'll try to be more timely tomorrow (hee hee)! In the meantime, I'd like to cap this off with a disclaimer: To make it precisely plain -- I like Flower. I am impressed with Flower. In fact, I'd say I love many things about Flower. Just remember, before you crucify me, that I am a fan.
You should raise a red flag, don't you think, if someone who likes a game is a "hater" for criticizing elements of it?
40 comments:
I imagine people are going to jump in and start protesting in a moment, so I'll just say right now: Yeah, that's a fair analysis.
(And I, too, believe in analyzing games based on how well they succeed at being the games their designers want them to be.)
When Santiago said they wanted to create an emotion, was that in reference to the "narrative" or the actual moment-to-moment experience of playing the game? I wasn't really deeply touched by the overarching theme of environmental restoration, but I found the game itself very affecting while I was playing it.
I can't say I've seen anyone going out of their way to praise the game's symbolism - most people seem to dig the gameplay, the purdy music, and the immersion that's afforded by the control scheme. Do you really remember or care about the "story" in Rez? Does it matter? Its pleasures were more abstract. I mean, that's the strength of the medium, and that's where it can earn the right to be called art.
I'll just say this.
Everyone wants to be the next "Braid." And when you notice how desperately they want to be, it ruins it.
Sounds to me that although Flower seems to be a somewhat manipulative game, you can't fault it for it too much.
It also takes a great amount of skill to manipulate an audience.
Though, of course, gathering the same reaction from the audience without using manipulation is even more laudable.
However, I think there's a place for both approaches, since one is more centered around the narrative and another around the design of the game itself.
While theater is just about the narrative.
That's the major difference between Flower and any play, it's more than just its individual parts and yet at the same time less.
That's why I think that although your thinking is fair enough, it's not necessarily objectively true. ;3
Interesting post. Yet, I'm all for trying to hardwire players to feel certain emotions. Hell, I'm even researching methods of how to do that. I don't believe there is such a danger of inflation, as you describe, when the designer goes with the interactive, emotion-enducing experience first, narrative second.
I believe that all games are manipulative in trying us to make pick up the controller - or a figurine on a board, for that matter - and do things, propelling us from one goal to the next, and while doing that we experience emotions. Name me one game that is not manipulative in this sense?
That's why I feel that 'manipulative' has a negative connotation that does not fit the case of Flower. I think seductive and persuasive are more fitting terms. They're very much about the same thing, anyway, don't you think?
I don't think "I'm going to make them cry" is the sort of goal an actor goes for. In fact, I think that's result-based directing, which is a mistake.. Kind of a douchey thing to bring up, but it's the difference between convincing an audience and pandering to one (which seems relevant to this article).
First off, good work in considering intention in the evaluation of a game. Isn't it the basic tripod af criticism to consider the intent of the artist, the worthiness of that intent, and the extent to which the intent is conveyed? It may have no place at Metacritic, but that says more about the inadequacy of Metacritic than about the failure of this critical method.
I haven't played Flower yet. (Nobu Nobu Boy.) It looks beautiful but not very subtle. It reminds me of some machinima I saw of a flower growing in a forest - not meaningful, just pretty.
Perhaps the reason Flower is receiving such plaudits is because we don't have anything that's better. We see this in games a lot: we see stories and dialogue praised because they aren't terrible. Flower is a baby step in the direction of something that connects at an emotional level, that was intended by the designer.
What, something can't be "a great video game," "an emotional experience," and "true art" all at once??
But yeah, I was suspicious of Flower before I played it for many of the same reasons you note: it seemed so calculated and trite. Kind of a clumsy swipe at making the opposite of your 'typical video game' with guns and blood and bad words. I was ready to climb on the hate train.
But that went away once I played the thing. I didn't care about the hamfisted juxtaposition of the loud, dirty city with the pristine prairie, or the clear attempt by the developers to "make Art." Instead I was completely immersed in the sensation of flight, the lushness of the surrounding visuals, and the clear, positive sense of progression as I played. I guess maybe the developers conveyed an emotion-- serenity?-- but they definitely conveyed a memorable feeling. And it's one I almost never get from video games.
I personally didn't feel like Flower was a revelation.. it's not a big, earth-shattering game. It's understated, and it just kind of made me think, "that was a nice experience," and wish there were more games available that were like it... so that we wouldn't all have to flip out over a simple little game about a spring breeze being released.
"Why is the audience being deceived by such an easy play for its emotions using such a trite, derivative theme? Because it wants to be, and because it believes it needs to be."
I feel that in any art/medium/whatever it is important for the audience to be complicit in creation of the experience.
In some media it is easy for the audience to immerse themselves, but in games the player needs to be an active participant, so the requirement for 'self deception' is higher.
Well, at least that's my opinion. ;)
Damn it woman! You have opened my eyes.
I thought Flower was a really arty video game, but as you say... trying to emulate an emotion is not what art is about. That's too shallow.
Art it's about having a story to tell that makes you feel something because of the emotional power of that story and not it's intentions.
But for what it is... Flower does a great job in manipulating the player.
Having only played a little bit of Flower I'm not qualified to make a fair judgment of it, but I don't really see anything wrong with the point it's trying to make, artistically and in terms of its message, as simple as it might be. I've been thinking a lot about mythology lately, and what kind of mythical stories our modern culture has (or doesn't have), and in terms of video games the narratives are often either pessimistic, complex, or just irrelevant. Flower seems to have an idealism that the more cynical among us may normally find ridiculous, but it also appears to get past that feeling through its delivery as a sensory experience.
Complex narratives are my favourite kind, but I think it is good to have media that presents a simple, overwhelmingly positive idea in a way that doesn't seem trite on the surface, something like an emotional mnemonic. How many people might play Flower, then go outside and see a field of flowers and grass, and have a reinforced feeling of protectiveness that might inspire them to donate a dollar or so to an environmental cause or read up on the damaging effects of industrialisation?
@Logan Right. That's exactly what I'm saying.
@Steve Gaynor: Of course it can. But I'm picturing that poll like one of those "what level of education have you received" tickboxes from an internet survey; "some college" or "four-year degree" or "grad school" -- if you've gone to grad school, than the previous 3 are implied, but if you haven't got there, than you can only tick as far "up" as you've gone. Or somethin'.
Let me bring up a couple other examples of intentional manipulation of emotion (or lack thereof) for comparison:
Bioshock - I wrote a column about why, after hearing for over a year about the moral conundrum of the Little Sisters, I harvested every last one. One thing I hadn't read discussed were the emotions evoked by battling the Big Daddies. The anger and frustration associated with the difficult fights, coupled with the rush of victory (and the questionable moral status of the Sisters) made me feel, at the end of each battle, a certain species of bloodlust that overshadowed any abstract moral discussion. Was it an explicit intention to evoke that emotion? I haven't read anything to that effect and it never felt contrived.
Jeanne D'Arc - I recently finished it after much frustration in the final hours. For the most part the game is so well-paced that there is no need to grind. But near the end a character who left your party earlier returns at a much lower level than everyone else. Given that this character has powers that would be useful in the final battle you will need to grind for several hours to bring them up to par. While the characters forgave this person for deserting, I didn't - the grind filled me with frustration and hatred. I might tell myself that that's the point, the gameplay is supposed to make me frustrated with the character, but it really just feels like poor design.
Add this critique of Flower and it seems like we have a spectrum of emotional generation that succeeds only with a successful balancing act. Flower is too explicit in its goals - it seems like the designer is yelling at the player to feel something (though I'm perfectly happy to turn my critiquing mind off and enjoy the ride!). Jeanne D'Arc is too accidental - I can make up an emotional justification for the grind, but it feels like I'm adding a layer that wasn't intended. Bioshock gets it just right, feeling neither contrived nor accidental. The price for getting it right? Few seem to notice or discuss that particular emotional design element!
I personally believe that every artist is manipulative.
Otherwise he wouldn't convince me that his characters are persons, or signs for something else. The first step in every work of art its o leave reality and believe in what's going in the text.
Talking about theater, maybe the actors aren't trying to convey emotions, but the writer must be manipulative, for his characters look real, for his inner ideologies come up in the text. Why he choose that context instead of other? Its a choice with something behind, an intention.
Yesterday in one of my literature classes in university we discussed whether or not authorial intent mattered in the end result and the way we interpret a poem, play, novel, etc.
I would ultimately say that if, for example, I painted something that was so beautiful that it moved people to want to have more sympathy towards their fellow man, that it doesn't matter if I only intended on painting a nice picture with some pretty colors.
Even if the hypothetical amateur actress decides she wants to make the audience cry, if the audience has no idea that the character was, in fact, supposed to make them angry-for example-and they were legitimately saddened enough to illicit a crying reaction, then this is nothing but an interpretive achievement on the part of the actress, not a failure.
I am compelled to think about certain legendary gaming moments. Particularly early ones... when gaming was still barely even trying to be an art form. Final Fantasy 6, for example. Do you think it was the game creators' intent to make people cry during the Opera scene, for example? Or during the scene when Celes is alone after the world is destroyed?
Probably not. But some people, myself included, still became very emotional during these scenes. These emotions are no less real than if I people cried during something more intentionally tragic such as Aeris dying in Final Fantasy VII.
Intent can be important, of course. Intention is what the creators need to have a result, obviously. But if the creators were aiming for for A, but they also achieved B and C, then this is an achievement, regardless of original intent
Then again - not to impugn you, Leigh, or any of the readers/commenters - there is a degree to which our own cynicism determines whether we view a particular emotional expression as contrived or not. I've certainly been guilty of such cynicism on multiple occasions (esp. watching any public figure "repent").
I'd be curious how you would feel, Leigh, if you hadn't been following the interviews and all the press related to Flower before playing it. I've noticed that being told what you are going to feel, or being told that there is a particular intent toward an emotion in a work of art inevitably dilutes the impact. I've found myself more emotionally impacted by an episode of The Simpsons than many Holocaust dramas, simply because there wasn't an expectation of an actual emotional connection beyond humor.
There is also something to be said for trying too hard. Maybe it is my natural aversion to effort, but I've found that sometime the most lasting art happens when an artist isn't trying. Again to use a Simpsons example, I will always remember the name of Selma's iguana JubJub not only because of the odd name, but because of the emotional impact of his debut episode. The odd name actually opened the door for the emotional response, and made the entire scene much more memorable. And "JubJub" wasn't the creation of a team of writers or focus groups. "JubJub" was something that Conan O'Brian used to say when the writers room got quiet, and the overworked Simpsons writers figured it was as good a name as any.
I got a bit rambly there, but it's early.
And another thing...
It seems to me that in this age of developer blogs, behind the scenes specials, and just a generally increasing accessibility to developers and creators that it is becoming next to impossible to ignore intent in game critique. As hard as critics can try, it is difficult to "unknow" something, especially when it is related to something we are trying to analyze.
"But these are design principles, not transcendental philosophical threads, not transporting narrative elegance."
Why can't design principles convey emotion? Where do you get off assuming that the narrative is of utmost importance? What makes you think art isn't manipulative?
I can't figure out where you're coming from. Frankly, you just sound kind of bitter.
Well analysing games based on their design intention is all well and good. But saying the actor wants to create an emotion and comparing that to a game is probably not apt.
It's the director who directs some of these emotions, he/she is the one who sometimes puts the actor through pain/misery/torture (whatever gets the job done in several cases) to get the emotion the director requires from the role.
I'd say the game dev can be treated as a director who's probably manipulating it, but when you look beyond that it was created for something and look at the element of the product that doesn't even feel anything because it is an artificial construct unlike an actor - the question stands then does this unfeeling actor bring you to feel something as though it is alive. Then in part it's due to the game director/developer but also it's because it does feel almost like the wooden boy has come to life.
But you do have to hand it to these directors they have made an enjoyable experience - did it manipulate my emotions - well the only thing it made me feel was the time I was skydiving and felt gravity and the wind against me. I did like the game, perhaps I'm just a bit cold.
Sorry to be so terse. Maybe I'm just having a crap day at work. But the fact Flower transfers its "sense of peace and beauty" to the player is the most significant thing going on here. Shitting on its extremely basic yet effective narrative arc isn't all that constructive.
"Why is the audience being deceived by such an easy play for its emotions using such a trite, derivative theme? Because it wants to be, and because it believes it needs to be."
The most important line of the piece. Like someone above me said, everyone wants to have the next Braid. By the same token, a lot of people want to be the first and loudest worshiper of the next Braid.
Games are going through their first really indie period, in the sense of fanbase and critical writing. All forms of art went through this period. The difference is movies and music didn't have the internet to speed up and exacerbate the discussion to truly ludicrous speed.
@Leigh
Why would you evaluate according to the developer's intention, if you find intention to be manipulative?
That precludes any engagement on your part.
"Hurrm"
I can't say anything else...not after what I saw (and kind of started) Wednesday.
I definitely see what you're getting at though. I just think it's fighting a losing battle to get most to understand it. The only ones that will side with you en masse are those who didn't like Flower outright and wantonly swing around what they think to be objectivity.
~sLs~
I just wanted to add that the emotions Flower intends to evoke are not just those affiliated with loving nature, ending humanity's oil addiction, etc. There are also the sensations or emotions associated with flying and exploration. So I guess I'm just piggybacking off of jeffk's comment. If you consider exploratory glee or the joy and exhilaration I got from moving hastily through a canyon with music timed to my success, then I would say the game was genuinely emotional.
A manipulated emotion is still an emotion. If someone provokes and manipulates you into feeling angry you still feel angry - moreso if you know that was the intention! Someone manipulates you into feeling happy you still feel happy, but finding out someone coerced you into feeling it - what, that makes you less happy? Why?
Many people seem to have a general understanding of emotions as something passive: Real emotions happen to you. You don't control them. If you "work yourself up" into something, then it's fake.
At the risk of sounding Sartrean (or Scientology-y) that's just too narrow a view. We play an active role in what emotions we "let ourselves" feel - maybe not the whole role, but an active part - and they're no less "real" because of it.
Leigh herself has written that "engagement is a choice". So is the meta-engagement - how much of the background of the developer's process and intentions we allow to affect our experience. This can largely feel unconscious. Anyone in any industry/discipline experiences this after a while (I called it cynicism in an earlier comment). We just know so much that we can't help but see the underlying processes and they can color our experience.
"creating an emotion / emotional experience" is the base level thing we consider when we make a video game. But you can't choreograph a play only for making people cry.
I wish that I can tell your our intention behind the game, my inspiration from life and my understanding of art one day.
But if the game requires the creator to tell you what it is about, it sounds like a failure :p
Jenova, thanks for replying.
"Failure" is absolutely never a word I'd use to describe the game. I enjoyed playing it, and it made me happy, and I thought it was beautiful. Thank you.
I think many people have begun to catch onto the fact that what I'm being critical of here is not the game itself, but what I feel is an exaggerated response to it on the part of some portions of the audience.
Of course, I fully admit it's not really my place to say what is an appropriate emotional response for other people to have. I can only speak for myself, and I hope readers understand that I'm not trying to assert facts beyond my own experience, here.
I also wished I could talk with you about your experiences and intentions in more depth, but since I was being critical here I was scared to ask you ;_;
SVGL, I'd admit, nobody in the team has expected such a positive response. We can't believe it ourselves :p
My understanding is that if an emotional experiences is fresh and unexpected, you know the first of its kind, it tends to leave a strong impact to the audience. We've received many mails from fans who just finished the game. A lot of them have never written to a game developer before. And clearly they are under a very strong influence by the game.
However if you have experienced something better or similar before within game or other medium. That emotional impact is a lot weaker, and you simply can't see why the others are so excited about it.
To prove my point, I want to quote one of the interviews I did. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/the-beautiful-game
Search the question about game that made you cry. I'm a living example ;) FFVII was naive, but look at the influence on my name :)
"But you can't choreograph a play only for making people cry"
I'll take that bet.
Come see my new off-off-off Broadway Play "Puppies In A Woodchipper". Soundtrack by Morrisey!
Please continue with your adult discussion, I'll be over here.
Jenova,
It's not that Flower didn't affect me. It made me feel peaceful and happy. To me, it was a simple experience.
What bothers me is that people seem to feel the need to translate that out into something of transcendental magnitude -- like the simplicity of peace and happiness is not enough, like they feel like it's not okay to love a small moment and so therefore they must invent a big one.
It's like, for some people, the didn't feel comfortable saying they got a small moment of joy from a fairly simple game, and so they needed to invent all these rationales about Flower, these ideas about it, to make it a creature of justifiable magnitude.
Or because we all want so much for games to be able to make us feel things, that when we find one that does, we are ready to declare the entire war all over for a single battle won.
I feel like that's not fair to games, not useful, and it's not fair to Flower, you know?
I loved FFVII also, as naive as it was. Jenova is a really unsettling character, though -- can't picture her creating Flower!
Please feel free to email me if you want to talk more, to submit thoughts of yours to publish here, or do an interview on Gamasutra or something.
I'm opinionated and can be harsh, but hopefully you don't feel too insulted or angry with me!
yeah, i think leigh maybe went about this the wrong way (respectfully, leigh!) and that today's post says, more to the point, that flower's fans are irritating.
my take: flower is kinda like rez and nights except not as good. but it's still worth playing.
graphics and music (= atmosphere) were particularly compelling aspects; gameplay was alright.
i have not much difficulty imagining flower being a dreamcast game, actually. it's not a far reach from that pinnacle of sega's creativity.
on the other hand, acting like it was some sort of spontaneous arrival, like a comet laden with alien genetic material, rather than a natural evolution... is silly.
flower is not the first game to deliver emotion. it is maybe the first PSN game to deliver emotion. and emotion is not something that has to be delivered outside of the context of "regular games" anyway.
basically if flower made you cry, i'm suspecting you've only ever consumed star wars-related media before in your life. go see a real movie.
The problem with the "intention" angle is that it doesn't tell you whether a game is something you'd want to play (i.e., if it's any good). I mean, Desert Bus may be a fully realized parody, as it was intended to be, but 100% success on that front doesn't mean it's not excruciatingly tedious.
Intention doesn't matter because "it's bad on purpose" is not a defense.
@SVGL: So if checking a "higher level" box implies all "lower level" boxes as well, does that mean that great video games, true art, and emotional experiences are lame? ;)
Anonymous -- haha! YOU DECIDE.
@Alex
i actually totally disagree. one can recognize the joke in desert bus and write a positive article about it while getting the point across. this is only really a problem when reviews function as buyers guide / are reduced to a score.
Having not played flower, I'll refrain from commenting on it, but I have to strongly disagree with:
"An actor's meant to adopt and empathize with the objectives of the character he or she's portraying and believe in them fully. If the actor can't become immersed in that; if, while waiting in the wings, the actor is thinking about making the audience laugh or cry rather than considering what his character wants in a given scene; if they want to shortcut the work itself to get right to the reaction to the work, the performance is hollow.
The result is a preciously self-conscious play for attention on the part of the actor, not a genuinely meaningful immersive experience."
Art is fundamentally about artifice. Manipulation is at the very core of artifice. An actor knows that the audience knows the scene they're watching isn't real, but their job is to make the audience forget that. What is that forgetting if not immersion? And what is the process of getting there if it is not an act of manipulation?
It's only "hollow" when it's carried off poorly, when the effect or affect aimed at is either not achieved or achieved clumsily, the puppet's strings made visible.
wow... so many comments. But I just couldn't let your statements pass without note.
About emotion and acting. I know where you're coming from with the whole intent creating a hollow experience, sometimes that's true. But it's a style, and it's not the only style.
The Romans took just the opposite approach (or so I've been told, obviously I wasn't there to see it for myself). Each actor became an avitar of whatever emotion they represented on stage. Exactly what we would call overacting nowdays. I suppose it would be like if everyone in a movie acted like Jim Carry.
Ever play Final Fantasy IX? The scene with Princess Garnet jumping off the tower while being chased by the guard (cant remember his name) comes to mind. The facial expressions were delightful. I blame it on the lack of voice acting, they needed to communicate emotion without words.
But anyways, I just don't think it's right to so needlessly assume that the motivation to bring a particular emotion to the surface needs to be considered bad. It's just what's in style right now, and who knows how painful it will be for our kids and grand kids to watch the movies we so love?
Sorry for the rant about hammy acting.
Also, I haven't played flower yet. And I totally agree with the part of your rant about intentions. Knowing the context, motivations, and symbolism that goes into the creation always adds extra meaning to me.
To me, having all the answers lined up like ducks takes away from the meaningfulness that play can have - that it needs to have for us to feel any inclination to come to communities like SVGL. There's a certain nature to the medium of games that fosters real play, but we're all being subject to some degree of algoritm anyways so how long before we just figure it out and move on?
Some of us tend to think every emotional experience in a video game is deserving of being "high-art", which by definition means deserving of a space on the gallery wall.
Maybe this isn't what we actually want, you know? Suggesting that "our" games deserve the same treatment or appreciation that the work of the gallery or theatre does, which I'll go on a limb and assume that's what we're sometimes after from the general public, that has a lot more baggage than we're really ready to deal with.
There is nothing less meaningful about play, afterall.
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