I don't like M.I.A. Her music is okay; certainly not as exciting as she's given credit for, although I like some of it. However, I couldn't pin down why I didn't like her until I read this Times profile of her by Lynn Hirschberg. This is the best piece of writing I've read in some time, and this because of the way it impresses on me an opinion of an individual and suggests I should share it. It's opinion writing of the best kind, and I'll admit I don't know whether the article has crystallized for me why I don't like M.I.A, or has persuaded me of reasons not to like M.I.A. Doesn't matter.
At times like this, I deeply resent the game industry (and also at times like this).
Let's pretend I was skilled enough a writer to do a piece like Hirschberg's. I couldn't in this business. Because game developers aren't vocal enough about who they are. If they have creative identities (many don't), they don't express them. But even if I could grasp at a couple people who would be nuanced enough "personalities" worth covering -- the Housers, Infinity Ward, Bobby Kotick -- there's no way in hell I could get close enough to them to do a piece like this. The PR machine wouldn't let me.
Because video games still refuse to be part of the entertainment industry in any way besides the dull commercial. Because the video game industry is still culturally irrelevant.
I feel like I've been banging on about impediments to gaming's cultural relevance my entire career. I need to take periodic breaks so that I don't become fatigued and cynical (too late, maybe). However, this article does a lovable job of summing up why it's still embarrassing to be a gamer, or to put it more kindly (since none of you are actually embarrassed), issues that are still holding the industry back.
59 comments:
David Wong is awesome. I am a huge fan of his book John Dies at the End.
That Hirschberg article is so cliche'. Its the typical since artists has money, uses sex appeal, and like fine things her actual politics are must therefore be insincere or fake.
The number of negative statements that are thrown out there is unreal "Maya claims her mother worked as a seamstress". Super negative for no reason to be negative, using "claims" makes it seem like it might be a lie. Does Hirschberg know its a lie? Then say so. She of course doesn't.
Could Maya be completely wrong about the politics? Very well could be. Are here beliefs thin and not well thought out? Very possible. But Hirschberg doesn't go there, she doesn't ask about her political world view. Instead she describes her lunch and clothing in a way to show her wealth and therefore denotes that she can't really care about the poor.
I don't think that was the takeaway. It was a very understated illustration of a very important dichotomy.
I also thought the politics were the most interesting part of the article -- someone who claims to be an activist being almost laughably ignorant on her own issue, to the point of causing harm to her cause.
I don't know. You describe the problem as "the video game industry is still culturally irrelevant," but I wonder if it might be better worded as, "Mainstream journalism is irrelevant to the gaming industry."?
(I don't know about the word 'mainstream' there; I just want to differentiate it from service journalism, game reviews, etc.)
From that perspective, it's up to journalists to sell game companies on why articles like the Hirschberg piece are important. Which, y'know, sucks.
Videogames are not culturally irrelevant -- that's a really broad, angry brush you're painting with there.
I believe the real issue for you is that videogames are celebrity-culture irrelevant. You're looking for gaming celebrities who are interesting personalities, who make a great interview, who have strong opinions and aren't afraid to express them.
The frustration you're experiencing is that narrativists (such as journalists) rely on personification to achieve comprehension. This is why no one ever interviews a tsunami; they interview the poor mope whose house got knocked down. This is why when media do movie coverage they talk to the director and the star.
Our industry doesn't do a great job with that. We have our Cliffy B's and so on, but they generally only speak within a narrow band of PR. That's because they are members of very large teams, financed by large corporations, and when they talk to the press they want to talk about what they love and what they need to sell: their upcoming/newly released game.
All of that said, it doesn't matter. The problem I'm talking about here is only a problem for journalists. Gamers have no shortage of gaming media and culture to consume, create, and remix. Game properties have been infiltrating the general culture since the days of Pac-Man. The only thing we're lacking is outspoken celebrities.
And the really real problem here is that it's all your fault. Celebrities don't create themselves; the media creates them in a feedback loop with consumers. You sound like you're annoyed because the gaming industry hasn't pre-created a celebrity for you to interview. You create celebrities by interviewing interesting people.
You want a celebrity? Go make one. Start a website or a column whose entire purpose is long-form interviews that are outside of the development PR cycle. When Cliffy B has a new game to promote, that's all he's going to talk about. When his new game is a year from launching, he'll probably talk about any goddamn thing you care to ask.
Journalists make celebrities. The problem with gaming media is we don't have great journalists.
Be one. Please.
Leigh you may be the Nirvana fan I have ever seen praise Hirschberg.
I would like to hear your views on how she took quotes out of context and left out parts which went against her aim (to show MIA as a hypocrite) and if it something you would do in an interview with Dan Houser.
Real Nirvana fans assume that shit people talk about Courtney is true ^_^
If I was a videogame journalist I'd grab Jordan Thomas and shake him until he said something as golden as "I want my scares to leave scars" again.
If I were to guess, Maya's view about Sri Lanka are misguided. The Tigers are hardly role models. but Hirschberg doesn't focus on why Maya's lyrics and policy views are harmful or don't really represent the actual Sri Lanka, after all the doesn't included getting comped flights to LA and London and getting comped meals at high end restaruants. You have one quote from a Sri Lankan "expert" that is as vague as possible. What you do have is a travelog mixed with fashion review. Its using connotations of different things to paint a given picture. It works in that sense but its very dishonest.
It's funny, but I think one of the best of this type of profile pieces about any celebrity came from a complete lack of access to that person. Gay Talese's "Frank Sinatra Has A Cold" was absolutely brilliant because he had no way of getting through all the handlers to the actual subject of his piece so he just hung around the guy for several months and gathered up bits and stories that fell off of him wherever he went.
Which isn't to say you're wrong, of course. Writing of that caliber about video game personalities is difficult not only because of a lack of access, but because people just don't care enough about the human beings behind it all. The closest this industry has come is that New Yorker article on CliffyB, or the excellent Dallas Observer article on Ion Storm.
Part of it, I think comes down to the problems of generating personalities out of collaborative art. Sure, Hollywood is able to take movies and television and turn out celebrities that people care about, but even there the people who become well-known and interesting aren't the creative types working behind the scenes, the writers or directors, it's the people whose faces are speaking to you while you watch. Games (outside of one-man or small-group indies) don't have that easily graspable personal connection. Even the voice actors are abstracted away behind animated avatars.
I think your right about M.I.A I think he music is overrated and find her constant attention-grabbing efforts to be irritating.
However, in her defense I think you give Hirschberg way too much credit. Some of the methods she used were unethical and douchey. I'm not sure if you have seen this Gawker story, http://gawker.com/5553404/mia-framed-by-a-french-fry It makes it pretty clear we can't really take Hirschberg at her word.
Anyway, my apologies for the rant. I could care less about M.I.A. but shoddy reporting like this really hits a nerve.
P.S. For the record your writing style and reporting > Hirschberg's.
Well Hollywood also invented the "auteur" as a marketing concept. Something video games have tried to latch onto, but it just doesn't work as well. There is no "writer/director/producer" for a video game. Occasionally you'll get a Wil Wright or Sid Maier but if you notice most of those guys are from when game development was done by teams of 10-30 not hundreds across the world. The big names now seem less creative types and more great managers of people.
Booger etc. is a bit down on the single personality thing. I'd agree in part that's true, but still, you can do band profiles just as much as singer profiles...
Also, individuals do make decisions or individually design things in a game. A lot can come out from that.
Inaccessibility is an, or actually the issue as said. PR people do loath having journalists talk to developers. If they do, they must not waste time and only talk about the next upcoming wiz-bang game. Sigh. They all sound the same of course since they all (have to) say the same things.
No one goes after what they did in the past (even if the past was "1 month ago"), or get them to talk about anything else.
It's kind of depressing that I only know about much of Will Wrights philosophies (and mainly only his...) from his own presentations, and yet know almost nothing about other people in the industry apart from simply what games they've produced.
Then again, am I solving this somehow? Absolutely not right now, so I feel sad about complaining! Maybe in the future! I'll try in my own small way, I think...mmm...ideas ideas...
Actually here's an idea; I could start with profiling videogame journalists, especially reviewers...now that'd be an interesting topic, and hey, they might be more accessible at least!
On cultural relevance, guys guys. We already won http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/apr/28/games.censorship
I think that a lot of people imagined some kind of audible 'ding' and then all of a sudden it was okay to cosplay to work and to talk about dps at the water cooler. It's much subtler than that.
Now of course, all we need to do is stop pandering to non gamers and get over it.
Another interesting post SVGL (sorry for the impersonailty but, Leigh seems so informal for someone I've never met [when will Miss Manners write a book about blog etiquette!]). I especially like how you try to incorporate other art forms in discussions about games. I think part of what art does is that it allows a culture to have a discussion with itself about what it is and what it wants to be. Even the ever-ephemeral genre of pop music is trying to do that (e.g. MIA, through her allegiance to the Tamil Tigers). Even though she is doing it in a hypocritical and counterproductive way, MIA is still taking part in the conversation. It seems that the desire to engage the culture at large is a much lower priority in games than even those art forms not traditionally considered high art.
M.I.A., love her or hate her, is a big personality. It's hard to have that in the gaming industry because the designers, writers, and artists are behind the scenes and out of the public's eye. Most gamers only ever see their product. Sometimes I wonder if you could create a sort of virtual journalism where you team with their writers to conduct interviews with the game characters, thus extending the fiction of the characters beyond their game worlds. It would be hard to do that without coming off as totally silly though I imagine. Could an interview with Marcus Phoenix not be filled with carnage? Could you talk with the little prince without being rolled up in his Katamari?
Yeah, it's hard to think of how to find the personality in the gaming world. Still, there are a few designers that seem like they must be really interesting people if you could figure out how to tap into them. I'd like to know more about the personalities of Jenova Chen (Flower), Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy), or Fumito Ueda (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus). Still, none of these people are likely to offer the pop-seductive mix of sex, politics, and noise as someone like M.I.A.
@Robert
'Well Hollywood also invented the "auteur" as a marketing concept.'
Actually, it was journalists writing in Cahiers du cinema who invented auteur theory. A good example of how critics can be useful (especially as they were quickly forced to move beyond it). With videogames we have the raw material - the journalists and readers - but things are only just beginning to move at a sustained critical pace. It would be a good idea to remember the pitfalls of auteur theory before trying to use it for videogames, but I agree with Leigh that looking at the people who make videogames should be as interesting and worthwhile as looking at people who make music/films/books/etc.
Cecil (Leigh or SVGL is fine, whichever you like best!) said: "Even though she is doing it in a hypocritical and counterproductive way, MIA is still taking part in the conversation. It seems that the desire to engage the culture at large is a much lower priority in games than even those art forms not traditionally considered high art."
This is an -excellent- point. Though she may be doing it in a juvenile and incorrect way, MIA is interesting and relevant because at least she's trying, and that identity becomes associated with the music she makes.
Few game designers seem to have something to say.
Okay, sometimes I do lament the lack of recognisable celebrity personalities in the gaming industry – the appeal of a juicy, controversial sound-bite is not lost on me.
Then I read some of that piece by Lynn and realised that we could do without them, and the shit that comes flying out of their mouths on such a regular basis. No loss, really – apart from for the journalists (sorry, Leigh).
Also, I disagree that video games are culturally irrelevant, and that article was full of so many broad generalisations that I cannot take it seriously But then, of course, it is Cracked.com.
Whatever happened to Sexygamedeveloperland?
Or I am rubbing salt in a wound?
@Oliver
I know. The point was that Hollywood took it and ran with it. Directors got above the title credits.
@Leigh, thanks.
"Few game designers seem to have something to say"
I couldn't agree more. I seems like designers will choose awesome over meaningful almost every time.
Leigh, you're right that covering a game designer with depth is difficult, but it is possible. For example, John Seabrook did a really good profile of Will Wright for the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/11/06/061106fa_fact
The problem isn't that the better game developers don't have anything interesting to say, or that gaming publicists would forbid it. The problem is that the gaming press is so marginal and co-opted, publicists have no reason to encourage it. What's needed is more coverage in the mainstream press. EA is totally tight ass about its coverage, but when the New Yorker came calling, I guarantee you they gave Seabrook total access to Wright.
No topic is unapproachable. As commenters have shown, it's been done successfully--more than once!--by writers for the New Yorker et cetera. As a journalist and a teller of tales, you should be looking at a challenge, not an impossibility.
As mentioned, Gay Talese was in the same boat as you are. And what did he write? One of the greatest pieces of expressive journalism.
Would it be hard to get access to developers? Oh yeah. Do most of them have nothing to say? Undoubtedly. Would the PR machine make your life hell? It sure will try. Will you get (well) paid for it? Doubtful. Do you have the writing chops to take on such a task? That's your call.
But CAN you do a piece like Hirschberg's on the video game business? Absolutely. And you should.
As one who's actually striving to enter the industry, I can assure you that there are developers out there who would love to talk, and there are those who actually have interesting things to say (whether you're in the AAA or the indie scene).
But like some commenters above, I'm going to agree and say that the onus is on the journalists to find these great stories. If the industry saw legitimate interest, I don't see any reason why'd they'd stop someone. Of course talking about stuff under NDA would be tricky (that's a given), but there's much more to a person's life and beliefs than their current work. THAT's the good story, not the current game.
Alternatively, everyone should just give their money to Robert Ashley.
@Cecil:
So awesome isn't meaningful? When I'm deep in code, and making something work incredibly well or do something incredibly cool, I *am* speaking - about my ethos, about my beliefs, about the way I want games (and art) to be. It's about what I view as being significant.
So yeah, that "awesome" explosion that you think is just a bombastic load of crap could represent six weeks of fervent and thoughtful creation, more if you include the system that underlies it. I think the problem isn't so much that game creators don't have anything to say, it's that gamers ignore it unless it's spelled out in black and white for them. Maybe if we played Adagio for Strings over every piece of action or something?
The MIA article: I don't like her music, at all, but I came away from the article feeling less dismissive than I had.
@anonymous
I don't mean to denigrate the hard work and creativity that goes into programming the explosion you are talking about (I'm not as elitist as I sound [I hope]; I do love a good explosion sometimes). And yes a particularly elegant piece of code has a kind of beauty that I may not be able to really appreciate. However, that beauty is not always apparent when playing the game; an explosion in a videogame has the same dramatic effect as an explosion in a movie, regardless of the presence of elegant code.
I don't think that awesome and meaningful have to be mutually exlusive. However, its extremely rare that I play a game and have the type of emotionally resonant experience that I find, (if not frequently, at least regularly), in music, film, literature, painting sculpture etc. which causes me to reevaluate my place in the world. And I think the reason for that is the goal of most games is to be awesome and thrilling, rather than to convey some insight into the human condition (cheesy I know, but I can't think of a better phrase at the moment).
Although, if you care to elaborate I'm interested to hear more on what you mean when you say you are speaking about what you view to be significant. I'd love to be able to appreciate what I'm missing.
@Anonymous Programmer
I realize this is kind of a backwards opinion, but the process doesn't really matter. If you manage to perfectly recreate, using only your own bodily fluids, the picture of a pack of dogs playing poker, you've still only recreated bad art.
If we could see the elegance of the code in any way other than smoothness of performance or clarity of resolution, that would be different, but a big cheesy explosion rendered through the greatest code ever written is still a big cheesy explosion.
You know what? I'd rather second what Cecil said: he was much more civil. Sorry, anonymous.
In regards to the programming thing conversation:
I've done some coding myself, and I think the explosion is a bad example. Do you guys consider gameplay mechanics to be art? Those have to be programmed. Mario's jumps would be nothing without programming, for example. Or good AI (NPC or enemy). Or the governing systems of a gameworld. That all has to written out as code to work. It's not just a visual thing.
In that respect, I definitely consider good programming to be good art. Just because it's not as visible doesn't mean it's somehow lesser.
First off: Who the hell is MIA? I've honestly never heard of this person before.
That being said, I agree with what some people have said: what you seem to want is more celebrities, and pieces on them. Personally, while I would love more information and interesting articles, I don't think we need more glorification of the person. The culture we have right now is already terrible, where the biggest news isn't about things that seriously affect all of us, it's about Paris Hilton or whoever happens to be in the spotlight at the time and whatever they're doing. That, and if you or other journalists really go at it you could come up with some great stuff. Just because publishers control the stream of information doesn't mean you can't get it from other sources or go to the person herself (or himself!) and dig deep into what you've got.
"Few game designers seem to have something to say"
Few people in the general celebrity culture have anything meaningful to say, even though they say a lot. MIA's positions on Sri Lanka are as incoherent and misguided as those of the people who made Modern Warfare 2.
You're looking for meaningful statements from the people making blockbusters, which would be like talking to Michael Bay about Transformers 2 and its place in culture. Good luck with that one. He'd probably talk about targeting demographics and making cool shit. Kind of like the guys at Infinity Ward.
There are plenty of people trying to do interesting things in gaming, but the industry just wants to cover the highest profile products and their creators. Maybe the guys making those Eastern European PC strategy games would have tons to say; ever asked them? Are you even aware of their existence?
If you want developers to say something interesting, is it the fault of the developer or the one asking the questions? I was the one asking the questions for 15 years, and now I'm the one answering them. Whenever I asked interesting questions, I got interesting answers.
Most of the questions I get now are moronic, and handled through e-mail so they can quickly turn around interviews and previews to generate hits. There's no "why are you doing this?" It's all "how many levels?" or "describe the story."
Here's the other amusing thing: The first responses to a developer expressing actual opinions from gamers is typically, "STFU. I play games to get away from this shit."
You'll be told you're a pretentious douche or people will whine about boycotts if you express an overt liberal or conservative viewpoint.
And as others have said, the reason many celebrities put themselves out there is because "all they want to do is take your money." MIA is marketing herself; she's an individual artist, not part of a larger collective producing an artistic work. It's a big difference.
"Because video games still refuse to be part of the entertainment industry in any way besides the dull commercial. Because the video game industry is still culturally irrelevant."
This whole thing just sounds like complaining that the video games are boring to you. I don't have the time to read eight-page articles about how Cliffy B. likes his steak. I'm too busy playing video games to care about dumb crap like that. If that's what "cultural relevance" means, fuck it; video games don't need to be "culturally relevant" for you to write a decent article about them or about the people involved in them. What's necessary is that you have something valuable to say about them.
And if you STILL want to write a boring article about someone who makes video games, there is an ocean of obnoxious tools in the indie community who would jump at the chance to preach their stupid shit at you.
Apologies for the disjointed nature of the following thoughts on the subject.
I see a very "chicken and egg" scenario here. Does the media cover celebrities because the public are interested in them or are the public interested in celebrities because they are covered by the media?
Is it just a case of scale? For starters, the games industry doesn't have "visible" figures like pop singers or actors; our equivalents are fictional characters, so that gets rid of the majority of potential celebrity figures. We do have equivalent behind-the-scenes creative figures, but less weight is put on a single person at the helm. The director of any film is a big deal, but there are still only a relatively small number of figures in the industry who are recognised as being a single driving force behind a game. That feeds back to the chicken and egg thing; have the likes of Hideo Kojima and Will Wright achieved some measure of gamer celebrity because of what they've produced, or are we more aware of what they've produced because they've become celebrities?
Part of why interviews with movie and music industry figures are interesting is the stories they have to share about other people. If the games industry lacks visible celebrities, do the behind-the-scenes people become less interesting? Is a videogame director fundamentally less interesting than a film director because the film director associates with visible celebrities on a daily basis and has an array of amusing anecdotes about Gerard Butler?
Is it down to demand? The games industry is still male-dominated and it's traditionally women who are more interested in celebrities, at least on the level of wanting to know about their private lives. Are we going to see increased demand for the details of Cliffy B's love life or glossy photoshoots of Peter Molyneux's house as female gamers become more recognised and accepted as a demographic?
I'd like to believe that it will be easier for games to have a serious mainstream field of criticism in the near future, but because most popular games require huge investments, the publishers will always push them to become blockbusters, and the safest way to make blockbusters is to give gamers more of what they already know, just bigger and better-looking, and with more refined controls. That means that it is very hard to justify investments like high-quality writing and acting, development of meaningful themes, or even techniques to elicit emotion in new ways.
If we find any of these things in games, it seems that they were "sneaked in" by members of the development team on their own time. In a way, this seems to have allowed for some more experimental things to happen in comparison with films of similar budgets; I've seen far stranger plot developments and endings in games than I have in most movies. I believe that game companies can get away with this because publishers sell games on their mechanics, graphics, and/or technical feats, whereas film studios sell movies based on story, star power, and visuals.
There is a very dedicated community surrounding the few games that have that special combination of daring plot and big-studio production quality, but the players that seem to reach the publishers most are the ones who care about gameplay mechanics, graphics, and technical feats; the exact selling points that publishers fall back on. Most gamers (or the most vocal grouping of gamers) just want to have fun, and the most vocal portion of them on the Internet are facetious douchebags who instantly dismiss a game if it doesn't look more impressive than last year's Halo or Gears of War.
While I agree that games journalism should take the initiative to enhance its cultural relevance, I also think that the gamers that publishers cater to most don't care much about it, and if they read a gaming magazine at all it's to see screenshots of the next big thing or the numeric rating on a game review. That is the biggest obstacle I see to the mainstream embracing video games as meaningful.
Gaming is culturally relevant but it's not politically relevant and it never will be. Writers like you spend all your time hoping and praying and wishing that games would be important and "adult" so that you can justify your obsession. You can't just enjoy them for the light entertainment that they are.
Work around the PR. If the interviews and questions are only about the current game they are working on, then you will rarely if ever get something meaningful because what is said about that isn't just up to or dependent on them. Its those constanst situations that gives people the impression that most devs having nothing to say.
Its when asked about current trends, why they make games, their influences, what is that makes them tick... that is when you will get personalities, not just names. But most devs are afraid to open up like that because they know somewhere someone will take a quote out of context which will in turn negatively impact whatever they are working on. Some sites will turn the quotes into a flame war against a competing publisher or developer. Which is hard not to do, I'm sure, because that is the easy, sure headline. Relying on quieter, subtler topics requires a confidence few have. Which is something that both devs and journos have in common. Both are afraid to let their work breath and be subtle for fear that the player/reader will get bored and move on.
Yes, blowing quotes out of context happens in other fields as well, but there is a clearer line between them, ie the Star and the New Yorker. So when devs do open up, it needs to be to a site or publication that has wholly dedicated itself to being beyond the fanboy noise.
GDC has proven that there are a lot of smart devs with interesting things to say. All they need is the outlet. And that isn't so much up to them as it is the press.
While I agree that more in-depth access to the "personalities" of gaming would make for interesting journalism, I'd rather that never happen if the result is the celebrity culture that's sprung up around film, television, and music "personalities". I'll be very disappointed when video game developers can use their fame as a platform from which to opine on political issues a la Maya or any one of a hundred Hollywood actors, producers, and directors.
There's a reason their views are almost uniformly simplistic, poorly reasoned, and juvenile. It's because what they bring to the table is fame. Not political or diplomatic or economic or military expertise. Not detailed knowledge on a specific historical conflict. Not scientific education on a specific public policy issue. FAME. They contribute their celebrity equation "Celebrity + cause = money".
Hell professional politicians, economists, soldiers, and scientists have trouble formulating solid agendas without making factual mistakes and running into serious ideological battles. If you can't get good analysis and information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a former President of the United States whose spent most of his post-office career on it (and you can't), why the hell would you look to Gwyneth Paltrow?
To sum up, yes, I agree 100% with the basic idea that creative personalities and coverage of them would enrich gaming. However, for some of the very reasons the linked articles touched upon, I'll be quite happy if we never have "celebrity" video game developers.
I'm a game developer (mostly on the indie scale these days), and I like to think that I have interesting things to say. I'll use my real name here rather than hiding as an anonymous poster.
I think the issue here is that journalists are going to have to demonstrate why giving a lengthy interview that gets turned into a big article is worthwhile. I think the biggest fear is that a really in-depth, frank article is more likely to do harm than good in most situations. As someone pointed out, a lot of gamers don't want to hear non-game related stuff that us developers might have to say; they often play games to get away from that type of thing. So, a journalist who wants this type of interview absolutely needs to demonstrate that there will be more benefit than harm done.
I'll also say is that you may need to set your sights appropriately. The former Infinity Ward founders can't talk because of ongoing lawsuits. Game sites already report every obnoxious thing that Bobby Kotick says. Maybe instead of aiming at the very top or the hot topic du jour you could tackle something a bit more modest initially. As people have pointed out, a lot of indie types would probably jump at the chance. Show that an in-depth article can do great things for the person being interviewed, and then work your way up. Yes, perhaps you'll have to talk to a lot of obnoxious tools before you find your really interesting story, but not every game with a big budget is a best-seller, either. That's why we get paid to do what we do.
If you want to talk to some interesting developers, the guys at Frictional Games would be awesome (they did the Penumbra series and are set to release Amnesia: Dark Descent in August). They write all of these really thoughtful and intelligent developer blogs about theory on how to make video games have more emotional impact. Really wonderful stuff read.
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/
If I had your job, I would do a story on those guys.
It's weird -- someone on Formspring asked me why game journalists are celebrities and game developers aren't.
Then here you all are telling me that you don't care whether games and the people in them are relevant or not; you're just interested in what slightly-articulate people like me have to say about them.
It's super-interesting.
@Leigh
Maybe it's because we are so much more used to see people like you say something interesting about games than the developers would that we think that way.
It's up to the journalists and critics to point the audience towards whatever is interesting or relevant to the subject at hand. Sure, I'd be nice if the developers would be a bit more open about it but then it's up to people like you to fill in the gaps.
I'll do my movie guy job and say; you can watch Hitchcock and Hawks but reading Bazin will help you really "get it".
If anyone's interested, EG wrote a fascinating article about Bungie making Halo 2, which is further proof that developers do have meaningful things to say about their craft.
... The link of which I forgetfully omitted, so here it is!
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/better-than-halo-the-making-of-halo-2-article
@Leigh
This is a little chicken-and-egg with cultural relevance but the "press junket to Charlie Rose" balance for game developers/producers/designers/etc. is almost exclusively on the junket side.
So it's left to the critics to write the more personal "deep thoughts"-type stuff that you might hear from an artist at times in other fields, but you just don't in games. And since critics are the ones whose work has an identifiable personality and voice, they become the celebrities.
There are developers that I think would be great for long sit-down interviews that aren't about "how awesome is your game", but I just don't know how it could happen.
"It's weird -- someone on Formspring asked me why game journalists are celebrities and game developers aren't."
On what planet are game journalists celebrities? Maybe they are to the people that closely follow game journalists, but there are sound guys who are celebrities to people who follow sound guys. In both cases, you're stretching the word "celebrity" to "anyone who has a following," but you're talking about people the public have actually heard of.
I'm guessing average Internet gamer person could only name a handful (at most) of journalists, and those are mostly due to controversies or those that really pissed them off at some point in their lives.
And bloody hell, if journalists are celebrities I should get some sort of lifetime achievement award for doing it before some of you crazy kids were even born. (Not really. I'm not THAT old.)
@ Leigh: Since videogames are "culturally irrelevant" in your eyes, and it's apparently important to you that they become relevant, haven't you considered covering films, books, or other things you believe are culturally relevant? If you want to cover a medium that addresses issues you feel are important, why waste your time with videogames, which you're admitting are just not doing that? For example, if videogames aren't doing a good job of pointing out the issue of women's discomfort, and at times fear of "cat calling," then I'm sure you can find a book or movie that addresses the issue a lot more successfully than any videogame has, or likely will for the foreseeable future.
And if your answer is, "because I believe videogames can get there," and you see developers aren't there yet, and you apparently have an idea of what you want out of a videogame, why not take the time and effort to learn the skills, join the industry as a developer, and help make it happen?
Not that agree with you on any of this (or disagree, I'm not giving my opinion here, though from my previous replies one could guess), but it seems you could probably be doing something different to address your displeasure with the industry.
I'll make a wild guess and say other people here are probably interested, or at least curious, to read your answer on this.
Steve said on June 3, 2010 7:33 PM:
"You're looking for meaningful statements from the people making blockbusters, which would be like talking to Michael Bay about Transformers 2 and its place in culture. Good luck with that one. He'd probably talk about targeting demographics and making cool shit. Kind of like the guys at Infinity Ward."
I don't want to make assumptions on the above statement, but do you mean to say developers of a "blockbuster" videogame have nothing meaningful to say because they work for a "blockbuster" studio, and therefore must be incapable of saying anything meaningful?
Having now read that MIA article, I am going to start calling her Ms. Brainwash, ala Exit Though the Gift Shop.
Additionally, games journalism is going to have to become something more than advertising for publishers before you start to see these kinds of articles on any widespread basis. So basically, I agree with you.
Right now, there very little games news that is not basically advertising. News news didn't start that way so the way may be much harder to tread.
I wasn't much of a fan of the Wong article. He's a great writer, and he definitely knows his stuff, but I think some of his points were off-base.
Specifically, I think the critique of video-game stories (they usually involve quite a lot of shooting!) was pretty ridiculous. Certainly there are constraints on games with regard to story-telling. Gamers want some action. The flashlight level on Alan Wake was brilliant, but gamers wouldn't stand for that if it were a whole game.
However, as others have pointed out, games and their stories are far more interactive, and thus, the environment comes into play far differently than in movies or books. In books, the author has a choice of what to describe about the surroundings, about the characters, about the plot. The writer has far more control. In film, it's even easier to control the focus of the viewer, and therefore, the flow of the story. In videogaming, it's much harder.
In short, Wong's critique, overall, seems to be that videogames still haven't grown up. They're no longer for children, but now they're stuck in a teen male stage, all testosterone and blood. I don't think that's the case, and I think Wong does gamers a disservice not only by focusing on the mainstream, but also by not exploring the various other challenges inherent in programming a video game, and writing a video game story.
That Wong article was cathartic and needed but given the twin blows of arising after the downfall of the word, and ludic fallacy, the reckless reductionism that gaming engenders, I kind of feel the stars are aligned against us. This collective inarticulate immaturity isn't ending anytime soon.
Oh well, I'll be in the corner, playing Persona 4 again if you need me.
Video games have evolved differently from any other cultural form-- music, film, literature, T.V., etc. Sure, you can't apply the auteur theory to gaming, but that doesn't mean it aren't culturally relevant. The relevance is in the mass vs. individual experiences and reactions.
But it would be sick to see, like, a Fellini of video games.
I don't even know anymore!
Here's a take on Hirschberg's article from a blogger I'm starting to dig: http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/06/07/m-i-a-is-a-fake-some-thoughts-on-gender-politics-and-truffle-oil/
It looks like Brian Crescente got that interview with Bobby Kotick you were hoping for.
http://kotaku.com/5559201/a-delightful-chat-with-the-most-hated-man-in-video-games
I would have rather had you as the writer, but at least we know its possible to schedule a lunch with the man now, even if you are from Kotaku and have spilled out the tabloidesque Activision VS Infinity Ward drama play.
YES! I needed to leave a comment to this, because of how incredibly true it is about this industry. HOW can we accurately call video games a facet of the entertainment industry when there are no faces and no personalities making themselves known OUTSIDE the industry itself?? It's like if Hollywood acted like they were all a bunch of gaffers and grips, regardless of their role! People would still watch them, but only "nerds" would read gossip magazines. Because who cares what the nobody who played the lead in "There Will Be Blood" is doing?
Those few commenters here who grasped the intent behind this post rather than the surface content may point out people like Kotick, or Maleneaux, et al...but are those people really the popular faces we imagine them to be? Do you know how many non-hard-core gamers...people who have PLAYED and LIKED MW2...know about the saga that went down at Infinity Ward?? Almost none of them! Almost. None.
Yes, video games are popular, and playing them is popular.
The culture behind video games is NOT popular. It is, in fact - as you say - irrelevant. This is a very real problem. It is not an inconvenience, it is something that's holding the whole industry back.
Also, I want to point out that the ones who've dropped the ball here are not the media or the people or culture in general. There is no impetus on the world to lead a genre or subculture into the light of relevance. The responsibility here lies entirely with the developers themselves.
The game industry actually can't be easily compared with movie making in general. But it CAN be compare to the animation industry in particular. And when you compare the two, you quickly see where video games fail. I'm not going to lay this out here, but trust me, the road map is there. This is not some philosophical quandary (chicken and egg? Seriously? Gimme a break), it's a problem with a solution that's just waiting to be implemented by those willing to change the self-stifling environment they develop games in.
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