On Game Developers and Legitimacy 214
Gamasutra is running a feature by game developer Brian Green on how he and his colleagues are still striving for legitimacy and respect as part of a medium that's still commonly thought of by many as "for kids" and "potentially harmful to kids." He notes that while financial legitimacy is no longer in question, artistic and cultural legitimacy are taking more time. Green makes some interesting parallels to the early movie and comic book industries, and points out that moral outrage against comic books did significant damage to the medium's growth in the US.
"... in the United States there was a 'moral panic' about the corrupting influences of comic books on children, as there often is with many 'new' media. The government threatened to enact laws to censor comic books, for the good of the children. (Does that sound familiar to game developers?) The industry reacted by enacting their own regulations, the Comics Code Authority (CCA). The Comics Code Authority heavily restricted the content that comics could contain. For example, the words 'horror' and 'terror' were not allowed in the titles of comics. Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and similar creatures of the night were forbidden."
Re:CCA was a *good* thing! (Score:3, Interesting)
your parents didn't have to worry about parenting. after all, why should they take an interest in what their child is reading?
You don't know my parents. (Specifically, my depression-raised grandparents who were always nosing around in my room, and wouldn't let me watch the 10PM TV shows when I was a young teen, or SNL when I was an older teen.)
i suppose if people like you had it your way there'd be no movies beyond PG-13
You need to watch Turner Classic Movies http://www.tcm.com/ [tcm.com]. Lots of great and powerful grown-up movies, and only a trifling few are TV-14 or above.
The Hayes Code forced writers to write smart, clever and witty dialog to suggest what is is now splashed across the screen. Think Jaws or the 1960 Psycho or The Birds instead of Saw. Another comparison: Double Indemnity vs. Basic Instinct.
all books/media/art would be insipid and uncontroversial--all so you can shelter your child in a Disney-ified world where everything is made for kids.
Have you ever had an original thought? Or do you just regurgitate the idiotic spew of incompetent writers who can't create drama without gore, nudity and foul language?
The CCA was Frequently Bypassed in Clever Ways (Score:4, Interesting)
Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and similar creatures of the night were forbidden.
For example, from the wiki article [wikipedia.org] on the Comics Code Authority:
Marvel skirted the zombie restriction in the mid-1970s by calling the apparently deceased, mind-controlled followers of various Haitian super-villains "zuvembies". This practice carried over to Marvel's super-hero line. In the Avengers comic, when the reanimated super-hero Wonder Man returned from the dead, he was also referred to as a "zuvembie".
Re:An insiders view (Score:4, Interesting)
Fallout 3 (which I haven't played, admittedly)
You really owe it to yourself to give Fallout 3 a try, especially if you are a fan of the series. I got hooked as a CS major in college and although I have little time now for serious games, I made time for Fallout 3 and let me say that I was not disappointed. It is obvious while playing the game that the team at Bethesda are real fans who played the original games, groked the Fallout universe, and really wanted to do justice to the first two games and the Fallout name after the series had been tarnished and sold down the river by Interplay with embarrasing console money makers and cheap third party "tactics" spin-offs. The result was really marvellous and the few minor flaws remaining can very easily be fixed in the patches to come. I was especially impressed that Bethsoft had the courage to preserve the over-the-top violence (ala Bloody Mess), drug use, and dark humor that had always been a staple of the series (even though they compromised a bit on Med-x == morphine, and some minor usage animations); no mean feat these days when games receive the sort of intense public scrutiny that comics once received. I am really looking forward to a revamped Fallout series with fan contributed side quest add-ons and more content in the future (there is talk about a sequel where the level cap is raised to 30 and the player takes a cross country trip to the ruins of Pittsburgh). Just talking about it makes we want to pick up my A3-21 plasma rifle and blast some super mutants into piles of goo.
Comic book mythology (Score:4, Interesting)
Kids - like everyone else - were watching television. Men were reading paperback books.
Mickey Spillane. "My Gun Is Quick"
Comic book sales were in a steep downward spiral and crime and horror looked like a quick - cheap - way to recapture an older audience.
The immediate problem was that distribution was routed through the same news outlets as everything else.
In the drug store with Scrooge McDuck and the cigar store with the bondage themed True Detective magazine.
The hard core stuff sold under the table. It could be - and often was - a very sleazy business.
The larger problem was that the newspaper comic strip was still in its prime.
Caniff. Al Capp. Chester Gould. Walt Kelly. Charles Schulz ---.
Both veterans and newcomers producing really, really, good stuff in every genre
--- and when they fought their own battles against censorship, they came into the fight with much better ammunition.
make better games (Score:3, Interesting)
If a game developer wants games to be taken seriously, he (or she) ought to start making games that can be taken seriously. I can't think of any game on par with The Lord of the Rings, or Les Miserables, or Till We Have Faces, or (to use more modern examples) Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, or Hyperion, or any of dozens of great books I've read.
Sidenote: more prominent boobs on the box aren't going to earn the gaming industry any more respect. They may increase sales, but the same can be said of romance novels, and they're not widely regarded as great literature either. Sometimes, to gain respect you have to give up a few sales.
I realize that games aren't books, and we should have different expectations, but the best games still seem to be about on par with mediocre books in terms of character development, emotional impact, and philosophical content.
I think games ought to take some inspiration from the anime industry; there's a whole lot of bad anime, but there is also some great anime, and I think part of the reason why is that the people in charge are willing to take risks and explore complex issues, and they trust their viewers to "get it". (This can result in bad anime as often as good anime, but the industry on the whole seems to encourage risk-taking, whereas the game industry does not.)
I don't play a lot of games, so it may be that I'm just not aware of the rare gems out there. Riven is the best example I can think of off the top of my head as a game that made me think deeper thoughts (and I don't mean the puzzles). Some of the Zeldas have been pretty good overall (though all of them are rather silly at times, and perhaps a little too predictable). I have heard good things about Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, though I haven't actually played either.
If anyone has any great suggestions for what they think is the video-game equivalent of, say, Pachabell's canon, or Michaelangelo's David, or the Notre Dame cathedral, or the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, please enlighten me with your suggestions.
Re:When did comic books become legitimate? (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought V for Vendetta perfectly captured the descent into totalitarianism of a modern society. It didn't capture a particular decade, but I think it did a great job of being a 1984 for post-1984. It doesn't yet seem dated, though I'm sure it will in 100 years, as almost nothing is truly timeless. If anything, the ubiquitous surveilance in London makes it more relevent today.
Re:CCA was a *good* thing! (Score:3, Interesting)
So, a comic book story couldn't even give the message, "Kids, don't do drugs."
The Sandman comics did a story about a lesbian. She had just come out of a failed relationship, no social acceptance was shown, and IIRC she ended up stabbing out both of her eyes (man, I loved Sandman). The story was frequently criticized as endorsing a homosexual lifestyle, and a stink was made by religious nutjobs. You just can't win.
The primary purpose of the CCA was to sell more comics. The secondary purpose was to stave off government intervention by self-regulating. It was successful on both counts, much like movie and ESRB ratings.
Re:CCA was a *good* thing! (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank god for the Hays code, or Hollywood would have produced filth like Brokeback Mountain (homosexuality) ,Jungle Fever (miscegenation), or Angels in America (reference to STD) back in the good old days.
Or... the writers would have had to be more clever in their writing. (The script for the 1940 My Favorite Wife kept getting rejected by the censors, but the final, approved, script was so good that it was nominated for Best Story.
Or... they wouldn't have been made, and, in the grand scheme of things, the world would not have noticed.
As opposed to what other art? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. As opposed to what other art medium?
A crucifix in a jar of piss is considered art. A TV displaying static in an empty room is considered art. Or I've personally seen such works of art in a private collection as 4 pieces of A4 paper, 2 crumpled and 2 folded, then straightened out and framed. That was art. I've seen a sculpture apparently representing "death" which was really a steel sheet monolyth. No, seriously, it was a big rectangular box of steel sheet. That was it.
Or probably the best example here was a modern painting I've seen, which looked _exactly_ like a tetris game when you just lost. No seriously, it was essentially a square grid with 1 to 4 adjacent squares filled with one of 5 or 6 colours or so. Except I recon one of the rows should have been eliminated before because it was full. I wonder if it was an error of the artist or that was some thought-provoking part about the unfairness of life.
If _that_ is art, why isn't Tetris art? It can produce the same kind of an image. Why is it art if it's displayed in some snob's collection on canvas, but not when it's on the screen?
2. The general idea (or excuse) of art these days is that it's supposed to be "thought provoking" instead of anything else. (In fact, last I've heard about it at an arts college calling someone else's work "pretty" instead of "thought provoking" is the most grievous insult you can throw and not be sued for it. But use it only if you want to make an enemy.)
So then why aren't, say, the story arcs of City Of Heroes art? I know several did get me thinking about morality, or about doing what you think is right and discovering that you've been manipulated, and a few other things.
And I'm not even saying that City Of Heroes is the only game like that. Most games can provoke _some_ thought. E.g., KOTOR 2 did a good job of being pretty morally complex, and had more than a couple of situations worth thinking about. E.g., The Witcher got pretty philosophical at times, and it made a good point that sometimes there are no right sides to pick. E.g., Black And White, much as I otherwise thoroughly despised that game, did get me thinking a bit about divinity and such. Etc.
Heck, I once even wrote an essay about Chucky Egg as a metaphor for the struggle of the common worker against the oppressive corporate chickens. Ok, it was a big joke, but it did provoke that kind of thought at least. So even a simplistic one-screen platformer can technically be thought-provoking.
And again, if a crucifix in a jar of piss or a crumpled sheet of paper can use the "thought provoking" excuse, then virtually any game can. If you're the kind that's inclined to think of the deeper meanings and possible metaphors of that jar, I see no reason why you couldn't do the same about a Mario kart game. (See the XKCD strip where she gets all philosophical about choosing to not cross the finishing line. Ok, just to make him lose, but still, that's some thought provoked.)
Re:An insiders view (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that's a very good point. There have been games around since before writing began. But no one has ever tried to say that Poker, or Hearts, or Chess, or Monopoly, or golf were "art". That's not what the inventors of those games was going for. The difference is that a lot of modern video games involve both the "game" aspect and the "story" aspect. And for the vast majority of games, the "story" aspect isn't particularly respectable art (nor does it particularly need to be).
Re:CCA was a *good* thing! (Score:3, Interesting)
I love Sandman, too. But, understand that the comic wasn't published under the CCA. Vertigo is an imprint of DC Comics, actually. A lot of the big comic publishers started creating imprints during the waning years of the CCA in order to publish comics that wouldn't get CCA approval.
It was successful on both counts, much like movie and ESRB ratings.
I don't think you can really compare the CCA to the MPAA or ESRB ratings; movie and game ratings in the U.S. don't restrict what content can be in the work. A work might be a harsh rating and not be shown or sold in some markets, but that's not the same as the direct restrictions the CCA imposed to get approval. There were no ratings for the CCA, and lack of approval during the height of its power meant that the comic couldn't be distributed to the primary markets.
You can argue that this is a pretty fine distinction, but it is a difference.
Re: Comics versus quality fiction (Score:3, Interesting)