EarthBound: A Modern-Day Storybook - Part 2

Here is the second part of Wesley Rea's analysis of Earthbound.  Enjoy!

A Modern-Day Storybook (Part #2 - Story)

In recent weeks, I have been working at an elementary school as a part of an after-school program.  During this time, when I am not helping students with understanding the basics of electricity or assisting them with their multiplication and long division, I have perused various children’s books that are available to the students I teach.  Some are witty, some are boring, and some are simply too strange for any rational person to understand.

And yet, despite these differences, they have the unified element of a story.  However vague the descriptions may be or outlandish the premise is, they are designed to get children to read and to (hopefully) think critically and imaginatively.  As I mentioned last week when discussing the art and music of EarthBound, this game contains many elements that capture the spirit of childhood in a storybook-like way that is attractive to both children and adults, and the story only further reinforces this claim.

While one can go down many different rabbit trails concerning the story of EarthBound, I have identified at least two reasons as to why EarthBound is this “modern-day storybook” I have mentioned and why it encapsulates our childhood dreams so well.

Simplicity

In Japan, EarthBound is written completely in the hiragana script (consisting of about 48 characters) rather than kanji (which has about 2,000+ characters).  Without getting too much into linguistics, one simply needs to remember that hiragana is a syllable-based alphabet, in which each symbol has a particular syllable sound attached to it.  This is done to (presumably) make the games easier for children to understand, as it is easily read and best emulates spoken Japanese in text format (much like how the Pokémon games in Japanese favor syllable scripts over kanji).

The beauty behind this rational choice of language scripts is that it allows the person playing to become more immersed in the experience.  It overcomes the struggle of having to decipher difficult words and allows the children to zip through the dialogue at a pace that closely resembles a speaking pace.  It also leaves many ideas or plot developments simple and intentionally vague at times (due to the limitations of the script), which allows for the player to interpret text that might seem unclear.

While this does not translate perfectly into English, the localization team did a superb job in trying to emulate the humor and wit of the Japanese version by injecting as much American humor and pop-culture references as they could (which, given that EarthBound is based on American culture, worked surprisingly well).

From the time I’ve spent on the game, it has also been clear to me that a lot of the English game itself, like its Japanese counterpart, tells the story with simple language that children can understand.  Characters speak American English, not the King James English that was prevalent in the Dragon Quest games at the time.  They are straight and to the point, telling the player what they need to know and leaving the rest up to the player’s interpretation of what they have been told.  While this is normal in RPGs, EarthBound has a way of making you feel that you are the child that you are playing as, since adult characters tend to talk down to you in a way that is diminutive and which treats you like… well, a child.

This is how the plot unfolds from start to finish.  At the beginning, you are simply dropped into this adventure and are given very clear directions about what you are supposed to do, but in-between fulfilling that ultimate goal, the rest is up to you and what you feel is necessary.  As any good RPG does, it makes players really feel like they are Ness, having to go from town to town asking questions, solving problems, and ultimately trying to figure out how to achieve the goal that has been thrust upon them.

In essence: You, as the player, take on the role of the child character, and you effectively become that child.  You mature along with Ness as he journeys throughout his world, discovering new things during this adventure that you have never learned before, and sometimes even making mistakes that you have to learn from.  The simple act of growing up and living life is heavily emphasized throughout the game in a way that will make children think about their own lives and cause adults to remember how it was for them. In that way, it truly is a storybook that both young and old alike can enjoy.

Relevancy

The setting for EarthBound is, quite frankly, one that is both bizarre and yet strikingly familiar to those of us living in America (especially if we grew up in the suburbs).  The story takes place in the year 199X in a country called Eagleland that is clearly influenced by American culture and ideals (though admittedly toned down a bit from the previous game in the series).  Ness is not a knight, mage, or thief, but is instead a young, normal boy with a penchant for baseball bats and yo-yos.  To a game that is marketed specifically towards children, what could be more relevant than presenting the player with a character that is, essentially, them?

As the story is set up in the beginning, the player (as Ness) finds that they must embark on an adventure, one that will involve having to travel past the confines of their hometown into a world that they have never seen firsthand.  To a child, the idea of traveling to strange, new places is exciting and adventurous, so one can immediately see why such a premise in a game that takes place in the modern-day would be very interesting to the children playing it.  It allows them to travel beyond the bounds of whatever environment they are in so that they can see strange, new things.  

The child, in essence, travels alongside Ness on his journey and learns everything concurrently with him.  One can even say that Ness, as the silent protagonist in the same vein as Link from The Legend of Zelda, is the “avatar” through which the child imposes their personality onto the main character as they travel and experience these new things.  This gives them a feeling of control that they might never be able to experience.  Since normal storybooks typically have characters with set personalities and dialogue, they do not give the reader that feeling of control or personalization that they can get from controlling what is essentially a “digital self.”  This can make the experience more immersive and engaging than any normal storybook can achieve.

While this is all well and good for the children, it is often overlooked that adults can garner a very similar experience that children have when playing games like EarthBound.  The adult is unique in this sense because they, unlike the child, have experienced life in much of its richness and discovery.  This can lead the adult to becoming disillusioned with adventures and new things because they know what happens when those adventures are finished and those new things are discovered.

However, when you give the adult a chance to play something like EarthBound, it can, all of a sudden, awaken those childhood desires and the imagination they used to have.  This places them back into that state of childhood and allows them a chance to essentially “relive” a portion of their childhood in some small way.  They are playing as a child, not as themselves, and must, paradoxically, “rediscover things for the first time.”  They get to put on those glasses of innocence and renew that sense of discovery and taste for adventure that they once had, and relive that time of maturing and growing up.  In this way, they can develop a further appreciation for where they have came from and how they have gotten to this point in their lives, and perhaps even take some of those childlike ideas and senses that they have forgotten and apply them to their adulthood.

Honestly, how much more relevant can you get than the experience of life itself?

Concluding Thoughts

In essence, I believe that it is fitting to refer to EarthBound as a modern-day storybook that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike.  Through the utilization of the music, art, and engaging story, children can be drawn into the game because it is immediately accessible to where they are at in their development as human beings.  Likewise, adults who have already garnered life experience can find something worthwhile in EarthBound because it allows them to relive those times of innocence and discovery that they might not necessarily get in their adult lives, which can inspire them to embrace once again those ideals of their childhood and find how to apply them in their vocation and relationships with others.

I would like to again thank Thaius for allowing me to write these articles for his blog.  It has been a pleasure to do so, and I hope that it will inspire somebody to check out EarthBound for the first time, and to help long-time players of EarthBound to once again pick up that Super Nintendo controller and relive their days of traveling as Ness.

Until next time… keep dreamin’.

[All screenshots in this article came from Moby Games’ page for EarthBound. The logo, picture of Clay Ness, and sprite of Ness giving the victory sign came from starmen.net.]

Review: L.A. Noire

Sorry for the delay, but here is my review of L.A. Noire.

This is most definitely an interesting piece.  Rockstar, the creators of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, set out with L.A. Noire to create the interactive equivalent of film noir, the genre to which black-and-white detective films such as The Big Sleep, Out of the Past (which I was delighted to see is actually playing in theaters across the game world of L.A. Noire), and The Maltese Falcon belong (if you've not seen any of those, I highly recommend you do).  In typical Rockstar fashion, they did so by recreating the entire city of Los Angeles as it may have appeared in 1940, because they like doing a lot of work.  Once again, that painstakingly detailed torture they have put themselves through has worked; though far from perfect, L.A. Noire is a fantastic example of interactive storytelling and investigative gameplay.

Rockstar hit the film noir, hard-boiled detective feel
directly on the head.  

L.A. Noire tells the story of Cole Phelps, a former marine who now serves as a policeman in the streets of L.A.  The game follows his rise to glory in the LAPD as he begins uncovering many levels of corruption within the system through his work in the homicide, vice, and arson departments.  Though the story takes a while to go from disconnected cases to a unified metanarrative, it covers a lot of ground, involving several twists, mysteries, and fascinating characters, and is truly entertaining and impacting in many ways.  Unfortunately, it largely fails in its depiction of the main character.  The picture of Cole that is given to the player in the first half of the game is suddenly and dramatically altered about halfway through, and since we get next to no understanding of his personal life outside of the occasional war flashback, there doesn't seem to be any good reason for it.  It implies character depth without actually developing any.  But the story just runs with it and expects us to accept it, culminating in a jumbled character journey for the protagonist that stands out as the jagged piece of gravel in the bed of polished gems that is L.A. Noire's story.  This does not ruin the story - it is still an exceptional and well-written tale that expertly mimics its filmic inspiration - but it does leave a rather empty feeling by the end (though that could be argued to be the point, considering the genre, but Cole's lack of real development made it ring hollow to me).

L.A. Noire has a particular visual element that really does define the rest of the game.  The game generally looks good, nothing to write home about, but the hugely publicized facial technology in the game creates some of the most realistic faces yet to appear in gaming.  This is accomplished by filming an actor from many angles with HD cameras to capture every little facial movement.  I think I agree with David Cage that the technology is a temporary solution, but that does not change the fact that it is really freaking impressive.  This does mean that the facial textures aren't quite as detailed as they could be (you won't be seeing the pore-revealing detail of experiences like Heavy Rain), but that hardly matters; the eye twitches, eyebrow movements, and subtle facial cues are extremely impressive, and they allow the game to do things we can expect to influence the industry for a long time to come.

Actor John Noble on the left, and his character in
L.A. Noire, Leland Monroe, on the right.  Yeah.  

The obvious thing this technology allows is easier connection to the characters.  They just seem more human than they may have without the detailed facial expressions, and everyone has a completely different face since they were all taken from real actors.  There is a level of non-verbal acting that has rarely been possible in a video game, allowing characters to make a strong impression even in only a few minutes of screen time.

However, the biggest effect of the L.A. Noire's technology is the ability to base gameplay not on systems and rules, but on observation of voices and faces.  This manifests itself in interrogation sequences not unlike Phoenix Wright's courtroom sequences in some ways, but much more dynamic.  Rather than simply scrolling through the character's words and finding contradictions or weak spots, the player must actively and carefully watch the character for signs of lying or discomfort.  The player must decide to believe or doubt the person being questioned, or if there is evidence that directly contradicts something they can simply accuse the person of lying and present the evidence to back them into a corner.  This creates an interesting and realistic experience that would not have been possible without the detailed facial movements, and has interesting implications for how video games can create non-combat-related gameplay.  There are also real consequences for messing up these interrogations, such as missing a vital clue or even charging the wrong person, making the game worth playing over to see what changes if less mistakes are made.  This often leads to frustration, as the answer is not always apparent, but there is always one right answer, and a chime lets you know if you got it right or wrong.  But once you get used to using facial cues rather than systematized rules to progress, it gets much easier and a lot more interesting.

In fact, combat and other action-oriented sequences take up a surprisingly small portion of the L.A. Noire experience.  Driving is a large part of the game, obviously, and high-speed pursuits, while sometimes frustrating, are exhilarating and no less of a spectacle than a well-directed chase scene in an action film.  Similarly entertaining is the ability to turn your siren on at any given time and cruise down the street while the good citizens clear your way.  Mostly, at least; sometimes the drivers in this game seem like complete idiots, and stop signs in 1940s L.A. definitely don't work quite like they do today if the A.I. traffic are any indication.  But still, the driving is great and the pulse-poundingly intense car chases never fail to impress.

In all seriousness, why does Rockstar insist on RB/R1 as
taking cover?  It just doesn't work as well as a face button.

Shootouts are the most disappointing part of the gameplay, but they are definitely not terrible, and they are a small enough part of the experience that it will not have much of a negative impact on your experience.  The cover system is similar to that found in Red Dead Redemption, but it is actually more clunky and difficult to accurately control.  I would often try to round cover or switch to the other side of a doorway, only to find myself standing in the path of a bunch of bullets instead of actually moving anywhere.  What's more, the right trigger both fires your weapon and makes you run.  You can imagine the confusion that tends to cause, aside from the fact that it severely limits the application of both actions.  In addition, the game's painstaking attention to detail falls a short here; namely, there is no way to take someone alive in a shootout.  You must always kill them.  For what the game is, this adoption of straightforward shooter rules seems a bit out of place.  If the game spent more time on shootouts I might take bigger issue with their shortcomings, but in the 25+ hours of gameplay I only spent about 2-3 of those hours in combat, so it's really not a huge deal.

The city of Los Angeles is absolutely huge, and the player will spend a lot of time traversing it.  Many landmarks have been faithfully recreated and can be discovered, and the architecture, music, and 95 specific types of cars from the time period and location have been perfectly recreated to make the atmosphere of the game spot-on.  The world definitely seems inhabited as well, with many people walking the streets and even talking about recent events such as Cole's cases.  There is even an option to play the game in black and white, a feature I turned on a few hours in and never went back; it made the entire game feel like I was playing a classic movie.  Exploring the city is fun not only because of the atmosphere, but because there are a total of 40 street crimes that will be called in on the radio every so often.  These are short and simple, usually consisting of a shootout or car chase, and can occur anytime you are driving around the city.

All in all, L.A. Noire is a game that stands as an example of what gaming can be, and though it wobbles a bit with the steps it takes forward, new ground is being covered and is well worth exploring.  Considering Take Two has said the game's sales make it a "powerful new franchise," here's hoping to a sequel where they can iron out the wrinkles and further develop the game's more groundbreaking elements.

EarthBound: A Modern-Day Storybook - Part 1

Today is a day of two firsts for Binary Narrative.  For one, today's article is the first of many future articles that perform a literary analysis of a specific work of interactive fiction.  I hope to do many of these from time to time, maintaining my anti-spoiler policy as much as possible, of course.  Secondly, for the first time we have a guest writer.  My colleague Wesley Rea has written a two-part, spoiler-free analysis of a classic RPG. I hope you enjoy it!

A Modern-Day Storybook (Part #1 – Art and Music)

If you were like me as a child, you adored spending indeterminate amounts of time wallowing in the adventures contained within children’s books.  As kids, we could not help but dream of that life that we thought was possible; that life of super heroism, intrigue, mystery, action, etc., where we were the commanders of our destiny and the writers of our lives.  As we grow older and realize that our childhood dreams were the stuff of mere fancy and impossible thinking, we still cannot help but hold out that sliver of hope that all of those fantastic adventures we read about as children could actually happen in our grown-up lives.  This has certainly been the case for me, and undoubtedly is the same for many of you readers.

EarthBound is the game that I personally feel captures this spirit of our childhood that no other game since then has been able to do.  In it, one will find a modern-day storybook written for both children and adults to enjoy.  I feel that the game accomplishes this through the use of its unique child-like art style, the musical choices made that invokes nostalgia, and a story that manages to take every trope of our childhood dreams and weave them together into a masterpiece understandable to any generation. For the purpose of this blog post, I will only be covering the art style and music, and will leave the story portion for a future post.

The Art Style

When one first glances at the artwork in EarthBound, they might think of it as childish and amateur.  While this may be true to an extent, it does not automatically follow that this is actually a bad thing.  I feel that this was a specific design choice made on the part of the artists’ in order to evoke a particular child-likeness and simplicity, not unlike how the Peanuts comic strips had a simple art style in order for the reader to understand what life looked like through the eyes of a child.

Considering that the game itself was marketed towards children and/or those coming out of childhood in the first place, it makes sense that the graphical style might mirror, in some way, the types of things they were used to: namely, children’s books and comic strips.  It is an easily accessible art style to them because it is what they have become accustomed to seeing.  In this way, it is something that is uniquely childlike, but that does not mean it is necessarily childish.

As one plays through the game, it is clear to see that these “simple graphics” are not as simple as they first appear.  As you start from your house in Onett and make your way through the many other locales featured in the game (not the least of which being a sprawling seaport), the graphical style gets increasingly more intricately detailed, differentiating between blades of grass, types of flowers, tree roots, the slight cracks in stone walls, and on and on it goes.  It is plain to see that the art style in EarthBound is not merely one of simplicity, but is one that finds the beauty of simplicity amidst the complex.  On the whole, it seems simplistic, but the deeper you dig into it, the more complex parts start becoming more apparent, to the point where everything starts becoming more… alive.

Which, incidentally, is exactly how a child views the world. Anybody who has been around a small, talking child for more than a few minutes knows the type of curiosity they possess, and their incessant way of asking, “Why?” to every explanation only reinforces their view that the world is alive and full of things to discover.  This is what I felt when playing EarthBound, that this sprawling world is alive and full of things for me to go and discover.  I feel that the art was designed so masterfully and purposefully in order to achieve this desired effect within people, which goes to show just how ingrained this childlike sense of wonder and discovery is in our minds, even as we grow older.

The Music

Personally speaking, if there was one single soundtrack that I could have playing throughout my life, the one for EarthBound would be it.  I cannot recall any other soundtrack to anything being so simple, yet so multi-faceted to encompass any particular feeling one has.  While there are not many songs that one could describe as “epic” in the game, I feel that the beauty of the soundtrack has to do with, strangely enough, its lack of desire to be truly monumental and earth shattering.  It finds its functionality within the limited framework of the Super Nintendo sound chip and does what it does pragmatically, but not without invoking that sense of nostalgia within the listener.

It is always hard to describe the sensation one gets when listening to a particular piece of music.  From my own standpoint, I can maintain that the emotions that well up within me when I hear particular instrument sounds or melodic patterns are subjectively beautiful.  To others, that same music may sound like incessant noise with no beauty present at all.  I cannot fault others for not sharing the same musical tastes as myself, so I can only invite others to try to enter into my shoes and hear what I hear and see if they agree or not.

From the very beginning of the game, the sounds of the surrounding environment are important to the atmosphere.  While there are pieces of battle music present within the prologue, it is mostly the noise of the outside environment that sets the mood for the player.  After the prologue, the first piece of music that we hear as Ness walks outside into the sunlight is “Let the Adventure Begin” (also known as the theme song of Onett, Ness’ home town).

This sets the stage for all of the music that comes afterwards.  This is the first piece that truly has to grab you and pull you into the story, and from my standpoint, I think it does an amazing job.  The title alone indicates that this is going to be the start of the adventure of a lifetime, and what an adventure it turns out to be.

I could go on and on for many, many pages worth of my thoughts and opinions on the music of EarthBound, but I will leave off with only one more song for the reader’s listening pleasure.  It is entitled “Smiles and Tears,” and is one of the end-game songs.  Without getting into spoilers, I can definitely assure you that the story to this game has its fair share of both smiles and tears for the player to experience and enjoy, and this song perfectly captures the bittersweet nature of the themes present in the plot of this game.

The very nature of this song is designed for you to feel nostalgic and make you remember everything you have experienced in the game thus far.  Your hopes. Your dreams. Your friends. Your family. Everything.

I have gone on long enough for now, so I will leave the discussion of the story of EarthBound for an upcoming second part of this series.  Big thanks to Thaius for giving me this chance to write about something that is near and dear to my heart.

Until next time… keep smilin’.

[All images came from starmen.net, one of the largest EarthBound fan websites on the internet today. The YouTube videos are not mine, so credit and thanks go to the uploaders and, most importantly, the composers of the music and designers of the games.]

RPGs and PS2 Voice Acting

Mid-week I'll be writing a less formal post.  Just some random thoughts on game-related things, current events in the industry, or perhaps an occasional review, rather than a structured article about specifically narrative-related principles.

In the void before L.A. Noire releases (I know it did the day before this post, but I'll only be picking it up today due to a busy schedule) I've been catching up on some games I own but have yet to play.  The first of this is Rogue Galaxy, a Japanese RPG on the PS2 developed by Level 5.  It's a stylish little game, with awesome cel-shading and a cool space pirate theme going on, similar to Skies of Arcadia or Treasure Planet.  It really does look fantastic, especially for a PS2 game.  I had started it way back when I got it, many years ago, but got stuck on a difficult part and got more games.  You know how it is.

Now that I've played more RPGs I can definitely see some of the more derivative aspects of Rogue Galaxy's plot, though it's not so typical as to be boring.  It's a pretty cool story, and the characters are quite interesting as long as you can appreciate the Japanese storytelling/writing style.  Being a huge JRPG and anime fan myself, I'm definitely enjoying it.

One thing I find interesting about the PS2 though is how many games have that awkward voice acting.  Many of you probably know what I'm talking about; it's not necessarily anything about the voice acting itself, but that unnatural pause during the in-engine cutscenes.  I'm not sure exactly what causes it; it's probably something to do with the game engine and its ability to load character motions and dialogue or something, I suppose, though it doesn't happen in all PS2 in-engine cutscenes.  It's heavily present in Rogue Galaxy at times.  It's also responsible for most of the complaints about the voice acting in Final Fantasy X, in my opinion; the voice acting itself wasn't bad (well, for the most part), but that awkward pause between so many lines of dialogue just made the pacing of conversations seem off.

If anything, it's an interesting example of how game technology has affected the medium's ability to tell stories.  Not that it couldn't tell stories well before voice acting could be perfected; some of gaming's best stories were told before voice acting was even within reach of the medium.  But it is one of many ways video games have developed in a kind of backwards manner.  The medium gravitated immediately to the action-packed, effects-heavy kinds of stories that film had to technologically advance to first.  This is largely because of the Narrative/Gameplay Paradigm, I would say, but also because technology allowed us to tell those types of stories right from the get-go, so we skipped the acting, writing, and even technological development to skip straight to the 'splodies.  Nothing wrong with 'splodies, but I think that explains a lot of the narrative deficits present in the medium.

Anyway, food for thought.  Perhaps I'll review L.A. Noire next week if I finish it in time.

The Role of Non-Interactive Storytelling in Interactive Media

Cutscenes have recently become, in the minds of many, the "failure-state" of video game storytelling. People complain that a cutscene interrupts the gameplay experience or takes away an opportunity for varied and interesting gameplay moments. It has gone so far that many have claimed that a game fails in its very artistic value as a game if the focus is anywhere else but the interactivity; if it is taken away or belittled for the sake of the story, the game has failed as an interactive artwork.

It’s true that the most memorable moments in gaming are those where interactivity is used or toyed with in the context of a powerful story moment. The epilogue of Halo: Reach, the famous plot twist in Bioshock, the moments leading up to the infamous death scene in Final Fantasy VII… Many interactive artworks have used interactivity to create impacting moments that truly could not exist in any other medium. And that is awesome.

The final mission of Halo: Reach is the pinnacle of
the series' storytelling.  

However, this idea that non-interactive story movement in an interactive medium is inherently bad storytelling has a problem. A huge problem that most people don’t notice unless, again, they take it to its full logical conclusion. Let’s see where it leads.

So the idea here is that the only good way to tell a story in video games is to use interactivity in everything, that everything must be interactive in some way, because interactivity is the storytelling property entirely unique to video games. Applied to art theory as a whole, this is saying that any given artwork must take full advantage of its medium’s unique properties in order to be good.  Any artwork that breaks from its unique properties is not a good artwork.

To illustrate, let’s apply this specifically to animation, as kind of a sub-medium of film. To clarify, animation is not a genre, but a subset of film itself, capable of telling far too many types of stories to be considered a simple genre. Feel free to comment (and good luck) if you want to make the argument that Cowboy Bebop and Disney's Cinderella both belong in the same genre.

Animation is, within the larger medium of film, uniquely capable of wildly over-the-top imagery and very silly slapstick comedy. It is easier for someone to take violence humorously when it is animated because much of the reality is lost, especially if the animation style is exceptionally quirky. It is visually capable of more silly or just plain weird images than live-action.

What would make for a bad animated feature, then? Well for one, animation that tries to look like reality is out; trying to look real abandons the lack of reality animation can deliver, eliminating the entire uniqueness of animation.  For that matter, if the work is expected to take full advantage of its unique properties, the animation had better take full advantage of that fact.  Any frame where characters are standing and talking is wasted, any scene without constant motion and exaggerated movement is doing it wrong.  In simpler terms, Spongebob Squarepants and Ren and Stimpy are objectively better works of art than Death Note, Avatar: The Last Airbender, or The Lion King.

The pinnacle of
animation, everyone.

Let's apply this logic to video games, since that is the whole point of this blog after all.  The unique property of video games as a medium is interactivity.  Thus, applied to this art theory, a good video game is one that uses interactivity in all its facets and never breaks from delivering an interactive experience.  It delivers a constantly interactive and intense experience, and achieves immersion by keeping the player constantly in control, constantly challenged and involved.  Perhaps aesthetics, graphics, story, music, etc. matter, but all are of minimal importance in comparison.  If the game stops with the interactivity to move a story forward, it loses its immersive quality and stops truly being a "video game."

So, according to this, what would a bad video game look like?  Well, like any of these.

To name just a few.

This prioritization of interactivity above all else is not entirely meritless, but I think it's a bit too extreme. The most erroneous aspect is the idea that there's only one way to tell a story well within a given medium, even if that way takes the fullest advantage of the medium's unique capabilities. To say in any artistic venue that one way is the only good way to tell a story is problematic because it discourages creativity and variance, two of the most important things in art. It's essentially telling an entire medium to stick to what it's good at before it even knows what it's really capable of.  The fact is, a good story is a good story.  Sometimes a story in a video game would not have lost much had it been told in a television mini-series, or perhaps a long movie, but that does not make the story bad. Though cutscenes have their benefits, they do not offer anything particularly special to video game storytelling, but that does not mean a good story told by a well-made cutscene is somehow bad.

This idea is really just coming out of the need for video games to claim their spot in the world of artistic media (though some also use it to support the idea that video games should not focus on art and storytelling).  In a previous post, I talked about how, despite the great stories some video games have told, games as a medium are still largely considered to tell worse stories than other mediums, and how this may be in large part due to the fact that video games have explored less of their uniqueness than other, older mediums.  Video games need to explore interactivity and truly come into their own with their ability to effectively wield this unique power, as this is the thing video games can do that no other medium can.  But this is intended to free and empower video games, not to limit them.  As we explore the frontier of this art form, we do not all pack up and move to the newly discovered areas; rather, we expand, settling and exploring the new frontier while still developing what we already know. We do not abandon the older tactics to game development and storytelling as we discover new ones, we use the old knowledge to improve and understand the new, and vice versa.  It is all important.

This is a bit of a heated topic as of late, so feel free to comment or email me with any thoughts, disagreements, or concurrence.  I would like this blog to be discussion-based to an extent, so if you have something to say, please do, and I will make sure to reply, and perhaps bring up your points in a future article.

See you next week, and assuming you don't vehemently disagree with what I've said here, don't forget to Like Binary Narrative on Facebook!  

ENGL 1337: Games as Lit.

We people of the last few generations have had the privilege of growing up with a new and exciting artistic medium.  Over the last three decades, video games have grown from entertaining pastimes to full-fledged interactive stories, taking storytelling places no other medium could have ever dreamed.  The children of the twenty-first century have seen it become possible to be a part of a story, which is, as Yahtzee put it, "a development as artistically significant as the moment Picasso realized which end of the brush was which."

Unfortunately, this is not the version we have been told. 

As we have grown up, video games have been subject to everything from misunderstanding to blatant demonization.  At the very least, these generations have grown up being told that video games are wastes of time.  Sure, maybe it’s okay to spend a few minutes here and there, but too much time playing Halo will rot their brain or turn them into serial killers. 

And kids that pose like this only
help them.  Seriously kid, we're
trying to gain respect over here.

The result is that, even while video games have amazing artistic potential and value, it is squandered on people who will only get out of them what they put into them, and all they put into them is an expectation of a good, if valueless, time.  This is not the fault of the people, but the fault of the way they have been raised to view the medium of video games.  The artistic value of video games is something understood by a precious few parents, and as a result they look upon their child’s gaming pastime as a waste, and use no subtlety making sure the child understands this. 

To make matters worse, schools do the same thing, but possibly even on a larger scale.  The academic community tends to be slow in accepting new ideas, and the acceptance of video games as an artistic medium has not broken this long-standing tradition.  As a result, we see schools disallowing portable game systems from their grounds and constantly preaching the value of reading over playing those useless video games.  They then join the parents in complaining about how their children spend all day playing Call of Duty with their friends instead of reading the latest Newberry Medal winning novel. 

The guarantee this book is about nature and history, and is
the exact same as the last Newberry book your child read.  

But if video games are an artistic storytelling medium, what is keeping children from learning from them in the same manner?  Why can someone play Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and yet only talk about the battles, the cool swords, and that impossibly tough library puzzle, never mentioning the story’s strong message of the dangers of coveting honor and glory or the way the romance is developed through nuanced dialogue in gameplay? 

Unfortunately, this culture brings it upon itself.  By painting video games as a wasteful pastime unworthy of any level of attention, parents and schools encourage students to play them as nothing more than that, effectively negating any value they may have by teaching children to ignore it. 

Instead, what if video games were incorporated into the school system?  What if schools were to meet children where their attention is already focused, present to them the values of something they already enjoy and use it to make them better, well-rounded people? 

The video game, not the recent okay
movie/terrible adaptation. Seriously,
couldn't the story have been similar?

This would not look very different from the current model of book reports.  Children in a class are assigned a particular game to play.  The aforementioned game, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, stands as a good example for jr. high and above.  I do not want to spoil the story (spoilers are manufactured personally by Satan in the pit of Hell), but anyone who's played it can tell you the prince’s character journey is one worth communicating and exploring, and the game itself portrays it well.  It is often praised as one of the best-written games ever made.  The gameplay ties into the story well, and the prince’s character development is deep and interesting, developed largely through thoughts and monologues while the player explores the ruined kingdom.  It would be easy to assign an essay with a prompt to explore the prince’s progression from a spoiled, glory-obsessed child to a mature man who takes responsibility for his
                                                         mistakes. 

Instead, many who play this game do so with the expectation they will be able to kill monsters in awesome ways, and they get that.  Many players even skip cutscenes whenever possible to get back to the gameplay.  They gain nothing from this experience but six to ten hours of virtual parkour and combat.  But if schools were to teach children of the narrative value of video games, teach them to play Prince of Persia and other games and pay attention to the subtleties, the characters, and the overarching themes, would this not cease to be an exercise in entertaining futility and become a worthy artistic pursuit? 

The negative portrayal of video games that children are given is not teaching them to use their time well, it is teaching them to ignore artistic value in a medium that is quickly becoming a cultural staple.  This is harming the artistic sensibilities and personal formation of entire generations, and cannot be tolerated.  Rather than resisting change and development, school systems must turn to the study of video games as a narrative medium and instill in children an appreciation not only for battle tactics and a positive kill/death ratio, but for interactive storytelling and the value that can be found therein.

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