7 ms·

Interesting that he feels the stories went away. I finished up Sleeping Dogs recently, and it's definitely a strong story. The Last of Us, Dragon Age, Bastion

by rodgerd 12y ago

Interesting that he feels the stories went away. I finished up Sleeping Dogs recently, and it's definitely a strong story. The Last of Us, Dragon Age, Bastion, Remember Me, Shadow of the Colossus, even the Saints Row series (as long as you don't mind it veering into Paul Verhoeven-self-satire). That's just off the top of my head. Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously?

fit2rule 12y ago
>> if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously? If they'd been making good films all the while, then sure. Why not? Otherwise it'd just be prejudice.
- Goronmon 12y ago
  Well...the point would be that even if he's a good filmmaker, if he literally hasn't watched any TV/movies in 15 years other than his own, how would he be a reliable judge of the current crop of TV/movies?
  - washadjeffmad 12y ago
    Most games produced wash out over time into collective styles of the period they were created. After all that, a few stand out as exemplars to represent this mass of games that, in the end, aren't all that different. Sure, there are individual differences, and if you took the time to experience them you'd probably enjoy many of them in their own way. But ultimately, it's a matter of taste. Al has been around long enough to see the trends and recognize the themes. If Alfred Hitchcock rose from the dead today and saw our current climate of remakes and benign comedies, he might enjoy them as novel. Or he might see them as knockoffs of ideas he'd seen done better a dozen different ways in his time, and for all the technical differences like format and cutting, not have a high artistic opinion of them or their methods. Al has that sort of background and experience (although not the lasting acclaim). He's not that impressed by fps or texture sizes or other period-sensitive qualities. He may not be giving them every chance to prove themselves, but why should he? He just thinks the big industry hype doesn't match the products, and I don't disagree.
skuhn 12y ago
I hear this opinion expressed a lot by people that don't play many video games anymore, and I don't agree with it either. There are a ton of modern games with really compelling narratives. Along with the ones you mentioned, there's been Wolfenstein: The New Order, BioShock, Uncharted, Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, Red Dead Redemption, Catherine, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Enslaved, Fallout: New Vegas, Life is Strange, Mass Effect, Tomb Raider, Spec Ops: The Line, Dishonored and many more just in the last five years, all with excellent stories in a variety of genres. There have even been some recent adventure games that can hold their own against the best of the golden age, like Broken Sword 5 and Tesla Effect. I think a lot of this perception comes from how the most popular video games present themselves: as mindless diversions. Think Call of Duty, League of Legends, Candy Crush, and so on. They can still be fun, but the story components are afterthoughts, hopelessly generic, or entirely non-existent. If you aren't participating in the market and seeking out new experiences, you don't know what's really out there. I do miss classic adventure games, and a lot of what Al talks about does ring true to me. They were the AAA games of their era, and yet Sierra and Lucas and Revolution never put out a generic or cash-in game. Even though these games were heavily sequelized (far beyond modern standards), they retained a unique voice. It would be amazing to see a modern publisher crank out games as often as Sierra did while matching their level of quality and innovation.
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  >>There are a ton of modern games with really compelling narratives. The problem isn't really the narrative, but rather the lack of a well-developed, deep setting. All of the games you listed have very good stories, but those stories make you the Center of the Universe and everything revolves around you. Even the parts of the setting that are explained give a very strong feeling that, at the end of the day, they were developed to justify and validate your goals and missions, either by hampering you or aiding you. In direct contrast, I'd like to point to the Baldur's Gate games. They don't just have an excellent narrative. They also take place in a very strong, well-established setting. This setting successfully conveys the feeling that, while you are an important character and what you're trying to do is important, at the end of the day the world (of Faerun) is chock full of people and organizations and nations with their own agendas. The epic saga you experience is simply one strand in a massive tapestry. And in the end you don't save the world or some such nonsense. You simply conclude your own story, and life goes on. Compare this to Mass Effect, where you literally save the entire galaxy from ultra-powerful robots who literally want to wipe out all life. Okay, fine. But the series does so little setting development that you end up caring more about destroying the bad guys than understanding and learning about the galaxy you are trying to save.
vanderZwan 12y ago
As much as I love old-school adventures, I think this interview by Shigeru Miyamoto is an interesting counterpoint to the whole story telling attitude as well: Miyamoto doesn’t see himself as a storyteller, and worries that the video game business is now so hung up on providing film-like experiences, with grand themes and complex storylines, that the essence of play is being lost. In films, he explains, the director and the creator are one and the same person, dictating what happens, carving out the story’s arc. But in games, he believes the director should be the player – his job as a designer is simply to equip them with the toys to direct. As a creative philosophy it’s pretty much the opposite of auteurism – though ironically, it’s one that has made him the best-known games designer on the planet. “These younger game creators, they want to be recognised,” he sighs. “They want to tell stories that will touch people’s hearts. And while I understand that desire, the trend worries me. It should be the experience, that is touching. What I strive for is to make the person playing the game the director. All I do is help them feel that, by playing, they’re creating something that only they could create.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11201171/nintendo-super-mario-pikmin-tokyo-film-festival-mandarin-oriental-tokyo-sega-mario-kart-zelda-wii-oculus-rift.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11201171/n...
- gr3yh47 12y ago
  interesting, as his games' stories are some of the best on their own merits, and then are combined with some of the most defining experiences in gaming as well.
- sfjailbird 12y ago
  "Games" span a much broader spectrum of entertainment types than movies. At one end there's the interactive story, and personally I would include most modern FPS'es in this genre, at least as far as the single player experience goes. The story is on rails and you get to shoot a little here and drive a little there. At the other end is the pure game mechanics, the sandbox where you are the director, in the words of Miyamoto (although his own games fall somewhere in the middle IMHO). Minecraft is a good example, but even GTA belongs in this end, since the most fun is to be had just playing with the game mechanics, rather than in completing the story. There's room for a huge amount of variety along this scale and there is a lot of room at both ends of the spectrum. Often these different game types even address totally separate target markets.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
"Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously?" Of course. There are film theaters and Internet. You can count good films at the end of the year with the fingers of your hand. Good film makers are going to spend lots of time making films, not watching them. There is lots of great series now, but if you are a professional you just need one or two episodes to really grasp the entire collection. Writers of series always use the same proven structure that works. Once you know, it is kind of boring because all series look the same.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  Al Lowe says in the article that he doesn't play games and hasn't owned a console for 15 years. And yet somehow he has an opinion of the state of games today. That's what the reference is. It's pretty obvious what rodgerd meant if you actually read the article.
  - Roboprog 12y ago
    There were times in my life I had no TV, but I still saw parts of some shows over at friend's houses. Same applies, I suspect. "I've seen it, and I don't want one" I'm not saying I agree with the assessment, but I get it.
on_and_off 12y ago
Regardless of the value of his opinion, I tend to agree : for the vast majority of games (where it is applicable, eg sport games do not count), I have found the stories extremely weak. The same power trip story is copy pasted to many games, especially AAA ones. It is obviously subjective but I also feel a tendency to stay away from complicated plots, Deus Ex is one of my favorite games but I have hated Human Revolution. The plot is extremely predictable from its beginning to its end, it felt like a collection of the most popular cyberpunk tropes. I loved the fact that I could not trust anyone in DE, especially in some chapters (like Hong Kong) where it is up to you to travel in the open world in order to discover who is playing you (pretty much everyone, at different levels). In HR, that feeling is entirely gone, replaced with a paper thin conspiracy. I am not sure he is entirely right though. Great storytelling has always been difficult. It is unfair to compare the average 2015 game to Monkey Island 1+2. There were also some mediocre stories back in Sierra days, we have just forgotten most of these and mostly remember a couple of gems.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
Not to mention, those are fun games with interesting and novel game mechanics. My memories of Sierra games more or less involve cheating because many of the puzzles were arbitrary. Oh, you gave the chicken leg to the yeti instead of the eagle? Now find a save game from 5 hours before! There's a reason Sierra failed - player punishing adventure games fell out of fashion. I play more than a few adventure and point and click games on Steam and rarely are the puzzles Sierra-like frustrating. That formula just doesn't work and only worked because of the lack of competition in the 80s. The early 1990s brought us stuff like Doom, Civilization, Myst, etc and killed the adventure game market. Heck, The Longest Journey and its sequels, pretty much brought back the Sierra-style game and sold a lot of copies. Compare it to what Sierra was doing. TLJ is pretty much fine art compared to the schlock-fest and hammy writing of the Sierra crew. > I realized, anyway, by the mid-'90s that people weren't looking for deeper games with deeper puzzles and thought-provoking concepts and all these things we were hoping for. Talk about paying yourself a compliment! Are we really saying Half-Life's or Chrono-Trigger's storytelling is more shallow than the milquetoast stories of the Sierra universe? Come on. There's also an argument here that games shouldn't be "do some work to get to the next part of the story" visual novels. There's balance between story and game. Some lean more one way than another. There's nothing wrong with either approach. I think modern gamers lean towards a more cinematic story-telling experience, which is a questionable fad. If anything, games are too story-based right now. That said, I feel a little sorry for Al. He and his people were on top of the gaming world in the 1980s and are now deep into irrelevancy. The sad part is, if he took on a more mature attitude like, "Hey, we had a lot of fun, but the industry changed quickly and we didn't, and we got squashed," a bit like Nolan Bushnell did about Atari, I'd have some respect for him. But playing the endless blame game (gamers suck, management sucks, but the creatives are oh-so perfect) just makes him look a primadonna.
protomyth 12y ago
> Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously? Consider a lot of people went and saw a comic book movie done by a man who doesn't read and, it seems, hates comic books, I'm not sure that's a disqualifier of the filmmaker's opinion.
- bryondowd 12y ago
  A comic book movie is still a movie, regardless of the inspiration. I would rather have someone who hates comic books make said movie than a comic book fanatic who hates movies. Now, if he were making a comic book, it would be a problem.
  - protomyth 12y ago
    I would say a comic book movie is a combination of forms with the best being made by folks who love both. Loving only one does not disqualify you from trying to combination. Just as some people make movies and hate TV. TV viewing is not a prerequisite for being a competent film maker.
    - bryondowd 12y ago
      I'm not sure I would agree with you there. I suspect these movies are far more movie than comic book, and that the target audience is far more moviegoer than comic book fan. If anything, I think being a big comic book fan could actually be a detriment for such a filmmaker, as they would have to resist doing things that work for comic books/comic book fans but don't really work for movies/moviegoers. But more likely, if it is a good filmmaker, whether they like comic books will have little or no impact on whether they can make a good film, even if it is based on a comic book. The mediums are just too different.
alricb 12y ago
> Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously? If he were French, I would. French TV is shit.
fragmede 12y ago
> Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously? If that filmmaker were D. W. Griffith, I sure as shit would.

by rodgerd 12y ago

fit2rule 12y ago

>> if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously? If they'd been making good films all the while, then sure. Why not? Otherwise it'd just be prejudice.

Goronmon 12y ago
Well...the point would be that even if he's a good filmmaker, if he literally hasn't watched any TV/movies in 15 years other than his own, how would he be a reliable judge of the current crop of TV/movies?
- washadjeffmad 12y ago
  Most games produced wash out over time into collective styles of the period they were created. After all that, a few stand out as exemplars to represent this mass of games that, in the end, aren't all that different. Sure, there are individual differences, and if you took the time to experience them you'd probably enjoy many of them in their own way. But ultimately, it's a matter of taste. Al has been around long enough to see the trends and recognize the themes. If Alfred Hitchcock rose from the dead today and saw our current climate of remakes and benign comedies, he might enjoy them as novel. Or he might see them as knockoffs of ideas he'd seen done better a dozen different ways in his time, and for all the technical differences like format and cutting, not have a high artistic opinion of them or their methods. Al has that sort of background and experience (although not the lasting acclaim). He's not that impressed by fps or texture sizes or other period-sensitive qualities. He may not be giving them every chance to prove themselves, but why should he? He just thinks the big industry hype doesn't match the products, and I don't disagree.

skuhn 12y ago

I hear this opinion expressed a lot by people that don't play many video games anymore, and I don't agree with it either. There are a ton of modern games with really compelling narratives. Along with the ones you mentioned, there's been Wolfenstein: The New Order, BioShock, Uncharted, Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, Red Dead Redemption, Catherine, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Enslaved, Fallout: New Vegas, Life is Strange, Mass Effect, Tomb Raider, Spec Ops: The Line, Dishonored and many more just in the last five years, all with excellent stories in a variety of genres. There have even been some recent adventure games that can hold their own against the best of the golden age, like Broken Sword 5 and Tesla Effect. I think a lot of this perception comes from how the most popular video games present themselves: as mindless diversions. Think Call of Duty, League of Legends, Candy Crush, and so on. They can still be fun, but the story components are afterthoughts, hopelessly generic, or entirely non-existent. If you aren't participating in the market and seeking out new experiences, you don't know what's really out there. I do miss classic adventure games, and a lot of what Al talks about does ring true to me. They were the AAA games of their era, and yet Sierra and Lucas and Revolution never put out a generic or cash-in game. Even though these games were heavily sequelized (far beyond modern standards), they retained a unique voice. It would be amazing to see a modern publisher crank out games as often as Sierra did while matching their level of quality and innovation.

enraged_camel 12y ago
>>There are a ton of modern games with really compelling narratives. The problem isn't really the narrative, but rather the lack of a well-developed, deep setting. All of the games you listed have very good stories, but those stories make you the Center of the Universe and everything revolves around you. Even the parts of the setting that are explained give a very strong feeling that, at the end of the day, they were developed to justify and validate your goals and missions, either by hampering you or aiding you. In direct contrast, I'd like to point to the Baldur's Gate games. They don't just have an excellent narrative. They also take place in a very strong, well-established setting. This setting successfully conveys the feeling that, while you are an important character and what you're trying to do is important, at the end of the day the world (of Faerun) is chock full of people and organizations and nations with their own agendas. The epic saga you experience is simply one strand in a massive tapestry. And in the end you don't save the world or some such nonsense. You simply conclude your own story, and life goes on. Compare this to Mass Effect, where you literally save the entire galaxy from ultra-powerful robots who literally want to wipe out all life. Okay, fine. But the series does so little setting development that you end up caring more about destroying the bad guys than understanding and learning about the galaxy you are trying to save.

vanderZwan 12y ago

As much as I love old-school adventures, I think this interview by Shigeru Miyamoto is an interesting counterpoint to the whole story telling attitude as well: Miyamoto doesn’t see himself as a storyteller, and worries that the video game business is now so hung up on providing film-like experiences, with grand themes and complex storylines, that the essence of play is being lost. In films, he explains, the director and the creator are one and the same person, dictating what happens, carving out the story’s arc. But in games, he believes the director should be the player – his job as a designer is simply to equip them with the toys to direct. As a creative philosophy it’s pretty much the opposite of auteurism – though ironically, it’s one that has made him the best-known games designer on the planet. “These younger game creators, they want to be recognised,” he sighs. “They want to tell stories that will touch people’s hearts. And while I understand that desire, the trend worries me. It should be the experience, that is touching. What I strive for is to make the person playing the game the director. All I do is help them feel that, by playing, they’re creating something that only they could create.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11201171/nintendo-super-mario-pikmin-tokyo-film-festival-mandarin-oriental-tokyo-sega-mario-kart-zelda-wii-oculus-rift.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11201171/n...

gr3yh47 12y ago
interesting, as his games' stories are some of the best on their own merits, and then are combined with some of the most defining experiences in gaming as well.
sfjailbird 12y ago
"Games" span a much broader spectrum of entertainment types than movies. At one end there's the interactive story, and personally I would include most modern FPS'es in this genre, at least as far as the single player experience goes. The story is on rails and you get to shoot a little here and drive a little there. At the other end is the pure game mechanics, the sandbox where you are the director, in the words of Miyamoto (although his own games fall somewhere in the middle IMHO). Minecraft is a good example, but even GTA belongs in this end, since the most fun is to be had just playing with the game mechanics, rather than in completing the story. There's room for a huge amount of variety along this scale and there is a lot of room at both ends of the spectrum. Often these different game types even address totally separate target markets.

Htsthbjig 12y ago

"Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously?" Of course. There are film theaters and Internet. You can count good films at the end of the year with the fingers of your hand. Good film makers are going to spend lots of time making films, not watching them. There is lots of great series now, but if you are a professional you just need one or two episodes to really grasp the entire collection. Writers of series always use the same proven structure that works. Once you know, it is kind of boring because all series look the same.

mattmanser 12y ago
Al Lowe says in the article that he doesn't play games and hasn't owned a console for 15 years. And yet somehow he has an opinion of the state of games today. That's what the reference is. It's pretty obvious what rodgerd meant if you actually read the article.
- Roboprog 12y ago
  There were times in my life I had no TV, but I still saw parts of some shows over at friend's houses. Same applies, I suspect. "I've seen it, and I don't want one" I'm not saying I agree with the assessment, but I get it.

on_and_off 12y ago

Regardless of the value of his opinion, I tend to agree : for the vast majority of games (where it is applicable, eg sport games do not count), I have found the stories extremely weak. The same power trip story is copy pasted to many games, especially AAA ones. It is obviously subjective but I also feel a tendency to stay away from complicated plots, Deus Ex is one of my favorite games but I have hated Human Revolution. The plot is extremely predictable from its beginning to its end, it felt like a collection of the most popular cyberpunk tropes. I loved the fact that I could not trust anyone in DE, especially in some chapters (like Hong Kong) where it is up to you to travel in the open world in order to discover who is playing you (pretty much everyone, at different levels). In HR, that feeling is entirely gone, replaced with a paper thin conspiracy. I am not sure he is entirely right though. Great storytelling has always been difficult. It is unfair to compare the average 2015 game to Monkey Island 1+2. There were also some mediocre stories back in Sierra days, we have just forgotten most of these and mostly remember a couple of gems.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

Not to mention, those are fun games with interesting and novel game mechanics. My memories of Sierra games more or less involve cheating because many of the puzzles were arbitrary. Oh, you gave the chicken leg to the yeti instead of the eagle? Now find a save game from 5 hours before! There's a reason Sierra failed - player punishing adventure games fell out of fashion. I play more than a few adventure and point and click games on Steam and rarely are the puzzles Sierra-like frustrating. That formula just doesn't work and only worked because of the lack of competition in the 80s. The early 1990s brought us stuff like Doom, Civilization, Myst, etc and killed the adventure game market. Heck, The Longest Journey and its sequels, pretty much brought back the Sierra-style game and sold a lot of copies. Compare it to what Sierra was doing. TLJ is pretty much fine art compared to the schlock-fest and hammy writing of the Sierra crew. > I realized, anyway, by the mid-'90s that people weren't looking for deeper games with deeper puzzles and thought-provoking concepts and all these things we were hoping for. Talk about paying yourself a compliment! Are we really saying Half-Life's or Chrono-Trigger's storytelling is more shallow than the milquetoast stories of the Sierra universe? Come on. There's also an argument here that games shouldn't be "do some work to get to the next part of the story" visual novels. There's balance between story and game. Some lean more one way than another. There's nothing wrong with either approach. I think modern gamers lean towards a more cinematic story-telling experience, which is a questionable fad. If anything, games are too story-based right now. That said, I feel a little sorry for Al. He and his people were on top of the gaming world in the 1980s and are now deep into irrelevancy. The sad part is, if he took on a more mature attitude like, "Hey, we had a lot of fun, but the industry changed quickly and we didn't, and we got squashed," a bit like Nolan Bushnell did about Atari, I'd have some respect for him. But playing the endless blame game (gamers suck, management sucks, but the creatives are oh-so perfect) just makes him look a primadonna.

protomyth 12y ago

> Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously? Consider a lot of people went and saw a comic book movie done by a man who doesn't read and, it seems, hates comic books, I'm not sure that's a disqualifier of the filmmaker's opinion.

bryondowd 12y ago
A comic book movie is still a movie, regardless of the inspiration. I would rather have someone who hates comic books make said movie than a comic book fanatic who hates movies. Now, if he were making a comic book, it would be a problem.
- protomyth 12y ago
  I would say a comic book movie is a combination of forms with the best being made by folks who love both. Loving only one does not disqualify you from trying to combination. Just as some people make movies and hate TV. TV viewing is not a prerequisite for being a competent film maker.
  - bryondowd 12y ago
    I'm not sure I would agree with you there. I suspect these movies are far more movie than comic book, and that the target audience is far more moviegoer than comic book fan. If anything, I think being a big comic book fan could actually be a detriment for such a filmmaker, as they would have to resist doing things that work for comic books/comic book fans but don't really work for movies/moviegoers. But more likely, if it is a good filmmaker, whether they like comic books will have little or no impact on whether they can make a good film, even if it is based on a comic book. The mediums are just too different.

alricb 12y ago

> Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously? If he were French, I would. French TV is shit.

fragmede 12y ago

> Seriously, if you were interviewing a filmaker who proundly said, "I haven't owned a TV in 15 years, because I know it's all shit", would you take their opinion seriously? If that filmmaker were D. W. Griffith, I sure as shit would.