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11.
ADD AND ABSTRACT
The tendency to discuss
games in the vernacular of cinema and the subsequent strategies
to market games in such a way as to convince the customer that
a game is in fact like a film is harmful in its reduplication
of the manipulative and concealing nature of realist work. This
trait
of discussing the similarities of the movies and video games
is most specifically a likening of these artifacts of play with
the Hollywood blockbuster, rather than a self-reflexive and/or
emotionally engaging artistic feat. Designers and developers strive
to create a playing experience that emulates the act of watching
a movie, sometimes using distinctive pans and zooms within gameplay
to grant it greater cachet amongst the media hungry masses. Most
often, games inject a rather contrived storyline into the playing
space through a series of animated videos referred to as "cinematics"
or "cut-scenes". As film is a far more acceptable mode
of media consumption, this also has the effect of attracting new
blood to a specific title or console. The perception is that unrealistic
gaming experiences alienate the player from the potential interactivity.
Wolf
points out that quite the adverse is true. Distancing from clearly
recognizable digital imagery has a freeing effect, allowing the
user greater room for interpretation. Although an endeavor toward
photorealism has become the norm of game design,
the
time and motion present in a video game, coupled with complex
graphics, could add to the stimulation of attention and curiosity,
and play with expectations in a variety of ways. Games could
even be designed such that the rules by which they are played,
and the ways actions and consequences are connected, could be
varied from game to game, requiring the player to learn anew
every time9.
The
need to streamline the playing experience, in keeping primarily
with the look and expectations of Hollywood, works to negate the
utopian possibilities of simulation. While game companies wish
to present an experience we are familiar with and feel that we
can be immersed into, the possibility to engage with the medium
as a unique happening or unique form of entertainment dwindles.
The industry is exploding and adapting the creatively stifling
production mode of its rich uncle, the film industry. The possibility
for postmodern commentary and critique via a form which recognizes
its limitlessness and multifaceted makeup has existed in video
gaming for some time. Pockets
of resistance to standard fare exist and proliferate on the
web, but the potential for an alternate method of popular gaming
seems to have slipped us by while we were watching the 90 minutes
of dialogue sequences included in Driver
3. The culture industry presents us with only that which
it is familiar with, imposing desire upon us and refusing the
possibility for intelligent art.
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