Despise Me

Last night I had the Philadelphia premiere of my film As Real as Your Life, the audience who was primarily there to see a Herzog film they showed directly after me, seemed to react pretty well - I had the usual slew of people who clearly were not big gamers telling me how enlightening the film was (which is good of course). As I was leaving one final dude pulled me aside to give comment about the film. I didn't ask if he was a gamer, but my gut instinct told me he spends a good number of hours at the computer. He introduced himself and quickly got to the point "thanks for showing your film, but to be honest I despised it." It was definitely the most negative review I'd gotten so far. He gave me a few reasons about the format of the film, the disjointed construction, etc etc...It was clear the film seriously bothered him, and I don't think it was because of anything to do with the film's style. It was much deeper than that, much more personal. I think he might have thought I was a big of a phony - a filmmaker posing as a gamer as opposed to the other way around. To be honest I don't have as much time to play anymore, and my addiction is certainly under control - when I show the film I sometimes have to pretend I'm still the addict they see on screen.

After the film, chatting with my friend Rich, I came to a new conclusion - I need to make a new film, I need to document some eloquent gamers explaining why they play, get them to open up about what games do for them emotionally. I don't think most gamers would be down with this sort of opening up - I think many people play to escape some aspect of their real life, especially their own shyness. This will prove an interesting challenge in the new film.

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Despise Me »

Time Lapse

I so I've begun looking for other video game blogs that might provide me some inspiration. I post here video game blog about adding parental timer controls to the xbox360 reminded me of a conversation a few months ago when I was living in Hong Kong. China imposed government enforced limits on game play back in 2005, and of course to some degree it makes sense, especially when people have begun to literally play-to-death. So I'm not against timers, I've definitely spent many all nighters playing online, only to realize at dawn that I had missed my target bed time of 1am. There is something so unnatural with the idea of fusing an egg timer onto your console - couldn't the motivation for gamers to limit their playtime come from within the design of the game.

There is only one game which I think puts this theory to use - in Metal Gear Solid 3 someone at Konami had the awesome idea of getting rid of the all to common magical health pack that restores one's health to full capacity even after getting shot in the head. Instead they devised an in game interface for treating your own wounds. Get shot in the leg? Well you have to remove the bullet (ouch), apply ointment (ahhh), stitch up the wound (ouch), and bandage it.

After that you're still not healed, all you've done is treat the wound, you're still badly hurt. In order to heal yourself the player has to rest, not for a few seconds (a la Halo / Gears of War) but for a good long time. Thankfully the game takes a time stamp during saving, so all one has to do is save, shut down, and come back in a few hours and Solid Snake is ready to roll. Despite how much I love Metal Gear Solid, their 'Cure' system is a bit clunky, and I'll be surprised if it shows up again in Son's of the Patriots. However building in time limits into the design was a great move. It managed to limit playtime while actually making the experience of playing more real and more immersive.

Obviously games like WoW are designed to be played ad infinitum, but if all players were subject to the same design based session limiters might it all even out? In fact adding a more realistic temporal framework to a MMORPG could actually increase the sense of realism. What it was as simple as avatars getting tired, and having to sleep? It sounds silly but putting you avatar to bed after a long days fighting sorta makes sense. You let him rest and when you come back to play the next day you're both fully refreshed...

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Time Lapse »

"Yes mam even you.." Part I

So a month or so ago I screened my film at the public library in my home town of Princeton, NJ. The audience was mostly parents who had convinced their kids to come with them to a 'movie about video games'. During the Q&A afterwards a frail looking mother, maybe in her early fifties, asked me "Do you think a video game can be too violent." I wanted to share with you what I told her that night.

I told her: Yes - it is possible, but not in the way you think. What's important isn't the quantitative amount of violence (can you kill? is there blood? can you gib? hit and run? chainsaw bayonet?) but rather the context in which the violence takes place. All violent video games can be mapped onto a gradient based on the complexity of the context the game provides the player. I'm just going to talk about one end of the spectrum in this post. More to follow.

At one end are games that provide an extremely simplified context for the actions of the player - many first person shooters fall into this range - the setup is simple: you're a super marine and you have to kill everything in order to save the world. Or even more simple: "Those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride!" Parents and law makers have spent a lot of time trying to keep this type of game away from kids, but in my opinion they're not worth the worry...

That night at the library I explained to the inquisitive mom exactly what happens when you rev up your chainsaw bayonet. She looked absolutely horrified with the idea that her children might be chopping anything, even evil aliens, in half. Then I told her that if she were a super marine living in the over simplified context of Gears of War, where good and evil are clearly black and white, that, "yes mam even you, given the opportunity, would bury your chainsaw in bloody alien flesh".



She looked even more horrified, but after a moment I think she sorta got it. What I hope she realized is that the real world is obviously much much more complex that the worlds of these 'low context' games. These game worlds are so simple that even young kids would not confuse them with the real world. And if someone does confuse the two, it's probably a sign that they need to learn more about the real world before playing any more violent video games.

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"Yes mam even you.." Part I »

talk20 a plenty

Last week I spoke at talk20 here in Philadelphia. It was my first pechu-kucha presentaion and I only had two days to prepare so it was a bit stressful. I spoke about video games of course, the topic I'm guessing the organizers hoped I would speak on.

My talk bubbled out of a journal article I wrote with Dr. Gino Yu (more on him later) while I was living in Hong Kong back in April 07. It's about 'Communicating Spiritual Experiences with Video Games' - you can find the full text here. I admit it's a bit out there, but in going back over what we wrote I realized a lot of it makes sense. Here's the gist of what I talked about:

1) For almost all of human history ritual and myth have served as the primary way communities have designed shared experiences, and in turn shaped their culture.

2) Today mass media has replaced religion as the main delivery method of myth/ritual/shared experience. TV and film, are not as engaging as ancient ritual practices, and are therefore less effective in communicating experience.

3) Video games combine myth in ritual like practice into a single beautiful, engaging, narrative form which communicates experience in pure form.

4) There is a new modern day mythology evolving out of the experiences of video game players.

5) THE POINT: We need to consider the makeup of this new mythology, because, as was true throughout human history the myths, and hero stories people live by directly shape how they perceive the world, themselves, and the meaning of life (sort of important).

6) (Mostly because I was speaking to 300 artists and designers) It's time you got involved in designing the future mythology our culture will live by. In other words - it's time you got to thinking about video games.

To be honest I'm not sure how the talk was received. I got a few laughs (mostly for juxtaposing a video of me dancing at my brother's bar mitzvah with crazy tribal chanting rituals from the film Baraka, but I'm not sure my final thoughts really hit home. People still seem suprised when I tell them the future will be shaped by video games. Either way it was good to test out these ideas on a live audience.

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