First, a brief history lesson. No, come back! It won't last long! Still here? Marvellous. Then I'll begin...
A small group of film critics (François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard amongst others), writing for the Cahiers Du Cinéma magazine, reacted against this artistic suffocation by the French studios. They championed a number of foreign directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock, who worked within the studio system but whose technical excellence allowed them to leave 'signatures' on a film through their visual style and tackle challenging themes through symbolism and allegory that would be off-limits to less ambitious minds. Due to their unique filmmaking techniques and singular creative visions, the critics called these directors the 'auteurs' (authors) of their films.
Those film critics went on to become film-makers themselves in what was known as the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave). The highly experimental movement ripped up the studio rulebook and twisted expectations of how a film was supposed to be presented and watched, appealing to the senses as well as the intellect (well, it was French). The situation French cinema found itself in before these directors revitalised it bears some similarities to how the videogame industry is operating now. Of course the details are different: rather than family-safe, moral message productions, the overwhelming majority of games released by big publishers are sequels in a limited number of popular genres, often near-identical to one another in terms of visuals and gameplay mechanics. Gaming is in desperate need of 'authors' to drag it out of creative lethargy.
There are many possible reasons why gaming has so far struggled to
find them. One might be that people seeking to enter the industry are
overwhelmingly likely to be young: the medium itself is only about
forty years old, so apart from those present at the beginning, new
entrants most likely be barely over half that old. Only very rarely do
people of that age have a strong world-view and the experience to
project it in a clear and confident manner. Asking them to helm a
multi-million dollar project and assert their artistic personality onto
the resulting game is an infeasible demand for most because they
themselves will barely be sure of what they believe in. In their desire
to learn their craft and be accepted, acquiescence will inevitably be
given to those who trod the ground before, turning into powerless
obeisance of their money-men task masters. Reports abound over the
internet of veteran programmers being refused jobs despite their years
of experience: unfortunately, the industry seems to value the knowledge
gained by age less than the malleability of youth.
While it's important to appreciate that the industry operates as a
business and will therefore go where the money is, the growing reliance
on formula sequels is strangling the young medium's bid to promote
itself as a worthy cultural form. It is segregating the gaming audience
in the same way that resulted in the graphic novel industry (which
produces a much larger number of intellectually stimulating works than
videogames) failing to find readers for its best works outside the
stereotypical niche. The artistic merits of games and graphic novels
are championed by fans, but apart from token bids by newspapers to
bring in younger readers by showing 'open-mindedness', the assumption
prevails that where books, film and radio have great cultural worth for
everyone, gaming and graphic novels are best left to adolescents. And
who can blame them, when the games industry itself continues to treat
its products as little more than cash-cows to exploit juvenile
fantasies?
Despite being derided by long-time fans for the manner in which
they've gone about it, Nintendo's outward-thinking with the Wii has
proven that the medium can appeal to non-gamers if offered in a manner
that proves it has interests beyond those of the average teenage boy.
Is Wii Sports colourful and child-friendly in its
presentation? Absolutely. But for most people that's no bad thing: If
they're going to be asked to play, childhood is where they'll be most
comfortable reverting back to. It's the juvenile years, when we all
thought we were cleverer than we were and lusted after the empty
pleasures of life, that most sensible adults would prefer to leave
behind. Games like Gears of War, despite the 'Mature' rating on the box, are more of an uncomfortable reminder.
The Wii is the brainchild of Shigeru Miyamoto, General Manager and
Head of Creative Development at Nintendo, also one of the few men who
can make a strong claim to being an 'author' of the games industry. His
authorial signature comes through a devotion to mixing accessibility
and depth, presented in a style that is cheerful without descending
into garish infantilism. He operates firmly within the gaming
mainstream, yet many of his games have strong surrealist aesthetic
influences (Pikmin, Super Mario Bros) and narratives in his story-driven games are deceptively deep (examining loneliness in Majora's Mask). He also has a knack for bringing in audiences who would not traditionally call themselves game players.
His presence is not just helpful for the games and consoles he
invents, but as a figurehead the industry can use to give authority to
their claims for cultural and artistic worth. One of the differences
between the literary or film industries and graphic novels is that the
former two can point out any number of great writers or directors,
respected by people in all walks of life regardless of their
entertainment preferences, as evidence of what their media can offer.
Comic books can provide a handful at best - Alan Moore and who?
Having these figures, whose creative appeal stretches over
boundaries and redefines the limits of what their medium has to offer,
is invaluable not only in terms of cultural respectability but also
increasing the number of people who would be open to trying things they
otherwise might not. Audiences are attracted to big events and having a
marquee name behind any product is a reassuring sign that the product
in question will likely be among highest quality of its kind.
A further benefit of the presence of 'author' figures in an
industry is that studios (or publishers) can feel safer in backing
riskier projects. This is not only because they know that the person in
charge is experienced in what they're doing, but also that the name
alone will be enough to bring in a certain amount of publicity and
sales. If we consider the upcoming Epic Mickey as an example,
having Mickey Mouse as the protagonist might have given the game a
certain importance over other platformers, but it was Warren Spector's
involvement and gamers' knowledge both of the quality of his past work
and the authorial gameplay signatures inserted within them (player
freedom, a certain amount of role-playing elements, open level design)
that elevated the title to something worth giving a large chunk of
Nintendo's E3 stage-time to. Promotional interviews in newspapers and
magazines have been quick to label him as one of gaming's most
respected statesmen, making non-gamers want to know who he is and what
makes his games more special than the myriad others they had ignored.
Beyond Miyamoto and Spector, coming up with a list of candidates as potential gaming 'authors' is dispiritingly difficult. Fumito Ueda, lead designer of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, is the most obvious candidate. Jonathan Blow, of Braid fame, has potential. Unfortunately, few other designers seem to meet the basic criteria that the Cahiers Du Cinema critics laid out for auteurship.
Hideo Kojima
could be a front-runner, despite his sense of humour taking a bit of
getting used to. Grasshopper Studios' Suda Goichi certainly has the
signatures and creative talent in abundance, but operates too far
outside the mainstream: his ironic deployment of gaming clichés are
easily confused as the same old adolescent fare by those not in-tune
with his mindset. As a team, Ice-Pick Lodge (Russian developers of Pathologic and The Void,
the latter of which I'll be writing about in-depth sometime soon) are
worth mentioning for having a manifesto of design ambitions and
dedication to creating experiences that expand how the interactive form
can express story and theme. Yet while the themes they draw their games
around (social decay, depression) are more broadly accessible than
Suda's, the manner in which they do so is profoundly anti-mainstream
and even seeks to make the experience uncomfortable for the player. The
only other candidate I could come up was David Cage of Heavy Rain
fame, but while his devotion to interactive drama is admirable, the
quality of his work (and writing especially) is debatable at best.
As much as the present methods of business-focused thinking is
proving lucrative for publishers, any industry so focused on finance
above creative endeavour will almost certainly end up consuming itself
and destroying any potential for expansion. The gaming industry's
patronising approach to its customers is evident both in its oppression
of young talent and reliance on formulaic genre sequels, as well as
attempts to catch on Nintendo's coat-tails and the Wii Sports
phenomenon, confusing understandable presentation for hand-holding. The
resulting flood of low-quality 'casual' games decided that the best way
of enticing those without controller experience was to treat them as
though they had the cognitive capacities of a three-year old.
By developing more individual talents, publishers can not only give
themselves a safety net for backing more experimental titles, but also
have promotional figures to introduce the medium to new customers:
surely the sign of a mature industry is how comfortably its creative
and business brains cohabit. If gaming is ever to create a Citizen Kane of its own, it has to first be open to finding an Orson Welles.
PS: I've been writing one post per week on Gamasutra for the past five months, but will now be taking some time off until the winter. Many thanks to everyone who has read and/or commented on my work.