GDC Rant: "The medium is not adolescent, you're ****ing adolescent"

[Reasonable]

Khuutra said:

Gamerace said:
@ Reasonable - Yeah you're right, that's the rut the industry is stuck in. And a purely 'artsy' game isn't likely to ever be a big hit.

But take movies for example, the biggest blockbusters inevitably may be action flicks but they are almost always action flicks with heart. Some romance, the hero grows emotionally/spiritually during the course of the action, so they at least have some depth even though it may not be the driving action.

There's no reason VGs couldn't embrace this as well. Image a Halo game that starts off as normal, but Master Chief gets a little cocky, makes a slight misjudgment and it results in utter, total defeat but not death to himself. He's shamed, dishonourably discharged and a broken man, now struggling to just stay alive amidst the horde invasion and not even sure it's worth the bother. Meets a female soldier who still believes in him, gets him to believe in himself (becomes love interest 'natch) and Master Chief arises anew and claims human victory from the jaws of total defeat and annilation. Now that would be emotionally satisfying, even for a woman to play (especially if they could play as a female MC) although the action might need to be taylored for a more casual player (in easy mode, relax).

Halo is a very bad example of this, considering how powerful and important and central to the narrative Cortana (and Captain Keyes) is.

 

Actually, while its good for a videogame, Halo I would argue that its characters and situations are typically oversimplistic (even allowing for Cortana and Captain Keyes). In truth they are more standard plot points than anything of a truly narrative nature.

I think the points made by Gamerace were fair enough - even if the Hero who makes a mistake is a cliche that's still a heck of a lot more of a character than the eternally calm Master Chief.

The truth is that most games like Halo, Gears, etc. do play to certain very rigid and adolescent archetypes. The young guys who love MC do so becuase he's cool, wins and never makes a mistake as such.

Almost no videogame I can think of have characters with true arcs and narrative discovery. I believe this is possible, if only based on a title like Silent Hill 2 which does take the lead character through one heck of a voyage of self discovery, to some very unpleasant places.

But while I would rate Halo very highly as a game, as a narrative it is a set of elements taken from other works (both film and literature) to provide a strong background to an extremely simple plot in the service of a lot of cool videogame mayhem.