Brainy Gamer comments on MGS4 cutscenes

[The Ghost of RubangB]

Wow. What a swell comparison. I guess the next logical step is for Kojima to start making MGS movies and stop making movies disguised as games! Oh snap!

I just jest.

But while Eisenstein picked up where Griffith left off and avoided the shackles of film as theater, I think people have already made games as games rather than games as film. Tetris, Super Mario Bros., and SimCity come to mind. I think Pajitnov, Miyamoto, and Wright have each developed a language of gaming that doesn't rely on film or even storytelling at all, and they are all different languages, one of fast-paced puzzle solving, one of character movement, and one of world-creating. I think these are all very valid and very important to gaming, and I'd say they're all more important than storytelling in games whatsoever.

Is storytelling really the sole purpose of games? Or is it simply one out of many equally desirable goals for the medium? Are we going to stop liking Tetris because it isn't cinematic enough?

I think that there are many forms of theater, film, and games, and that they are all equally acceptable. I think mixing and matching them isn't necessarily bad (or good) in and of itself, but I can definitely see how it got in the way of Griffith and Kojima in similar ways. I think films with highly gestural theater acting have worked before Griffith was even around (Trip to the Moon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiDWmXHR3RQ), and I think cutscenes in games have been both successful and unsuccessful for decades. The first example to pop to my head is the cutscenes in the original Ninja Gaiden on NES. You might argue that they were basically comic strips, but the way they would appear one panel at a time and move around on the screen was actually a popular film technique in documentaries for a few decades before the game came out.

I'm rambling. Anyway, this was a great read. I've never heard of this web site before. Is the rest of their stuff this good?