Tag Archive for 'story in games'

Mass Effect 3 as Automatic Performance Art by the Collective Unconscious

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players

A large group of devoted Mass Effect fans absolutely detested the ending to the game’s third, final installment. The outrage became so frenzied that developer BioWare announced that they were going to change it. This news has led to further frenzied outrage from game developers fearing that their artistic integrity will no longer be respected, critics decrying it as the death of games-as-art, and other general quasi-enlightened indignation.

The simple answer to all this is that video games are inherently a collaboration between author and audience. The more holistic answer is twofold:

  1. An author’s intent is meaningless if they fail to communicate it to the audience
  2. Art and meaning does not have to be intentional, and is often unintentional

The first point is a uniquely metamodern observation: it neither rejects nor accepts the validity of authorial intent, but makes it contingent upon its relationship to the audience’s interpretation. The second point is something that has been well-established since the dadaist and surrealist movements (but obviously not widely-understood). The result is that Mass Effect is not a mere series of video games. It is performance art, being unwittingly performed both by BioWare and their fans.

VAGUE SPOILERS FOR MASS EFFECT 3 FOLLOW
Continue reading ‘Mass Effect 3 as Automatic Performance Art by the Collective Unconscious’

    Realization: Hideo Kojima is Video Gaming’s Béla Tarr, Except Not Talented

    I didn't intentionally position Tarr so he was looking at Kojima all like, "You think I'm this fucking guy?" But it worked out pretty well.

    Béla Tarr is the director of cult classic Hungarian films such as Sátántangó. Hideo Kojima is the designer of massively popular Japanese video games such as Metal Gear Solid 4. These two men actually have quite a lot in common, save for the medium they work in, their popularity, and their pretentiousness when discussing their craft.

    Let me describe Sátántangó to you, briefly. The opening consists of an eight minute shot of the camera doing almost nothing while watching a bunch of cows:
    Continue reading ‘Realization: Hideo Kojima is Video Gaming’s Béla Tarr, Except Not Talented’