Last week we talked about gaming narrative. This is actually a topic that I find very interesting because there seems to be a divide in the industry between people who like narrative in games and people who think that extensive narrative has no place in games. I personally think that games are probably the best way to tell narrative because the consumer actually moves the story along with their actions. Whereas a book or a movie puts the reader or watcher in a completely passive role, a game can tell a story by making the player a part of it. If done well, this can usually make the player more invested in what's happening than if they were just reading about the events.
While many games separate gameplay from cinematics, Bioshock is a good example of a game that does not. Half-Life 2 also did this really well. It puts the player in the middle of the cut scenes and designs them in such a way that compels the player to look where they are supposed to look. I really like this kind of solution because it adds an extra layer of immersion. In another game that would go to a cut scene, I would be reminded that I'm actually playing a game, but here, the events are happening all around me in real-time and I am a participant.
Some games, however, have very minimal narrative--just enough to give a reason for the mechanics and the end goal. Rayman Origins is a good example of this. The game starts with Rayman and Globox sleeping. They snore too loudly and apparently cause all of hell to break loose with their snoring. So now they have to make the world right again. This is an oversimplified, ridiculous story that only serves to explain why the player is doing all of these tasks. Still, it works exceptionally well and really makes the game that much more enjoyable.
I personally enjoy a large backstory and an extensive narrative to pull me into a game. This would explain why many of the games I played as a child were D&D games on the computer. The gameplay is pretty simple, but the stories were the reason I played. I always just wanted to know: What will happen next? What will the next region look like? Who will my party meet? That's what kept me playing even through the most tedious games.
Lit and Media
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Monday, April 1, 2013
Encoding/Decoding and Technology and Society
Well, this definitely was some dense
reading. Unfortunately, I fear that much of the material discussed
here flew way over my head. Here is what I managed to take away from
Encoding/Decoding by Stewart
Hall and Technology and Society by
Raymond Williams. When deciding on a message to send, it is important
to be aware of a few very important things or else the message you
are trying to send can and probably will be misunderstood. The essay
by Stewart Hall was mostly about this concept of creating the right
message so that what you want to get across is the same thing that
others see when they view your message. It is all about working with
connotations of words and with the things people are generally
familiar with simply from consuming media and observing the world
around them. Personally, I find that my communication is often
misconstrued and in my experience, the line between having a simple
conversation with someone and offending someone is a fine line
indeed.
The
essay by Raymond Williams was more about television and how it
affects us today. This is what I was able to understand from it, at
least. I personally don't care much for television. Before I came to
Ringling, I watched it a lot, but now the internet has replaced my
television and I suspect the same can be said for many people with
internet access. In fact, I think that this whole television debate
will soon become obsolete and the internet will replace it. Most
people use the internet like television already and it would be
pretty crazy to talk about television and the internet without
mentioning torrents and how easy it is to find television shows for
free. I doubt that this will be going away any time soon. I think the
internet will be in our living room instead of cable television and I
think this change is already happening.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Akira Kurosawa and his films
I watched three movies by Akira
Kurosawa to analyze how prevalent his influence is through three
separate films. The three movies were Throne of Blood, Seven
Samurai and Ran.
What's interesting about these
movies is that two of them are based on Shakespeare plays, so another
creative mind is already contributing to these works indirectly.
However, it is known that Kurosawa writes his own films by himself,
which makes sense because all three movies definitely seemed to be
made by the same person. The cinematography was fairly similar across
the board. All three films made generous use of dramatic pauses
during which little to no action is taking place and the camera holds
on one figure. Cuts are generally made only when necessary and a
single shot is occasionally stretched to the maximum length it can be
without getting uncomfortable. Also (and this may just be a trait
found in Japanese films) the actors sometimes overact their roles.
The moments are really dramatized and characters will often express
their anger or frustration very frankly with body language or facial
expressions. There is little subtlety to be had in these films.
Kurosawa's
establishing shots are also very similar across these three movies.
He shows the land in its natural peaceful state before he introduces
the conflict that leaves the land foggy and covered in bodies. In
fact, his pivotal battles are often punctuated by some sort of
weather effect or an ominous fog to set the tone for the scene.
Everything about his shots is extremely well measured and very
deliberate.
Likewise,
the lighting in Kurosawa's environments, especially his interior
spaces, is hardly ever realistic. There is always light where there
needs to be light and there is always shadow where something or
someone must be covered. He uses light and contrast to bring
attention to important characters or actions and when that light
would not naturally be present, he puts it there anyway, because in
the end, he is making a film that must read the way he wants it to.
Sometimes he tries to explain that light with something like a gap in
the wall. Other times, there is no reason for it at all. It simply
needs to be there for the shot.
One
last thing that I think is worth mentioning is the way he is able to
communicate ideas and thoughts without a word of dialogue. The
quality of these films is not very good, so the actors often had to
compensate by very clearly showing their emotions on their faces. But
at times, a character will say nothing at all while speaking entirely
with their body language. They can express fear, dismay and even
madness in this manner. It is really quite impressive what Kurosawa
can do with visuals alone.
Monday, March 11, 2013
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Notes
This is meant to be a movie that turns preconceptions upside
down—just like McMurphy realizes that this isn’t what he signed up for, the
viewers should go through a similar transformation. I want them to really hate
McMurphy when he shows up and then I want them to become as attached to him as
the patients are. At every corner of the hospital, I want there to be reminders
that the staff control every single aspect of the patients’ lives and every
attempt to give the patients the illusion of choice is as transparent to
McMurphy as it is to the audience.
McMurphy
is as rebellious as they come and I think it is imperative that this shows
clearly—even as he is trying to be cooperative in the beginning. His sly
remarks must read as subtle jabs and his banters should be right on the edge of
genuine. He knows he’s in a mental hospital, but he still has belief in his
fellow man. He should be the only healthy person to speak to the patients as
one sane man speaks to another. While the nurses may occasionally soften their
voices or speak slowly and clearly, Mcmurphy assumes that they are as present
in their minds as he is. Ratched is the only exception to this rule. Still,
this is the mistake he and Ratched make—because they are mental patients, they
are mentally unstable. They make radical decisions without considering their
effects on an unhealthy mind. McMurphy gets them to break the rules and start
rebelling while Ratched berates them and humiliates them, further degrading
their mental states. This all comes to a head when Billy kills himself when he
hears the threats Ratched makes. Just when the viewer starts to believe that
these patients are getting better—just as Billy speaks without a stutter for
the first time, Ratched says something that would barely faze a sane man, but
Billy, as we come to understand, is not a sane man. None of them are and
everyone is brought back to square one.
Likewise,
the patients are all there for a reason, and as such, most of the conversations
between them and the outside world should be at least somewhat awkward and a
little uncomfortable. They are not used to having such a smooth speaker and
alpha male as McMurphy in their ranks and by the end it should be an honor for
them to be in his company. This man is what little of the outside world that
they get to see regularly and soon he becomes a symbol of the man they must be
like to function on the outside—especially for Billy, who refuses to leave
because he is no prepared.
This
also becomes a new experience for McMurphy, who was an alpha male on the
outside, but never had much of a following. Here, McMurphy has a chance to be
in an environment where he really is mentally superior to everyone he
encounters and, as such, is able to get people to do things through his
charisma. This McMurphy is the complete opposite of the McMurphy after the
lobotomy. Throughout most of the film, he is trying to escape and in the end he
does with the help of the Chief. The most important idea about this movie is
that nothing is ever as simple as it seems and even in a controlled environment
like a hospital, terrible, unexpected things can happen when something new is
introduced.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Medium Is the Message
well, I thought this was an interesting book. So if I were to add another page, it would probably be a little bit more optimistic. And it would look something like this:
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Thoughts on Lolita
Lolita is an interesting
book because it deals with something that crosses far beyond the threshold of
taboo, and yet it does it so skillfully and eloquently that the reader often
forgets exactly what the book is about, which is a somewhat psychotic
pedophile who is also a pathological liar. The only problem is, he’s really
good at what he does—so good that the reader, if not primed to mistrust this
man, may not realize that the contents of his “journal” are not coming from a
trustworthy source. Of course, I’m talking about Humbert, in this case, not the
author.
The narrator goes to such
lengths to try to prove his innocence, but then he says things like, “I did not
plan to marry poor Charlotte in order to eliminate her in some vulgar, gruesome
and dangerous manner such as killing her by placing five bichloride-of-mercury
tablets in her preprandial sherry or anything like that…” It completely throws
the reader off and he’s slowly comes to realize that this narrator is either
toying with us as he does with the psychiatrists, or he really does have a mental
problem that can make him quite dangerous. It’s an amusing little dance he does
between revealing what I imagine is his true self, and a masked version of his character
that he uses to stay as presentable as possible for an audience that may be
responsible for his fate.
What I really found quite
unique to this book was that as I read it, I registered that the narrator was a
little insane and had serious problems, but it was only when I started
listening to the audiobook that I realized just how deep Humbert’s issues are.
There was something about the way the voice actor talked that made it sound
like he sincerely believed and agreed with the things he was saying—especially
the parts where he laboriously pronounces Dolores’s pet name, “Lo-lee-ta.” I
actually liked the story more when I was listening to it than when I was
reading it. As I was reading, it just seemed like I was a passive observer—not
even an observer, more like a secondhand listener being told a story from
someone who heard it from someone else. When I listened to the audiobook, It
felt like I was right there in the room with Humbert as he told me about his
fetish for little girls and of his adopted daughter whom he has sex with
repeatedly. It’s so much more visceral and it makes the detailed a thousand times
more difficult to ignore.
I like
that Humbert really tries to justify his actions. He does not deny them.
Instead, he reasons that he does not do any harm with his lust for nymphets.
Also, according to Humbert, why does it even matter when the romans would
molest twelve-year-old boys and holy figures would be wed to wives who had not
even hit puberty yet? To him, there was nothing wrong with what he did, and
that’s what made the book so interesting—it was from a perspective so utterly
unlike my own, I have to suspend my disbelief to unprecedented levels just to
get through it.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Conan the Warrior
Conan the Warrior
One thing I kept noticing was that Robert E. Howard went into
very lengthy descriptions about the characters and the landscape he was
introducing. Also, it seemed that he took every opportunity to make the
characters as sexy as possible. When Conan laughs, he flexes his bicep for
appeal. When he looks at Valeria, he pays particular attention to her large
breasts and hips. You can just imagine how the scene would unfold in a
movie—very little gets left to the imagination. The two main characters are
beautiful beyond compare because they are the perfect man and woman (so it
would seem) with no real flaws, except quickness to violence and occasional
rash decision-making, both of which are still pretty attractive attributes. It
seems that this short book was made the same way a sitcom would be made
today—by which I mean it serves no real purpose but to entertain. No big ideas
get thrown around, no morals are questions, and everything is pretty black and
white. It’s just a book about two nearly superhuman characters messing around
in a dangerous town and fighting off monsters and men alike with almost
reckless abandon.
All in all, it certainly knows how to be entertaining. I
completely understand the necessity for such literature. I also noticed that
just about everything I’d consider cliché in today’s writing is a constant presence in Conan the Warrior: Women who move with the quickness of a cat and
men who have bulging muscles just about everywhere. It’s one giant mixing pot
of the things that gave birth to today’s genre literature.
Another thing I noticed was that Howard gives incredible
details to little things like belts and clothes. He pays very close attention
to how the clothes fall on the person wearing them—especially if the form
underneath is still discernable through the clothes. This appears to be exactly the thing
that many people would want to read about because such beautiful people simply
don’t exist in real life and being able to get such an accurate description of
what one looks like is just as good as seeing a celebrity or a 3d model of an
incredibly attractive hero rendered on screen—and thousands of people pay to
see that every day. Perhaps I'm over-simplifying it, but this is just how it seems to me.
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