Video Games, Writing, and Story

  If you're a fanatical fan of my blog and just so happen to have a perfect memory than you may remember that I once embarrassed myself by writing a post about how I was excited for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to come out and continue the story. In that sense I was making myself look bad to both kinds of gamers. The butch, trigger happy patrons of franchises such as Modern Warfare look down on me because I actually played MW and MW2 just for the plot. The true geeks, those who support video games as art and watch Zero Punctuation religiously (I like to think I'm a true geek. I do watch Zero Punctuation a lot too, "Yahtzee" Croshaw rocks) frown at me, shake their heads and wonder how small a brain I must have to feel immersed and involved in the plot of the Modern Warfare games.

So, I recognize that my excitement in the face of the release of MW3 generally makes me a loser in the eyes of everyone, but that won't stop me from discussing it. I was quite excited to play through the campaign of MW3 and see where the story would go. I knew the plot had finally boiled over into world war 3 (It's not like they didn't advertise that a million times) and I just wanted to see how our protagonists would make it out alive and also bring a satisfactory and fulfilling close to the Modern Warfare franchise. My first complaint about the campaign for MW3 was that it was 5 hours. As Captain Price lit a cigar and the credits began rolling I just sat in shock, staring at my screen. The game ended so quickly, and with so little warning that I felt like I hadn't even played half a game. The fact that the entire end of the game was a series of quick-time events didn't help either. The end of the game just left me feeling empty and a little angry and ripped off. The first Modern Warfare had really drawn me in with its plot and had actually surprised me with plot twists. MW2 was exciting and made me care about the characters and even slightly stirred my emotions. MW3 made me realize I had just wasted 5 hours.

What was the difference between the first two games in the franchise and MW3? I recently stumbled onto a theory. Modern Warfare and MW2 were written by Jesse Stern, a television writer best known for writing NCIS. MW3 brought on a new writer, Paul Haggis, writer of several films including Crash and Casino Royale. When I first realized this I mulled it over for a while and then wrote my thoughts on my future brother in-law's wall. Jenny's brother, Jon, is going to school for video game design so I like talking video games with him. Here's what I wrote on his wall:

"I think the difference is that Jesse Stern, as a TV writer, wrote each level of MW and MW2 as a self-contained "episode" so that each little story arc could feel fulfilling in and of itself. Paul Haggis on the other hand tried to write a giant cinematic finale for the whole series and left us with a series of unsatisfying and schizophrenic levels wrapped up in an anticlimactic finale.

Moral of the story? Maybe video games should be structured more like TV shows than movies."

This got me thinking about some of the video games I've really enjoyed for their story, and how that story was structured. I am a huge fan of the games of BioWare because of their consistently fantastic writing, story telling, and overall pacing. Again, some might say this makes me a bad gamer, but I by far prefer BioWare games (Mass Effect, KOTOR) over Bethesda games (Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3) just because BioWare games are easier to swallow. The endless worlds of Bethesda games may be immersive and interesting, but I tend to lose the plot in them and forget why I'm even playing. Two of my favorite games from BioWare, and favorite games of all time, are Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect (I have yet to play ME2 so I can't speak for that yet). As far as story goes I would say that both of these games do espouse more of an episodic approach than a single movie approach. In both of these games the story is composed of a tremendous series of assignments or quests that generally each have fulfillment within themselves. For example, if I finish a quest in one of those two games I feel like I have accomplished something, when I finish a level in MW3 I just feel like I have to keep going so I can get somewhere. It makes sense that BioWare games are so similar in the quality of their writing because they're pretty much all written by the same guy--Drew Karpyshyn, Senior BioWare Writer.

I guess this leaves a sort of age old question: Does the story serve the gameplay or does the gameplay serve the story. Of course it's a mix and very open to individual preferences. This is also a chicken-egg sort of situation because without both you won't have a good game. If you have the best gameplay in the world but the story is so bad that it completely distracts you from the gameplay, or vice versa, then you've got yourself a bad game.

I think my personal preference is one of extremes. Maybe it's because I'm a writer, or maybe it's because I'm a "video games as art" hippy, but to me story is very important. In the games I generally choose to play I like either all strong story or no story at all, none of this MW3 middle ground. For example, I've been playing Combat Arms on and off for over two years now. Combat Arms is an MMOFPS and therefore has no story. I mean, each map has a description that can be loosely linked to the others, but other than that Combat Arms is nothing but gameplay. In the case of Combat Arms I'm there just for the gameplay. Another example is Hedone, another free-to-play MMOFPS that's still in closed beta. I just so happen to be awesome enough to be a member of that closed beta. Again, Hedone does have a cool premise that gives it a really great feel, but as far as actual story, there is none. But contrast that with games like Mass Effect and KOTOR where, though the gameplay was pretty good, the focus was on the story, at least for me. A lot of people complained about the annoying vehicle sections in Mass Effect. To be honest, I barely noticed them. I was being pulled along by the story and if I had to drive around a little to find out what would happen next I was willing to do that. So I guess give me story or give me death, by which of course I mean give me nothing but killing other players.

It can be difficult to discuss video games as art because so many people, including Roger Ebert, claim that "video games can never be art" (at least not yet, Ebert concedes). I think the biggest difficulty for the non-gamer is seeing how a game where you run around shooting people can have any meaning more than that. Please forgive me, as I am about to do something unbearable. Allow me to compare video games to Stanly Kubrick's film, Full Metal Jacket. Full Metal Jacket is about war and death, trauma and PTSD. Full Metal Jacket is very violent, with a whole lot of shooting. Anyone who has seen the film cannot forget "Gomer Pyle's" descent into insanity and terrifying end, nor can we forget the lethal sniper who turns out to be a young girl who nobody can feel good about killing. This film evokes powerful emotions and communicates these messages through the story telling. If it was not for the artful story telling this movie would just be some violent war movie. What then of Modern Warfare and MW2? These are probably some of the worst candidates for artful shooters that I could choose, but I haven't play any of the Half-Life games and Modern Warfare is what I've been talking about. Anybody who has played Modern warfare will vividly remember crawling out of a crashed helicopter after a nuclear explosion, just as anyone who has played MW2 will shiver when I say the phrase "Remember-no Russian." These games also conveyed powerful messages and emotions about the horrors of war and our fear of international terrorism. One of the greatest criticisms brought against MW3 is that it did not display war as a horrible thing, but as fun. The emotions and feelings that Full Metal Jacket conveys regarding war are very similar to those that the first two Modern Warfare games conveyed.

And shooters are possibly the least artistic of the games out there. Now, I own Bastion, Limbo, The Binding of Isaac, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I haven't played them yet, but I know they're artsier than the average game I play. The difficult with classifying video games as an art for is that so many video games, perhaps 75% of video games, are not art. They are not trying to be art, they do not want to be art, and they are not art. The majority games are just trying to be fun or, even worse, just trying to sell. Because gamers are a split bunch and will buy anything if it has a cool trailer. Probably more than 75% of the consumers of video games are not considering it an art form as they consume, which is why the industry caters to their taste and generally not to the taste of those looking for video games as art. But just because not all video games are art doesn't mean that some of them can't be. I mean, not all films are are aren't but that definitely doesn't mean they all aren't. Films have been recognized as an art for for years, but I remember taking Art and History of Film and they weren't always viewed as art. They had to fight for it too. Impressionism wouldn't exist if the impressionists had listened when the art community said they weren't art, rather than host independent exhibitions. Video games are still a growing and emerging art form, but I do believe that the art is here now.

I can't finish up without giving some more mention to Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, best known as a game critic at the Escapist Magazine with his "Zero Punctuation" videos. But, before doing that Croshaw actually had his own site where he released several games of his own making. Honestly, despite the graphics being made in MS Paint and Adobe PhotoShop, Croshaw's Chzo Mythos (A.K.A. John Defoe Quadrilogy) and 1213 trilogy were the games that really made me start thinking about games as art. I had played KOTOR at the point, and loved it, but I hadn't really begun thinking about what made it so amazing until I got a chance to play these simple, yet entirely artful, games. I would suggest anybody interested in video games as art, or just  good free games in general, check them out.

There, that's nearly 2000 words of me going back into my old rambling style, maybe that will make up for me skipping a day. I'm glad to be blogging again, and I feel really cool and smart having written all this intelligent sounding stuff about video games. I'm sure anybody who really knows what they're talking about is probably looking down on me right now, but this is just what I'm thinking. Anyway, I must be off now. Farewell!

P.S. The Supreme Court says video games are art, and the National Endowment for the Arts says so too.