IMPress Polly
02-13-2017, 10:46 AM
"Video games are here and they are here TO STAY!" --Paranoid Narrator
Yes, it's true: I finally got to see Jeremy Snead's 2014 purported documentary on the history of video games! It was gifted to me for Christmas by my aunt who figured I'd be interested because video games. She was partially right! I have to recommend Video Games: The Movie! It's so bad that it's quite entertaining! :grin:
I refer to Video Games: The Movie as a purported documentary because it contains almost no actual, concrete information. It was clearly not made with any sincere intent of educating the gaming non-initiate so much as serving up torrent after torrent of nostalgia for long-time video gamers. Montages of game footage are broken up by vague and disjointed summations of console generations that perhaps run a commercial from the era and/or have a forgotten '90s TV sitcom actor mention that one particular game from that generation was "good" or "special" before abruptly moving on to the next generation, having apparently covered the basis. Then the 3D timeline around which the film revolves starts over again with the backstory of the "legendary" video game industry crash of 1983 that almost no one seems to even recall, summarized just as non-specifically. (e.g. It is mentioned that the 1982 game E.T. prompted a backlash among consumers "due to its poor quality", yet no explanation of what made E.T. a subpar product is provided, as the game play is never described.) And it similarly keeps jumping back and forth and back and forth along its 3D timeline, clearly wanting to be divided up along topical lines (which makes more sense), yet remaining officially committed to telling events strictly in chronological order in a structural contradiction that perplexes. (One might call it a "legendary" contradiction. :wink:) In the process, whole swaths of gaming history that the filmmaker implicitly considers less legitimate (e.g. that of mobile gaming, so-called girl games, etc.) are pretty much completely ignored (even the history arcade gaming (a type still very much alive and thriving in Japan to this day) is somewhat sidelined) while the parts of gaming history that do matter to Snead are consistently describe with such non-specificity that little to no information can be resultantly gleaned by the non-initiate.
Video game developers are occasionally interviewed, but only Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, offers any kind of real insights into the process of video game development. The rest stick to vaguaries. (Sensing a theme?) No female game developers are interviewed.
Video Games: The Movie is little more informative when it comes to the topic of the cultivation of storytelling over the medium's history. It is insisted that video games constitute an art form, yet no examples of the artistic highlights over the decades are mentioned. Rather, the argument the film makes revolves around pointing out that the games industry of today frequently hires people to draw, write, act, perform music, etc. The same could be said of many porn films, but I doubt many people would allege that those have real artistic merit! Examples were definitely needed to substantiate the case. It's a shame they weren't provided, because there are plenty too!
I further take issue with the film's presentation of artistic progress as simply a matter of technological progress, as that represents a rather formulaic way of approaching creative expression. Is the storyline in Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (2015) really better than that in A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985) just because the former has a superior graphics engine and voice acting or does the question of thematic pertinence matter? Does Fallout 4 really offer us more social insights and touching moments than Gone Home just because the former includes dialogue choices and a vast, sprawling world while the latter does not? Creative expression cannot be reduced to a formula! That's what makes it creative expression! Otherwise it would just be math. There is a solid argument to be made that video games can indeed be used for purposes of artistic expression, but Snead is not the right messenger! He doesn't get art.
Snead's "documentary" is at its worst when it tries to tackle the controversies, past and present, surrounding the medium, consistently taking a one-sidedly pro-industry view and a scorched-Earth approach to anyone who disagrees. Those who concern themselves with the potential social impact of graphically violent content in popular video games, for example, only have these concerns because they're not only parents, but bad parents who neglect their children, the documentary insists at some length without evidence. (Let's be frank: that line of argument is always implicitly directed specifically at working single mothers; the poorest and most disadvantaged demographic on Earth. How noble of these multi-millionaires white guys to offer such helpful insights.) And to those "busybody parents" who worry about how safe their daughter's online play experience will be or whether their son will become addicted through these environments, Snead offers an idyllic portrait of online gaming environments wherein there are no problems in need of address like pervasive sexual harassment and threats of violence against women and girls substantial enough in scale to give the United Nations cause for concern, but only friendships and marriage proposals. Indeed, the film goes as far as to describe online gaming as representing a new stage in the evolution of the human species!
Finally, but perhaps most importantly (as this is what makes it all funny and worth checking out), the self-importance of this film cannot be exaggerated. Lest you think I am kidding, quotations from the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and John F. Kennedy are sprinkled throughout (one famous man quote per topic). This is the context in which video games are placed. That is how lacking in perspective this movie is. By the end we have Silicon Valley executives proposing that we should start to seriously reconsider the merits of living in the real world, as one day hopefully we will all be able to download our souls into a full-scale, video game replication of the universe. (Did they not see The Matrix?!) And these are the sorts of reasons why, despite its best efforts, this movie cannot separate hardcore gaming from nerd culture. In ignoring the way the masses game (e.g. mobile gaming, etc.) while expressing genuine paranoia concerning the parental agenda, ignoring and/or dismissing all social problems surrounding gaming culture, and giving credence to these bizarre, self-important industry philosophies, the viewer can't help but develop an 'interest' in the mental state involved in its production.
In short, Video Games: The Movie is an amusingly pretentious two-hour infomercial for the video games industry. Pick it up today and enjoy! :grin:
Yes, it's true: I finally got to see Jeremy Snead's 2014 purported documentary on the history of video games! It was gifted to me for Christmas by my aunt who figured I'd be interested because video games. She was partially right! I have to recommend Video Games: The Movie! It's so bad that it's quite entertaining! :grin:
I refer to Video Games: The Movie as a purported documentary because it contains almost no actual, concrete information. It was clearly not made with any sincere intent of educating the gaming non-initiate so much as serving up torrent after torrent of nostalgia for long-time video gamers. Montages of game footage are broken up by vague and disjointed summations of console generations that perhaps run a commercial from the era and/or have a forgotten '90s TV sitcom actor mention that one particular game from that generation was "good" or "special" before abruptly moving on to the next generation, having apparently covered the basis. Then the 3D timeline around which the film revolves starts over again with the backstory of the "legendary" video game industry crash of 1983 that almost no one seems to even recall, summarized just as non-specifically. (e.g. It is mentioned that the 1982 game E.T. prompted a backlash among consumers "due to its poor quality", yet no explanation of what made E.T. a subpar product is provided, as the game play is never described.) And it similarly keeps jumping back and forth and back and forth along its 3D timeline, clearly wanting to be divided up along topical lines (which makes more sense), yet remaining officially committed to telling events strictly in chronological order in a structural contradiction that perplexes. (One might call it a "legendary" contradiction. :wink:) In the process, whole swaths of gaming history that the filmmaker implicitly considers less legitimate (e.g. that of mobile gaming, so-called girl games, etc.) are pretty much completely ignored (even the history arcade gaming (a type still very much alive and thriving in Japan to this day) is somewhat sidelined) while the parts of gaming history that do matter to Snead are consistently describe with such non-specificity that little to no information can be resultantly gleaned by the non-initiate.
Video game developers are occasionally interviewed, but only Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, offers any kind of real insights into the process of video game development. The rest stick to vaguaries. (Sensing a theme?) No female game developers are interviewed.
Video Games: The Movie is little more informative when it comes to the topic of the cultivation of storytelling over the medium's history. It is insisted that video games constitute an art form, yet no examples of the artistic highlights over the decades are mentioned. Rather, the argument the film makes revolves around pointing out that the games industry of today frequently hires people to draw, write, act, perform music, etc. The same could be said of many porn films, but I doubt many people would allege that those have real artistic merit! Examples were definitely needed to substantiate the case. It's a shame they weren't provided, because there are plenty too!
I further take issue with the film's presentation of artistic progress as simply a matter of technological progress, as that represents a rather formulaic way of approaching creative expression. Is the storyline in Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (2015) really better than that in A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985) just because the former has a superior graphics engine and voice acting or does the question of thematic pertinence matter? Does Fallout 4 really offer us more social insights and touching moments than Gone Home just because the former includes dialogue choices and a vast, sprawling world while the latter does not? Creative expression cannot be reduced to a formula! That's what makes it creative expression! Otherwise it would just be math. There is a solid argument to be made that video games can indeed be used for purposes of artistic expression, but Snead is not the right messenger! He doesn't get art.
Snead's "documentary" is at its worst when it tries to tackle the controversies, past and present, surrounding the medium, consistently taking a one-sidedly pro-industry view and a scorched-Earth approach to anyone who disagrees. Those who concern themselves with the potential social impact of graphically violent content in popular video games, for example, only have these concerns because they're not only parents, but bad parents who neglect their children, the documentary insists at some length without evidence. (Let's be frank: that line of argument is always implicitly directed specifically at working single mothers; the poorest and most disadvantaged demographic on Earth. How noble of these multi-millionaires white guys to offer such helpful insights.) And to those "busybody parents" who worry about how safe their daughter's online play experience will be or whether their son will become addicted through these environments, Snead offers an idyllic portrait of online gaming environments wherein there are no problems in need of address like pervasive sexual harassment and threats of violence against women and girls substantial enough in scale to give the United Nations cause for concern, but only friendships and marriage proposals. Indeed, the film goes as far as to describe online gaming as representing a new stage in the evolution of the human species!
Finally, but perhaps most importantly (as this is what makes it all funny and worth checking out), the self-importance of this film cannot be exaggerated. Lest you think I am kidding, quotations from the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and John F. Kennedy are sprinkled throughout (one famous man quote per topic). This is the context in which video games are placed. That is how lacking in perspective this movie is. By the end we have Silicon Valley executives proposing that we should start to seriously reconsider the merits of living in the real world, as one day hopefully we will all be able to download our souls into a full-scale, video game replication of the universe. (Did they not see The Matrix?!) And these are the sorts of reasons why, despite its best efforts, this movie cannot separate hardcore gaming from nerd culture. In ignoring the way the masses game (e.g. mobile gaming, etc.) while expressing genuine paranoia concerning the parental agenda, ignoring and/or dismissing all social problems surrounding gaming culture, and giving credence to these bizarre, self-important industry philosophies, the viewer can't help but develop an 'interest' in the mental state involved in its production.
In short, Video Games: The Movie is an amusingly pretentious two-hour infomercial for the video games industry. Pick it up today and enjoy! :grin: