As we all know Boston is a hotbed of gaming talent. From the big cheeses to the little fishes, established studios and the new kids on the block; all keen and eager to release product that will enrich our lives. Game design is in their blood, their visions are what make the culture of gaming so appealing.
This week, I was intending to write about Lantana Games who are currently developing a “Revolutionary stealth-platformer” called Children of Liberty but the lure of Starcraft II was too much to resist for my contact at this new and exciting studio. I was also keen to highlight the sold-out Immigration Game Jam, which will be taking place at MIT-Gambit next weekend. But I was distracted by the use of the phrase “video game culture” on the front page of the Boston Globe on Friday.
When the Globe decides to highlight this slice of life, the gamers and game developers should be pleased. However, when the newspaper used the term “Video Game Culture”, they weren’t referring to the latest immersive lifestyle experience.
They were talking about the latest blockbuster movie release in a summer that has seen more turkeys than Thanksgiving. Scott Pilgrim Vs the World is a graphic novel that has been adapted for the big screen, and, according to Ty Burr, “rides the video game culture.”
Cleverly using the headline “High Scores for Scott Pilgrim”, the review begins as follows.
“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’’ may be as close as the movies will ever get to seeing the world through the eyes of an over-caffeinated 23-year-old man-boy playing retro video games on a handheld and listening to a jangle-core iPod playlist while waiting for his girlfriend in an all-night diner in a largish North American city.”
We then get numerous references to gaming; “it’s fun to watch Cera beat up super-villains a la ‘Mortal Kombat’”, director Edgar Wright “builds his film on the patchy narrative leaps of video games and their surrounding cargo culture”, “for all intents and purposes ‘Scott Pilgrim’ is a video game”, “one that keeps rebooting itself”, “he vanishes in a burst of coins”, “power-ups and extra lives are possible.”
What is cargo culture? How exactly is Scott Pilgrim a video game when the source material is so obviously a graphic novel (and one that actually draws on Manga rather than Konami)? Why is the eponymous hero a “man-boy” because he enjoys playing retro games?
Coming so soon on after online gaming was the focus of the overly violent ‘Gamer’, this sort of review/movie does little to dispel the myth that gamers are nothing more than slackers who spend their waking hours plugged into their consoles. The fact that gaming is considered a profession in some parts of the World, and that Cyber-athletes compete all year round in well-attended tournaments that showcase their gaming ability is something that is not highlighted.
Happily though, Burr is not alone in his desire to push the movie-as-game. Peter Keogh in the Boston Phoenix writes that “the allusion to Super Mario Bros is just the start of the suffocating homage to retro video games” and complains that “a rarefied logic prevails – oneiric or maybe just the rote mechanics of a Nintendo game.”
Two different reviews from two different newspapers. Two attempts to tie the movie into a video game culture that presumably Mr. Wright – who has directed two of my favorite movies, Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz – thought would be the best way to turn the pages into celluloid.
I know that I am preaching to the converted, but the gaming industry and the talents that work in Game development are producing so much more than a series of meaningless beat-em-ups – with the obvious exception of Fire Hose who have made the violence in Slam Bolt Scrappers cartoon-like!
While the Globe article didn’t exactly shine a light on the gaming industry, they did manage to focus on the more cerebral side of the industry in their business section. Irrational Games, based in Quincy, are working on their follow-up to Bioshock (2007) which introduced us to the underwater world of Rapture and which was a commercial success for the studio (Bioshock 2 was released by another developer earlier this year).
Slated to be released in 2012, Bioshock Infinite is set in a mysterious floating city at the beginning of the 20th Century which according to the Company’s Ken Levine is “not just a flying World’s Fair; its also a kind of Death Star”, was inspired (apparently) by “the history of American imperialism” and may have been influenced by the annexation of the Philippines by President McKinley towards the end of the 19th Century.
History, pop culture, an immersive experience, intelligent game mechanics. Irresistible to the gamer and developer alike, the reason why plugging yourself into another world is so attractive to millions of people.
The perception may be of the slacker but the reality is that gaming is hard work and takes time to master. Gamers may not have to fight the world every time, but movies that don’t show the true nature of gaming are detrimental to the industry’s health.
Extra lives are only useful if you have the time (and skill) to use them.
What did you think of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World? Do you agree or disagree with the movie reviews? Let us know in the comments below.
