Smithsonian Art of Video Games Exhibit winning games

Earlier this year, the Smithsonian American Art Museum held public voting for which video games to feature in its planned Art of Video Games exhibit. Voters could choose one of three games in each genre (e.g. action, strategy) on each selected console (apparently no hand-held devices), sectioned off into the different "eras": Start!, 8-bit, Bitwars!, Transition, and Next Generation. See the list of winning games here.

I am delighted that Mass Effect 2, Portal, Diablo II, and Final Fantasy Tactics made it into the exhibition. These four games are among my favorites. Mass Effect 2 was my obsession last year, with an intriguing story, complex characters, difficult choices, tight and exciting gameplay, and beautifully created worlds to explore. Portal was a short but superbly sweet game, perfectly designed to feel challenging and satisfying without being impossibly frustrating, teaching you the mechanisms of how the portals can be used, bit by bit, before setting you loose. Even with what are now primitive graphics, Diablo II had memorable settings and engaging animation, and I remember how wowed I was by the cut scene graphics when I first saw them. I'm actually a little less convinced about the artfulness of Final Fantasy Tactics, but I'm a bit ignorant here because I haven't played any other games like it (it's the only PlayStation, Japanese RPG, or true turn-based combat game I've played). But it was fun, with an intriguing if sometimes confusing and frustrating plot.


Yes, this is the same pic I used in the older post...but it's a good one.

Other games that I've played at least in part that made the cut include Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Earthworm Jim, StarCraft, Super Mario 64, and GoldenEye 007. Other assorted winners I feel like mentioning include The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Halo 2, Final Fantasy VII, Fable, Bioshock, Minecraft, and Super Mario Galaxy 2. Mario and Legend of Zelda seemed to fare particularly well, with many games in each franchise making it into the exhibit.

I was most disappointed to find that Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn did not make it into the exhibition. It was beaten by Fallout, which I haven't played, though I understand it is a perfectly deserving game as well. Still, BG2 is my favorite, so the loss stings. Interestingly, Fallout 3 beat another BioWare game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Though I really love KotOR, I was less disappointed by its loss, because from what little I know of Fallout 3 I think it earned its victory. It's a little funny, though, because KotOR is five years older than Fallout 3, which puts it in a different league from a graphics standpoint.

One game from each era was selected (not by vote) for exhibit visitors to play for a few minutes, to allow them to experience the games' interactivity. Interactivity, after all, is a crucial component of the art of video games. The selected games are Pac-Man (arcade), Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, and World of Warcraft. I still regret never playing Myst. A friend gave it to me in high school, but for some reason our computer at the time didn't like it, making weird sounds and sometimes refusing to launch it (probably a flaw in the disk). Anyway, I gave up, and never got anywhere in it. Maybe some day I'll get back to it.

The Art of Video Games exhibit will be in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 3rd floor North, from March 16-2012 to September 30, 2012. Mark your calendars.

Female characters in video games: Female protagonists

Seeing how it's still March, and thus Women's History Month, I have an excuse for a feminist post. Having read some interesting pieces on female characters in video games in the recent past, the topic has been on my mind. In this series of posts, I will share my thoughts on various issues of female characters in video games, as well as articles that helped provoke these thoughts.

Post #1: Depiction of women in video games
Post #2: Good female characters in video games
Pose #3: (below)

Female protagonists in video games

Yesterday's post was about making female characters in games strong characters. This is about the need for more games with female protagonists. Most games I play nowadays actually allow the player to choose the player character's gender, so in a way I can't really complain about not having enough female protagonists. But here's the question: Am I a fan of a certain type of game that happens to feature gender choice? Or am I drawn to these games in part because I can play as a female character?

Growing up with our Sega Genesis, I never thought much about games that forced me to play as a male. Still, whenever a choice was given, you can bet that I chose the female character. This doesn't mean I wouldn't try out Axel or Max, but I'd always come back to Blaze. It just seemed natural. Most of these games, however, were pretty light on plot and character. The character on screen wasn't so much your avatar as it was an image that let you beat up the bad guys. I didn't have to relate to the feelings of the cowboy or the hedgehog on the screen in order to enjoy what the game had to offer.

Those games can still be fun, but the games I truly love are ones with involved, engrossing stories and complex, engaging characters. And in these types of games, I have to admit: I have a high preference for games where the player character is female. In my post on female protagonists in Pixar and DreamWorks movies, I argued that one of the reasons we see so few of them is that girls are generally better at relating to the opposite gender than boys are (this may even carry through to adults and contribute to the perception of any non-action movie with a female lead as a "chick flick", but that is a discussion for another day). I still think there is truth to this idea, but I don't feel it as strongly when it comes to video games. It's one thing to relate to a protagonist in a book or in a movie, but the player character in a video game is special. Their choices are your choices, their trials are your trials, their triumphs are your triumphs. When you have control over a character's actions, the character starts crossing over from being just a character to being you. I love to be immersed in the stories of games I play, and I can't be as immersed when the player character is a guy because, honestly, I'm not very good at thinking and feeling like a guy.

So what RPGs have I played through as a male character? The list is pretty short.
1) Pokemon. You may or may not count it as an RPG, but either way, the main character's gender is pretty insignificant. I chose a character name that was non-gender specific, so essentially, my character might have just been a tomboy.
2) Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but when I played this game, I pretended that I was actually one of the female members of my party, rather than the actual player character "Ramza". He may have been the boy born to privilege, but I was a close friend and advisor. Everything good Ramza did was with my advice, and everything stupid he did was against my advice (the story made more sense that way, anyway, as he does a bunch of dumb things beyond the player's control). So even though this was a game with a male player character, I found myself a female substitute.
3) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2. KotOR2 did something clever that got me to play against type as both evil and male: You would get one of two possible party members depending on your alignment, and one of two other possible party members depending on your gender. So once I finished the game as a Light Side female, I went back and played through as a Dark Side male, so I could meet the two alternate companions. I had trouble enough relating to the protagonist when I played as a good female (this was one of my criticisms of KotOR2). But I definitely never related to my evil male protagonist, mostly because I usually can't stand making evil choices in games, but partly, I think, because he was male.
4) Uhh, actually, that's it!

Looking at this evidence, I am left to conclude that I really do heavily prefer playing games with female protagonists. I daresay I even feel a little sexist right now. A friend in high school gave me Grandia and I never played it--was it because the main character was a boy? Is this why I've still never tried out Half Life 2, despite many recommendations? Oh no--am I missing out on an expansive realm of fabulous games because I am prejudiced against male player characters?! OK, calm down, I think it's not actually as bad as it might seem. After all, it was only on my second playthrough of FFT that I picked out a female character to represent me; the first time through, I was perfectly happy to have a male player character. I'd still love to check out Half Life 2, if I ever find the time. It's just that BioWare makes really great games that I love for many reasons beyond having a choice in my player character's gender*. If it weren't for that, maybe I would have played as male player characters more often.

* I am grateful to BioWare for giving us the choice in character gender (and for giving equal opportunities for romances in recent games). But even they aren't perfect. I'm tired of all the protagonists being male "in cannon" or "by default", and seeing only male protagonists in all the trailers and posters and promotional materials. Sorry, it has to be said.

Anyway, the point that I'm trying to make with this somewhat winding personal account is that this female gamer, at least, is drawn to games in which she can play as a female protagonist. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Girl gamers are real, we are many, and we want to be marketed to. We want games that were made for us, or at least that were made with us in mind.

Why shouldn't there be games with female protagonists? Girls can be heroes, too. I understand if a historical FPS wants to have a male protagonist. But as I mentioned yesterday, in a fantasy or sci-fi world, the gender disparities observed in human history that have limited the number of female action heroes need not apply. Besides, the heroes of video games are super human, anyway--why can't they be super women?


Shepard. Kicks. Ass.

If my personal anecdotes aren't enough, here are some better arguments for seeing more female protagonists in games:
1. Female protagonists are not to be feared by Doc at Inner Child Gamer
2. Response: Female protagonists: A "risk" worth taking by Brinstar at The Border House
3. Halo: Reach writer – “We’re not serving half our audience” by Cuppycake, quoting Tom Abernathy, at The Border House

As argued in those articles, female protagonists won't hurt video game profits as much as you might think. And even if having a female protagonist affects them a little, it's the right thing to do. Young girls like to play games, they like playing games with girl protagonists, and they need good role models to look up to as much as boys do. They deserve it--it's only fair.

There's the well-known Catch-22 of women in video games: We need more women designing video games so we can get more and better female characters in games. But we need more and better female characters in games in order to make more women interested in designing games. The Catch-22 can be broken. We just need both sides to take a leap.

Lost Planet, and Video Games to Movies

Yet another video-game-to-movie deal has been announced: Warner Bros. is set to distribute a film version of Capcom's Lost Planet. David Hayter, who worked on the scripts for the X-Men and X2 movies, is set to write the screenplay (Variety).

A couple of in-production movies based on video games have caught my eye lately, namely Prince of Persia and BioShock. BioShock has Gore "I made a billion dollar movie franchise out of a lousy Disney ride" Verbinski attached to direct. Prince of Persia is about to begin filming, with such stars as Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, and Gemma "You'll know who I am on Nov. 007*" Arterton directed by the likes of Mike "Potter number 4" Newell.

I've never played any of these games, so I don't know much about them (Jake Gyllenhaal? Prince of Persia? Please explain.) beyond what I can gather from a quick skim of their respective Wikipedia articles. Not being familiar with the games, I can't make a qualified prediction of the movie adaptations' prospects. But I will comment on the track record of video-games-to-movies thus far.

It's not good, and sadly it can't all be blamed on Uwe Boll. Looking down the Wikipedia list (whatever did people do before Wikipedia?) of theatrical release films based on video games, from Super Mario Bros. to In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, the movie with the highest IMDb user rating (these are users like you and me, folks, not critics) is... drum roll... Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within--with a whopping 6.4 out of 10 stars. No joke. The "best" movie based on a video game is a box office bomb that has nothing to do with video games except for Hironobu Sakaguchi.

Let's lay aside the fact that the Final Fantasy movie can hardly be said to be "based" on a video game. The important point is that IMDb users deem all the other video game movies to be worse. They scored less than an already poor 6.4. Several of the movies are even in the esteemed "Bottom 100" with such bedfellows as SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 and From Justin to Kelly. How do the studios keep producing such consistently bad movie adaptations of video games? Is there something about the source material that makes it innately unsuitable for film?

I have played some role-playing games with exciting, insightful stories and fun, interesting characters that I think could make good films (well, at least better than the recent Resident Evil). The problem is, I would hate to see any of them made into movies. These particular games allow a wide range of character development that would make it difficult for the director's choices not to enrage every fan of the game. For instance, I fear if Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic were for some reason made into a movie (it won't be), it would surely have a male protagonist (since judging from the Star Wars movies women apparently can't use the Force as well as men**), which would spark in me and other fans much anger, leading to hatred of the movie and box office suffering. Furthermore, there's the question of whether this protagonist would uphold the side of Light or fall to the Dark Side. In the game the choice is left up to the player, and making that choice adds a whole dimension to the story experience. Lara Croft is a character established independent of the player, with a look and a personality that Angelina Jolie can emulate, but in the games I'm talking about, the appearance, personality and role of the character are shaped over the course of the game by the player's choices. That is what makes these games great, and it's what makes players like me so attached to the characters and their stories. But it is also what would make it impossible to please all the fans with both the casting and the way the plot unfolds in a movie version. And while movies based on video games attract audiences much larger than the player base of the games, the gamer fans are the core of the audience and the instigators of that all-important buzz.

To be fair, movies adapted from all media face considerable hurdles. The only way for any movie adaptation to be great is for the makers to recognize the drawbacks of the medium of film and take advantage of what film has to offer in order to add enough to the story to justify the existence of the adaptation. This may be possible to do for RPGs. But how do you compensate for revoking such a fundamental component of the original story as free will?

If games that allow too much player choice are out, then games with predetermined characters and a set linear storyline, or no storyline at all, must be the better candidates for movie adaptations. The latter brings us movies like Street Fighter. The former has some potential. But here's another problem: in almost any video game (at least, the action games I'm talking about here), the story is merely a vehicle for the fighting. I don't spend 40 hours playing a story. I spend those hours kicking monster/alien/bad guy butt (and collecting better equipment and gaining skills--gosh, can you imagine how boring it would be if they included that part in the movie? And here's our hero, shuffling through her unrealistically enormous backpack... equipping a new weapon... no, changing back...). So movies based on video games like these tend to be action movies that focus entirely on the action, rather than the plot (and writing) or characters (and acting). That is not a critic-pleasing formula, and it isn't often pleasing to the general viewership, either.

The movie studios will continue to churn out new movies based on video games because, despite invariably universal criticism, some of the movies make considerable profits at the box office and on DVD. But each failure adds to the collective feeling that the genre itself is bad. This is discouraging indeed, since the "mainstream" hardly needs another reason to question the tastes of video gamers. So when will we get a video game movie to validate the genre? Who knows, maybe Sands of Time will be 2010's Incredible Hulk (I won't be so ambitious as to hope for anything more). Maybe BioShock will be a surprise hit--Verbinski has proven he can turn an unlikely source into an enjoyable movie. But historical trends are not in their favor.

I believe that a good movie based on a video game is possible. There are games with great stories and memorable characters that can be fleshed out by a good writer and director to satisfy movie standards. And now that the new fad seems to be hiring movie makers to write the scripts for video games, the products of these collaborations may turn out to be ideally suited for movie adaptations (though if a video game is too cinematic, what's the point in the adaptation?). We just need a filmmaker who really wants to make a good movie and knows how to embellish the plot, bring out the characters, and integrate the action into the film, rather than one who just wants to use the film as a showcase for stunts and explosions. A good adaptation is out there. Fans are waiting.


* Note 8/22/08: The movie has been bumped back a week to 11/14/08. Kind of a shame, since they had the whole 007 thing working for them.

** I should note that female Jedi do get some love in other Star Wars media. And that the ambiguity of my phrasing there is intentional. 10 points to anyone who understands what I mean by that.


Note: A follow-up post of sorts prior to the release of Prince of Persia is here.