OXCGN – Breathing Life Into Gaming

By AXIS of Reality

© 2009 Alex Baldwin

By now most of you would have seen District 9. Great movie, yes?

For most people it came out of the blue, little hype and minimal advertising until its release (at least here in Australia), and while perhaps it will be famous for its origins of rising from the ashes of the Halo movie, most will remember it as being a distinctly different type of sci-fi film, and one that can teach games a thing or two.

• District 9 Trailer

A lot of the trailers for the movie were quite deceptive, even going as far to include scenes that didn’t exist in the final film. Instead of an all-action blockbuster in line with Transformers 2 or Terminator: Salvation, director Neill Blomkamp and visual effects masters Weta created possibly the most realistic sci-fi movie this decade, if such a thing is possible.

While the other flashy futuristic films like the new Star Trek take the viewer on a thrill ride of spectacle after spectacle, aiming to awe its audience and provide a sense of wonderment, District 9 was almost the exact opposite.

Not shiny – yeah!

The easiest way to sum it up is very simple: it’s not shiny.

Not just talking in a literal sense, District 9 wasn’t about heroes saving the world or CGI extravaganzas. The visual effects such as the alien ‘Prawns’ were blended in seamlessly with the real-world elements on the screen to the point that they looked just as natural and real as the human characters.

The same is true for the action sequences – there’s no slow motion gunfights or flying cameras circling epic fights here. The documentary format grounded it and gave it as much impact as many real-world war documentaries. So much so that my parents didn’t actually last through the film, having to walk out about an hour in (the weapon testing) because it was just too real for them.

Realism gave it a stronger impact

My mother even told me later she couldn’t sleep for hours that night with it playing in her head.

Along with The Dark Knight last year, action blockbusters and sci-fi is slowly starting to wean off the flashiness and connect itself more with real life with fantastic results that give a lot more depth and weight (though the flashiness is still a valid format when it works such as James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar, also with CGI done by Weta).

So how does this tie in with games?

As District 9 shows sci-fi beginning to mature as a format with more to provide than superficial thrills, I couldn’t help but draw parallels with current games.

While the biggest franchises such as Halo and Gears of War are fantastic, they demonstrate that current games are still stuck in the ‘shiny’ stage, still stuck in adolescence.

You may have noticed in District 9 the ‘protagonist’ wasn’t motivated by saving the world. He wasn’t a hero. Hell, he wasn’t even that likeable a lot of the time. He was, however, extremely effective and most of all human.

When was the last time you played a mainstream game that didn’t give the player some form of power over others in the game or elevate them above the common horde (ignoring the exceptions to the rule like Animal Crossing, of course).

Protagonist = domination

Take a look at the motivation of the protagonist or player in almost all current games – domination.

You’re DESTROYING your opponents, BEATING fellow racers, growing to the most POWERFUL person in the land, SAVING the world, RULING the people or even now MANIPULATING people and creatures.

District 9 had a flawed, cowardly and often patronising and arrogant ‘hero’, whose only motivation was selfish. Basically, a much more realistic hero than 99% of games provide, and as such one that is much more relatable even if we like to think we’d be a better person in the same circumstances.

Saint or Sinner?

That’s why I’m surprised to see the limit of player choice in games is still ‘be a saint’ or ‘be the spawn of the devil’. And in the end, both are still for the purposes of some form of domination over others.

Sometime I’d like to play as a human, and a blank slate at that – something that forces me to make my own choices and my own motivation. Something that shoves the player into a situation they aren’t prepared for or have any clear guide as to what ‘winning’ is.

Something like District 9 – the motivations change as the game flows, and there is no real end goal – there is simply reacting and adapting to the changing circumstances, whether for the better or worse.

Will Heavy Rain or Alan Wake change this?

A brief glance at the gaming horizon reveals two possible answers to this ambitious idea – Heavy Rain and Alan Wake.

So far from what I’ve seen of Heavy Rain a lot of the situations are scripted linear events so that leaves me casting hopefuly glances at each new trailer for Alan Wake. You play as a regular human in a situation beyond your control, and without endeavours of saving the world or getting a Level 80 character.

The current generation of hardware has the capabilities to fuel complex interactions and constantly changing game dynamics, and with development team sizes at an all-time high there’s no reason to keep scooting around the edges and simply pushing out ‘flashy’ games.

• Halo Movie Trailer – Full Combat

Film has matured and is taken seriously now, with even sci-fi getting some heart and intellectual depth now with District 9 and a healthy balance of spectacle films and more serious works.

While these two styles exist in film, games will always be missing out on half the picture if they continue to remain stuck in the spectacle and ignore what can be achieved when when you dig deeper than the surface.

• Check out District 9 – The Game

© 2009 Alex Baldwin

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