The Peculiar Position of Game Trailers: A Critical Perspective

The video game trailer occupies a very peculiar place in media consumption. Whereas a preview for a movie gives the audience a glimpse at what the movie offers, a video game trailer is always external to its own medium. A movie trailer works because cinema is a passive, visual medium; the viewer sees a bit of what he/she will see in the movie proper. Similarly, reading the back of a novel or a sample of the novel in another book serves the same purpose--it advertises the novel through the medium of the novel. Game trailers to not have that luxury. They operate solely within the spheres of the visual and aural, but gameplay requires the physical touch and feedback of inputting commands on a controller (or waving your arms like a lunatic, if you're into the whole motion gaming thing). Game trailers cannot communicate the ludological sensation of gameplay, hence the necessity for demos--a far more relevant method of advertising a game than a trailer could ever be. It is because of these limitations that I always approach game trailers with a fair degree of skepticism. Don't get me wrong, trailers serve a fundamental purpose of hyping the company's product and introducing it to consumers. After all, we can't all attend Gamescom or E3, and sometimes demos can be a little slow at hitting the download scene. As bafflingly illogical as game trailers are on a fundamental level, they are absolutely essential to the industry, and as such, warrant discussion about how best to accurately and honestly advertise their products.

I find that the best trailers fulfill a few certain criteria. The trailer should first and foremost always provide an accurate introduction to its game's mechanics. If I'm watching a trailer, I want to see how I'm going to be playing the game. Whether or not this takes place in-engine is negligible compared to the importance of showing the ways in which the player will manipulate the game's world. Second, a trailer should give the viewer a glimpse of the game's world in terms of its atmosphere while maintaining a certain degree of mystery. If the game will be funny, provide a funny trailer. For a horror game, instill a sense of dread and gloom. If it's a story heavy game, focus on narrative--without giving too much away. Lastly, the trailer better damn well be entertaining and memorable. We're all so plugged into the world of mass media devices and viral videos that it's easy to see a trailer and then immediately forget about it. A great trailer has staying power. Since trailers operate in a visual medium, I'll turn to a few examples of trailers that have created significant buzz this generation.

Gears of War: Mad World Trailer

When I saw this trailer for the first time, I finally grasped what this new generation of gaming could produce. I like Gears of War well enough, and when it hit the scene as one of the premiere flagship titles to sell the Xbox 360, this trailer was a bit of a risk. It's heavily atmospheric, hauntingly lonely, and bizarrely reflective. I'm a sucker for dissonance. I used to play a lot of games by turning down the game's music and providing my own soundtrack, often playing shooter games while listening to serene music to provide bizarre contrasts. This juxtaposition of the hyper-masculine soldier with the dreamlike melody of Gary Jules' "Mad World" makes the trailer certainly memorable, and this contrast emerges in the game's aesthetic. The game's setting, planet Sera, teems with ruined Hellenistic architecture, creating a world of apocalyptic beauty. Some gilded age has fallen to ashes, and the game's art direction makes destruction quite beautiful, providing a similar contrast evoked by the trailer. The gameplay, though, never quite reaches the thematic sophistication of the trailer. Sure, the game controls like a dream, and its violence is almost operatic. I nevertheless can't help but feel a bit misled by the atmospheric sense of isolation and terror in the trailer. I never feel as vulnerable as the trailer makes Marcus Fenix out to be. This is certainly a good thing for gameplay because its a game that lets you feel like a badass, but there is a slight disconnect between the promises of the trailer and the game--though the trailer is still remarkable.

Killzone 2: E3 2005 Trailer

I remember how this trailer was met with both excitement and incredulity. Some people thought it heralded the new age of gaming while others called shenanigans and claimed that such gameplay was impossible. Whichever side won out (and I'm inclined to think the former), the trailer certainly had people talking until the game's 2009 release. The trailer showcases the gameplay through a fully-rendered CG sequence, making some onlooker wonder if the game could possibly ever look as great as the trailer shows. Killzone 2 looks sharp, to be sure, but the trailer was way before its time. Releasing it four years before the game's publication date built expectations that could not possibly be met.When critics finally played Killzone 2, they couldn't help but compare it to the trailer revealed in 2005. For me at least, the trailer spoke true--others had dissenting opinions. The trailer captures the chaotic atmosphere and dynamic combat in Killzone 2, and I can't help but speculate that the team at Guerilla needed the four years to catch up to their own advertisement. Even if they did bite off a bit more than they could chew, the time spent paid off by delivering one hell of a game.

Dead Island: We've all seen it...

This trailer for Dead Island is a textbook example of how not to make a game trailer. When it hit the internet, it absolutely blew up; people who didn't even play games paid attention to it. It's an emotional, artistic and atmospheric mini-movie. It's extremely well done. The music helps facilitate this family's tragedy perfectly, providing a different spin on the zombie horror genre in a way that I thought was just reserved for The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later. The trailer is a remarkable piece of CG art, and on that level it excels. Dead Island was in development hell since its 2006 announcement, and this trailer announced its resurrection, building audience anticipation and undoubtedly resulting in a massive surge of pre-orders. But the game it advertises is not the product on the shelf. After being underwhelmed by seeing gameplay footage, I gambled on a rental, and I sadly found my misgivings to be true. While I'm sure there's plenty there for others to enjoy, I don't think anyone can seriously make the claim that the trailer captured the essence of Dead Island. Dead Island is not a game about tense, emotional situations. It's not a story-driven survival narrative. I never felt any connection to people I protected. And at no point did I throw a child out the window. Other than the resort setting and the zombies, the trailer has little else to do with the game. The game is nowhere near as good as its trailer. The trailer is a well-made movie, challenging narrative and genre; the game is a bit of incoherent mess. And never the twain shall meet.

BioShock: Near perfection

BioShock was a hard sell. Combining a bizarre environment, Objectivist philosophy, and intelligent first-person shooter gameplay looks just as strange on paper as they do in theoretical practice, but this trailer reveals only what is necessary to build excitement while maintaining mystique. We see the combat in the way a splicer fights against a Big Daddy. We see, from a first-person perspective, a deeply disturbing scene with a man forcing himself on a helpless child, the camera's position mocking the viewer's passive complicity in the grisly pantomime. We hear a synopsis of Andrew Ryan's Randian philosophy. We catch a panoramic view of the underwater, ruinous dystopia. We see strange powers, a vita chamber, a shotgun, a monster with a drill, a pipewrench. All the key elements of the game's mechanics appear...yet we're left wanting more because we don't know how they fit together. It's unlike anything we've seen before, even those of us who have played Ken Levine's System Shock 2, BioShock's spiritual predecessor. The trailer tells an ambiguous story with provocative gameplay elements on display all while building a sense of atmosphere and keeping the audience engaged. We're left wondering what the hell we just saw and wanting to discover--and play--something more in this weird world.

There are most certainly others that work just as well as these. The Dark Souls trailer set to The Silent Comedy's "Bartholomew" combines mood, mechanics, and an awesome (and relevant) song. The gameplay trailer for Dishonored works well, too, though it has its flaws--mostly due to its making the game look like a throat-slitting simulator. I love the atmospheric short film trailer for Metro: Last Light, but it provides nothing useful in terms of describing gameplay, unlike the short film for Halo 3: ODST, which worked in the mechanics through the combat sequence.

A video game trailer must accomplish more than provide a fun little video. It must accomplish more than a film preview or a sample of a novel. The most successful game trailers break the constraints of the visual to offer aspects of the ludological. We interact with games in much more complex (or at least different) ways than we do with film and literature, and trailers should acknowledge this fact by accurately portraying the ways in which the consumer/player will interact with the digital world on display. As silly as I think trailers are, we need them, and the industry needs to get the word out somehow. But they can only take us so far. Otherwise, we wouldn't rely so heavily on sites like IGN to keep us informed. We, nevertheless, should always approach the videos we see with critical and analytic eyes--and then forget them completely we play the demo.

Cheers,

--David

Video Games and the Legacy of Genre Fiction

When most people think of the word "literature," their minds conjure up images of Shakespearean tragedy, of epic poetry, of large books about white whales and national revolutions, of the Romantics (Byron, Shelley), of the Victorians (Dickens, Eliot), and of modernists (Joyce, Hemingway, Woolf). Unfortunately, most also think of crippling boredom and tweed-clad professor types who talk ad nauseum about the cultural importance of these works and writers in front a group of people who would rather be somewhere else. I've been on all sides of the classroom--a rapt listener, an exhausted teacher, a bored student. This post, however, is not about the canon or instruction of English or American literature. Hell, it's not even about literature (that part is for context), but rather a discussion of genre and how it fits in with current video game trends.

Just as great artists like T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were writing great works that would greatly influence and define early 20th century art, other writers churned out books as quickly as they could, forsaking linguistic complexity in favor of fast-paced plots, cheap laughs, or easy thrills. This tradition is called "genre writing," and it was often viewed as vulgar and amateurish by the high art literati--but it sold. The genres of mystery, adventure, vaudeville comedy, horror/gothic, and science fiction (still in its infancy) became established, and with them, so did the rules that governed each genre. For adventure, a group of men needed to explore a remote corner of the world, meet the natives, and reify the importance of civilization. In mysteries, the detective investigates his case with mathematical precision and dizzying intellect. A horror story worthy of H.P. Lovecraft needs a blend of psychological terror and supernatural influence. Genre fiction is comfortable, predictable, safe, and, above all else, profitable.

The influence of these generic formulas in the video game scene is more than evident. Gamers no exactly what they're getting into when they pre-order a science fiction, war epic, fantasy, adventure, or horror game. It's a brilliant marketing tool, and it's always effective. Just take a look at a few games' cover art juxtaposed with covers of novels from the same genre:

Adventure

Uncharted 3 cover art (2011)

One More Step, Mr. Hands from a 1911 edition of Stevenson's Treasure Island

Both Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Naught Dog's Uncharted 3 fit nicely into the adventure genre. Each involves a cast of rogues outside of their own countries and cultures, a fair bit a violence, and, of course treasure. The images, then, are noticeably similar, giving the consumer a quick look at the product. We can easily tell that these will contain the tropes of adventure fiction--violence, action, set pieces, etc--as well as key plot points (a plane crash and an encounter on the ship).

Horror

Resident Evil 2 American cover art (1998)

Stoker's Dracula book cover (1902)

Here, both covers achieve more in atmosphere than they do in plot--a hallmark of the horror genre. The character on the front of the book cover (presumably the titular count) evokes a threatening, and intensely gothic, feel. The same could be said of the game cover, though a bit more modernized: the source of fear looks directly at the viewer, intensifying the threat of danger. We know what we're getting into when we buy either of these products.

Mystery

Heavy Rain cover art (2010)

Dorothy Sayers' Clouds of Witness (1926)

I find this pair to be the most interesting of the three. Both contain an object in close proximity to blood. We know these objects will be of great importance to the overall plot, but what that connection is remains...well, a mystery. Mysteries and whodunits often involve a single item wanted by multiple people that is the central cause of the conflict--this object is often referred to as a MacGuffin. (Note: They're also called "plot coupons" by people who look down on formulaic writing) Here, the MacGuffins appear to be the focal points of the artworks, letting the viewer know that the plots revolve heavily around these objects.

Obviously these three examples do not entirely encapsulate all of gaming and genre fiction traditions into a set of rigid instructions. Indeed, one of the most interesting facets of genre writings is not how each work fits into its generic category, but rather how they deviate from the established paradigms. Even some of the most widely respected novelists of the 20th century worked within such paradigms to test their own experimental writings. Joyce's Ulysses, for example, is well known for (among other things) transforming one day in the mundane life of an Irishman into an exploration of language and literature worthy of an epic poem, while simultaneously interrogating the division between "high" and "low" art styles.

Also, that same Irishman masturbates in an episode
written in the style of contemporary woman's magazine.
Literature, folks.

I posit that video games often function in very much the same manner. A "good" video game challenges the constraints of its genre. Uncharted 3 addresses Nathan Drake's compulsion to complete his adventure even if it means the death of his partner, Sully. Resident Evil 2 asks the player to subject him/herself to the horrors of the game universe by employing controls that limit the onscreen character's mobility. Heavy Rain affords the player the opportunity to not follow Ethan Mars through the physical and psychological torments of the Origami Killer. These games play with genre convention in ways offer interpretive insight into the inner workings of gameplay and narrative.

My goal is a series of posts that discusses games (hopefully with help from fellow IGN community members) about how games employ and challenge the paradigms of their respective genres. Complicating the matter, however, is the fact that gaming culture has invented its own system of classification, lumping games into categories of first-person shooter, role-playing game, survival-horror, third-person shooter, dungeon crawler, sports simulator, fighting, etc. Looking at games from the perspective of generic convention reveals how they--just like novels, films, dramas, and poetry--toy with such restraints, often testing the limits established archetypes. Video games have become one of the most culturally important avenues of interrogation of contemporary values, and writing about their connections to genre fiction can make more evident the importance of adhering to and breaking from paradigms. I hope you check back soon to read about and discuss this topic.

Cheers,

--David

Playing through the Payne: The Issues of Max Payne 3

Warning: Here there be spoilers.
It happened in the decaying favela slums of Sao Paulo.  It had been a good few weeks since I picked up the controller to play Max Payne 3, so I figured why not go back.  Max Payne 3 has perhaps the most polished gunplay I have ever experienced--it's almost as satisfying as a real trip to the gun range.  In my second playthrough, the shooting and movement still felt dynamic as the first time, but in the streets of the ghetto, while Max undergoes a "hangover sent straight from Mother Nature," something felt off.  After his employer is killed and the building burns down around him, Max has a life-changing epiphany--no more booze until he puts a bullet in the brain behind this convoluted plot involving organ harvesting and political corruption.  The plot takes off in a very clear, direct path for redemption and brutal execution...but the gameplay stays the same.

Here is a textbook example of ludonarrative dissonance (shameless plug for the title of my blog).  From the beginning of the game, we know Max Payne bathes in alcohol and derides himself for being a washed-up loser.  Yet he moves with the practiced grace and precision of ballet dancer, placing shots between the eyes of his would-be killers with surgical accuracy.  It's hard to buy that Max is simultaneously a booze-soaked, pill-popping slob (he even tells his partner "I'm not slipping, I've slipped") and a grotesquely efficient killer.  Is this really the performance of a pilled-up drunk with a gun?:

Tom Bissell, one of the most established game critics I've read, writes about this in his article on Max Payne 3, saying that the game is "quite possibly the most ludonarratively dissonant video game ever made" and arguing that, in the end, the game "appears to be trying to say something about regret and death and slaughter and addiction, but, of course, can't."  I tend to agree.  The game sacrifices synchronicity in favor of a well-polished shooting system.  After all, who the hell cares if a game's story syncs up perfectly at the expense of gameplay?  Controlling a drunk, stumbling Max Payne for the first few hours of the game would not a happy gamer make.  Nevertheless, if a developer chooses to make a game as narratively driven and brutal as Max Payne, then said developer should work to elevate the purpose behind having a player kill hundreds of virtual people, drunk or sober.  One way to alleviate this issue would have been a cosmetic change to the gameplay--other than Max's shaving his head and donning a Hawaiian t-shirt.  Something as simple as making the gunplay a bit sloppier in the first half of the game by using more motion blur or by eliminating kill cams altogether would make Max's narrative shift better.  Imagine playing the game for a while and enjoying the crisp gunplay, just without the exquisite detail (because Max is drunk), only to be completely blindsided by the clarity of the the death animations in the latter half of the game when Max sobers up.  The impact would be narratively and ludologically synchronous--Max's clarity would be the player's clarity.  The trade-off would be significant, to be sure, but if the gameplay were still crisp and the visuals dialed down in the first few chapters, the transition could be extremely effective.

But the heavy themes the game introduces would still need to be resolved.  Max Payne 3 raises the issues of poverty, redemption through violence, and the carelessness of the rich without offering any type of ludological investigation of how to deal with them. The only issue explored in gameplay is extreme violence, and even then, mostly through the slow cam close-up.  The game forces the player to witness up close and in incredible detail countless bodies' being torn and shredded in gory, beautiful detail.  Only in these instances does the player have the opportunity to understand what exactly all this killing begets in the form of dynamic death animations brilliantly crafted to respond to where the bullet pierces the body.  The player also has the ability to slow down the camera to see with greater clarity the character's last movements as well as the ability to keep firing at the body even though the enemy is dead.  Affording the player with the ability to slow down and view pieces of metal ripping and tearing the human body allows the player to reflect on the means he/she employs to accomplish Max's goal.  But after about the hundredth time I saw a slow motion death sequence, it no longer induced a wince from me; I kept wondering what is the purpose behind it.  Am I supposed to feel guilty?  Am I supposed to gain some sort of insight about the human propensity to violence?  Is the message that violence only begets more violence?  Or am I simply asked to enjoy the carnage?  Entertaining any one of these questions seems like a logical critical step, but upon execution, the results are unsatisfying.  The game, in this respect, seems a missed opportunity.

It's brutal, it's disgusting, it's beautifully rendered, and it's provocative. But what does it mean?

Let me reiterate, though, that Max Payne 3 boasts the most responsive and satisfying shooting mechanics I've ever experienced. Nevertheless, if games are going to be elevated to the artistic standard we so fervently argue they do, the questions regarding video game violence and ludonarrative dissonance must be addressed. The interaction on part of the player redirects the moral responsibility of executing a person-shaped pile of ones and zeroes back on the one holding the controller.  The role of the critic, then, should be to unpack the meaning embedded in the code as pixels explode across the screen.  Performing such an exercise on Max Payne 3 yields mixed results, but the game may be compelling precisely because of this problem.  There's no way to synthesize violence and meaning here; the game drags you down into a blood-spattered critical hell and challenges you to climb back out--bullet by bullet.  Perhaps that's commentary enough.

Cheers,

--David