February 3rd, 2010 / 5:52 pm
Snippets
Snippets
Matt Bell—
From Michael Rudin’s “Writing the Great American Novel Video Game” at Fiction Writers Review: “The keyboard we writers know so intimately… lives a double life, spellbound in passionate affairs with a video game community that dotes on it as affectionately as we authors ever have. For every keystroke a writer uses to describe character or establish scene, somewhere in cyberspace a gamer uses these same keys to navigate gunships and commandeer submarines.”
I don’t know. I think that what I write, in a sense, is preparing me for a kind of war.
I don’t know. I think that what I write, in a sense, is preparing me for a kind of war.
This article is fantastic, thanks Matt. I play a lot of video games, and try to stay up on what’s going on with video games as much as I try to do so with poetry. This article sort of represents a discussion that goes on in the gaming world as well, and it’s nice to see it sort of cross over to a discussion that literature-types can participate in as well.
That said, I think some of the examples used are a little out of touch. That might not be the right phrase, but whatever. MW2 is a hyper-popular game, but I don’t think it best represents what he’s getting at. I’ll be honest, I haven’t played it, because it doesn’t appeal to me all that much for gameplay reasons (the online community is basically the every 15 year old boy in the U.S., and they are great at shit-talking). Sure, it got the nomination from the WGA, but so did Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which has had critics everywhere frothing at the mouth since its release. I might not go so far as to say it is the “Citizen Kane of games” that Rudin brings up, especially because it’s frequently compared to film and that is the kind of comparison I think games need to move away from to reach the independent status that might allow a “Citizen Kane of games” to emerge. I think it comes close though, really coming close to this artistic interactivity, or however you want to put it.
Great to see him mention Bioshock, which is probably still worth discussion even though it’s 3 years old, especially in the light Rudin is presenting (people from other artistic venues looking in at games and making comparisons, rather than the gaming community looking out and making comparisons). The sequel is out this month (Feb 9), though whether it will be as good is yet to be determined.
And just as an aside, if anyone is actually interested in the subject, the games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus on the Playstation 2 and the upcoming Last Guardian on Playstation 3, all developed by Team Ico, have frequently been cited as “arthouse” games. Also the downloadable game Flower on the Playstation Network. There are, of course, many others, and even in the “mainstream” games of this gen there’s things worth consideration.
This article is fantastic, thanks Matt. I play a lot of video games, and try to stay up on what’s going on with video games as much as I try to do so with poetry. This article sort of represents a discussion that goes on in the gaming world as well, and it’s nice to see it sort of cross over to a discussion that literature-types can participate in as well.
That said, I think some of the examples used are a little out of touch. That might not be the right phrase, but whatever. MW2 is a hyper-popular game, but I don’t think it best represents what he’s getting at. I’ll be honest, I haven’t played it, because it doesn’t appeal to me all that much for gameplay reasons (the online community is basically the every 15 year old boy in the U.S., and they are great at shit-talking). Sure, it got the nomination from the WGA, but so did Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which has had critics everywhere frothing at the mouth since its release. I might not go so far as to say it is the “Citizen Kane of games” that Rudin brings up, especially because it’s frequently compared to film and that is the kind of comparison I think games need to move away from to reach the independent status that might allow a “Citizen Kane of games” to emerge. I think it comes close though, really coming close to this artistic interactivity, or however you want to put it.
Great to see him mention Bioshock, which is probably still worth discussion even though it’s 3 years old, especially in the light Rudin is presenting (people from other artistic venues looking in at games and making comparisons, rather than the gaming community looking out and making comparisons). The sequel is out this month (Feb 9), though whether it will be as good is yet to be determined.
And just as an aside, if anyone is actually interested in the subject, the games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus on the Playstation 2 and the upcoming Last Guardian on Playstation 3, all developed by Team Ico, have frequently been cited as “arthouse” games. Also the downloadable game Flower on the Playstation Network. There are, of course, many others, and even in the “mainstream” games of this gen there’s things worth consideration.
MUDs: gaming, and ALL writing.
MUDs: gaming, and ALL writing.