Revelation
Don’t have time to write anything of substance, but just had this realization while sitting on the pot: cut scenes are not game moments — in fact, they are “NON-game moments” and should be called such. Cut scenes have zero interaction. They are games trying to be something else, and for games to be unique in the world of narrative, they will have to evolve and find a way to tell their stories without cut scenes and other NON-game moments.
boo cut scenes. have we talked about this?
I’d compare cut-scenes in video games to intertitles in silent films– cinematic asides in an interactive medium to text asides in a cinematic medium. Both are condescensions from their original storytelling in order to convey what technology of sound and imaginative design inhibits them from doing naturally– dialogue. Until games can make dialogue as intuitively interactive as physical action, cut-scenes will remain a necessary evil.
I’d offer a few ideas of how to do that, but that’d spoil what I’m saving for my thesis a year from now.
well put bob, i’ll look forward to that thesis…
“I’d offer a few ideas of how to do that, but that’d spoil what I’m saving for my thesis a year from now.”
Yeah, you better keep a tight lid on that.
Hey, don’t blame me if I want to turn my schoolwork into a MacGuffin. That way I can pay less attention to actually doing it.
In my mind, cut-scenes have always been analogous to the rising curtain in the performing arts. They allow us to settle into the magic circle as an audience, as well as settle into our character as a player. Curtains are also used to indicate the beginning and the end of different acts. If a production has too many starts and stops, you blame the director or producer, not the curtain.
After all is said and done, cut-scenes do serve a similarly important purpose to the curtain. I know that after a partcularly exhausting stretch in a videogame it’s nice to sit back and have a completely non-interactive reward, just as its nice to have intermission after a particularly emotional scene. Cinematics, then, only become odious when they are neither rewards or breaks, but rather interruptions to gameplay that clearly hadn’t gone on long enough.
Finally, Bob, as someone who is going through his thesis right now, and on a similar subject no less, I highly recommend showing your hand. You’d be suprised how much your perspective changes on something once you actually release it into the world and see if it can stand up on its own. My experience with your work is that it is consistently valuable and insightful. The more perspectives and opinions we can put to discussion, the more progress we can all make on these problems.