Girl Meets Geekdom

Movie title: Reality Bites Starring: Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn, Ben Stiller Directed by: Ben Stiller Written by: Helen Childress Genre: Drama, Romance, Comedy Year: 1994

Maybe it’s just that I’m approaching that post collegiate angst period of life, but there is something in Reality Bites that is very real and revealing about stepping into the world for the first time. In my depressive “what to do with the rest of my life” state, Reality Bites has been something to ponder, to relate to, and simply to enjoy.

Reality Bites is an angst-ridden glimpse of life after college for 4 Generation X-ers. Lelaina Pierce (Winona Ryder) is a woman with her own ideals and big dreams to become a documentary filmmaker. She gets her first taste of post-collegiate life when she takes a job at a TV station and moves into an apartment with her college roommate Vickie (Janeane Garofalo). Soon they are joined by another college friend, Troy (Ethan Hawke), a man who chose not to graduate college in favor of his philosophical views on society and has been in love with her for some time. Lelaina shows antagonism towards Troy from the start, and ultimately ends up in a relationship with Troy’s opposite–a yuppie TV exec, Michael played by Ben Stiller. Ultimately, this story deals with characters facing bleak realities that come with idealism, love, and career.

The interesting thing is that the characters are not necessarily likeable, but they grow on you as you watch them slowly let go of the adolescent ideals of their identity. Strangely enough, the film is uplifting despite a depressing subject nature. There’s no wrong or right, and the film is structured in such a way that you can still relate to the characters without necessarily agreeing with them, yet they belong to a unique generation. The film is accompanied by a great soundtrack that carries you through a glimpse of the 90’s.

In General:
B+ Movie
B+ Performance
B+ Script
A+ Music
A- Love Story

Sony has just released the Monster House Trailer, which has me bouncing off the walls with excitement. Why, you ask? Monster House happens to be the film that I got to work on as an intern at Sony Imageworks two summers ago.
The film is directed by Hollywood newcomer Gil Kenan, and produced by Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis. It utilizes the same “performance capture” technology as Polar Express, but the movement is a little more natural. For one thing, they did have kids act out the kids roles so there is none of that scaling down Tom Hanks business, plus I beleive the animations have more freedom
I saw the animatic for this film in the early stages of production, and the familiarity of the trailer amazes me. I guess that goes to show how much planning goes into a CG film. Anyway, I highly encourage everyone to see the movie when it comes out. If you subscribe to my blog, you can count on me to give you regular reminders!

While we are on the topic of emotion in video games, I figured I’d share my opinions on what makes Final Fantasy the #1 emotion evoker of all games. There are a lot of reason, but the biggest element, I would have to say, is linear story. A lot of game designers seem to frown upon linear storylines in general, arguing that it defeats the purpose of player control in gameplay. Of course one should focus on gameplay as the core of a video game, but let’s get over the no-duh statements and take it to the next level. Otherwise it would be like making movies with your entire focus on FOVs, f-stops, and film speeds.

Linear Story does NOT Mean Linear Gameplay
Critics tend to argue that linear stories limit gameplay, which maybe true to some extent, but less than you would imagine. For one thing, a linear story operates on a progression the way most games have levels. Even in a game like Tetris, you have to pass level 1 to get to level 2, which is really the basis of a linear progression. Generally, you can wrap non-linear gameplay around a linear story by allowing the player to customize characters, allowing the player to explore the world freely, filling the world with mini-games and sidequests, etc. Games like Bethesda’s new Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and consequently the entire Elder Scrolls series, champions the non-linear RPG, but at the core of their game is still a fundamentally linear story. It’s certainly different from games like Final Fantasy, but the principal of the linear story is still there.

Not being able to choose has its advantages
Not being able to choose your character’s path is only a negative if the designer fails to use it to the game’s advantage. I remember one instance in beginning of Final Fantasy VIII, where the anti-hero, Seifer, disobeys orders and leaves his post and heads to a place of rumored danger, forcing you to follow. At that point, I was not too drawn to the game and found it annoying to have to follow even though I had selected not to when prompted. Sure, this is a frustration, and maybe viewed as the pitfall of linearity, but think of the set up. This follows a very cinematic model—one character has entered a place you know you shouldn’t be. You know something bad is going to happen. In film, you have no choice but to enter that space with the character and whatever happens to the character is out of your control. In video games, you are forced down that path, but cannot take the passive viewing approach. Think about the apprehension you feel when watching a horror movie, when you know that the main character is headed for danger, now put the control of that character in your hands—the stakes go up.

Linear Stories Allow for Better Characters
The best part of a linear story lies in the potential of creating dynamic characters. Linearity permits a character to change as a result to the games events. Moreover, linear structure raises the stakes for each character because the things you do can potentially change the character—you might not have control over the ultimate outcome, but it feels that you do. When Aeris died in FFVII, many people spent hours figuring out ways to bring her back, wondering if there was some way in which she could stay alive. Linear stories ultimately allow for characters to react to scripted events and to have that reaction carry through the rest of the game. When Aeris died, Cloud will never be the same again. By contrast, a character like James Bond–in either the games or movies, starts and ends practically the same, no matter what happens. Sure, they might be sad, confused, or profoundly affected by a lover’s death, but you know that when the sequel comes, it’ll be as if it never happened. Dynamic characters is a fundamental reason why games like Final Fantasy can evoke emotions—they are able to develop characters, then use the game events to change them fundamentally. These changes are what evoke emotions like love, sympathy, and pity.

Final Words
Despite my belief in the potential of linear stories in games, I do have one piece of warning: If you are going to force me down the dangerous path to rescue the princess, I better have a damn good reason why. Linear stories have the potential for what I described above, but they don’t inherently carry it. A good linear story is harder than it sounds, but that is a different discussion altogether…

Someone once related to me a scene in Final Fantasy 4 that, many years back, had brought two teenage boys to tears. Was this an anomaly of two gamers too deeply involved with their game, or something more universal to the gaming experience?

Today’s Wired news cites a study done by Bowen Research on the emotional element of games. The researcher, Hugh Bowen, found it surprising that “two-thirds of all gamers think games exceed, could exceed or could equal the emotional richness of other major forms of art and entertainment.” He did not expect that, at 78%, RPGs would top the list of most emotional genres over MMOs. Even more surprising to him was that gamers told him video games inspired such feelings as love and compassion.

Finishing my first Final Fantasy redefined me as a gamer. I was completely taken in by the richness of the characters and how greatly I became attached to them. In Bowen’s research 104 out of 535 people cited Final Fantasy as a rich emotional experience—and why not? Honestly, I’m surprised that only two-thirds of gamers believed in the emotional richness of video games. I would venture to guess the other third invest more time in genres such as strategy, sports games, non-linear quest based RPGs, multiplayer-shooters, and MMOs and other competitive social games, which tend to have less of the reflective type of emotional experience. The significance of titles such as Final Fantasy and more story driven RPGs and shooters is that they are partially interactive movies. The time you invest into games greatly exceeds that of films and because of that the characters grow on you—that is, unless the designers created shallow characters. Wired and Bowen’s report both talk about grown men crying over Aeries’s death in FFVII, but seriously, you don’t even need Aeries. With a good plot and good characters, those 8-bit pixels in FFIV can do it.

Actually I don’t really blog. I have a Xanga, and I don’t keep it updated. I used to try to keep journals, but I can never keep that up. I do store a lot of random thoughts in my head, and I guess the only reason why I never really wrote that on my Xanga was just that Xanga never really felt like it was mine. It feels a little weird to write anything serious there. I don’t think I had a single entry that didn’t end every sentence with a gazillion !!!’s. My new website redesign runs on Drupal, a content management system which allows me to edit my page from the site itself. It seems like its designed mostly for bloggers, so I figured since the functionality was there, I might as well use it. Plus, it’d be nice to have a section on my website that can potentially be constantly updated as well as a place to congregate my ideas.