Warren Spector Warns Against the Videogaming Industry Becoming Marginalized Like Comics
By
Blood Spectre,
Posted on: 2010-08-17 11:37 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
I still hate Warren Spector for ruining the Deus Ex franchise forever.
He does have one good point though: newer games are getting way too dependent on setpieces and scripted events. Singularity was a big offender where the entire game was on some very obvious rails and there is little point in replaying as you know everything will unfold the same way every time.
On the other hand I don't really want more sandbox games where the main quest is easily ignored and you can quickly get caught up in sidequest after sidequest, assuming that the game even gives you an hint as to where you should be going or trying to achieve.
I see this in every generation of gaming that comes around.
In the Genesis and SNES era, everything was a platformer.
In the PlayStation era, everything was either a JRPG or a fighting game
In the PlayStation 2/XBOX/GameCube era, everything was a sandbox game
Now in the PlayStation 3/Xbox360 era, everything is a first person shooter
Some of his arguments have merit, and some don't. When it comes to RPGs, it's not usually buff guys.....it's teenagers who master swordsmanship after their first battle.
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When Spector talks about choice, he doesn't mean open-ended sandbox games or sims. He's absolutely committed to strong narrative in videogames over free-for-alls. The distinction in his game design philosophy is that he wants players to be able to interact with the story through their choices so that the narrative can unfold in numerous different ways.|
Originally Posted by Lazarus
On the other hand I don't really want more sandbox games where the main quest is easily ignored and you can quickly get caught up in sidequest after sidequest, assuming that the game even gives you an hint as to where you should be going or trying to achieve.
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Originally Posted by Blood Spectre
Who?
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Warren Spector is a 27-year game development veteran with 6 years in tabletop games at Steve Jackson Games and TSR, followed by 21 years in electronic games with Origin, Looking Glass Studios, Ion Storm and most recently Junction Point, a division of Disney Interactive Studios. In addition to making games, Warren has been a novelist ("The Hollow Earth Affair," published in 1988), a film reviewer for the Austin Chronicle and an Assistant Instructor for film and television studies at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2000-2002, he served on the Board of Directors of the International Game Developers Association and served as co-chair of the IGDA's education committee. In 2007, Warren returned to UT Austin to teach a Master Class in Videogames and Digital Media. Warren graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL with a B.S. in Speech and received his Master of Arts in Radio-Television-Film. He remained at UT to pursue a Ph.D. in Communications until the game business lured him away from academia just a dissertation short of a degree. |
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Personally, I'd love to see games start adding some randomization to their setpieces. Take the first Resident Evil and in particular, the dog through the window scene. There are at least 3 versions of this scene I know of; probably more made in the different rereleases. How much scarier would that game be if instead of a scripted event like that, the game picked one of several possible scripted events when you ran through the room?
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Originally Posted by Lazarus
He does have one good point though: newer games are getting way too dependent on setpieces and scripted events. Singularity was a big offender where the entire game was on some very obvious rails and there is little point in replaying as you know everything will unfold the same way every time.
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I'm not seeing how comic books have been "marginalized" at all- quite the opposite, they've become largely mainstream. A comic book won the Pulitzer. Comic creators have turned out internationally lauded reporting. Award winning films have been made from comics and the lives of comic creators.|
Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
"If we don't break out of the big buff guys with swords and space marines," warns veteran game designer Warren Spector in his keynote address for GDC Europe. "We're going to get marginalized the way that comic books have been in the United States. I hope we can break free of the content of comic books."
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The mainstream of any commercial endeavor will reliably be junk aimed at wherever the money men think the 'broadest appeal' is. So in comics The Big Two mostly publish garbage, in movies the corporate behemoths mostly release garbage, etc etc etc on down the line.
But comics as a whole have done nothing but become more creative, more wide ranging, and more culturally accepted in my lifetime. They've gone from garish four color fist-fests I picked up at the 7-11 (although even then there were creative exceptions to the general rule) to an art form covering a panoply of styles and genres.
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Comics/comix/graphic novels are still in the process of penetrating the mainstream in the US, and it will be some time before they overcome the stigma that still lingers from 50s Seduction of the Innocent anti-comics crusade and resurges in the latest psychological criticisms of superheroes. Art Speigelman - who detests superhero comics - has moved to young adult books, and Robert Crumb - who detests them even more - has moved to France. Neither of them has been on the bestseller lists for a while, and they're the most prominent and recognizable comics figures as far as mainstream success goes (notwithstanding the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy). National comics distribution is a niche market dominated by long underwear types. Trade publishing remains reluctant to acquire graphic novels. Manga translations from Japan - where comics are read regularly among all ages if we're looking for an example of real mainstream success - have been the biggest growth sector in bookselling for the category. While there are some independent comics exceptions to mainstream generic offerings, it's nothing like their heydey in the 80s. And when one compares the range of popular comics' genres in the 50s to the contemporary titles', there's no question the field has contracted. Ultimately, the problem is that people don't think twice about going to the cinema or a bookstore but would never set foot in a comic book shop.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I'm not seeing how comic books have been "marginalized" at all- quite the opposite, they've become largely mainstream.
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But Spector's point wasn't to deny the artistic merits of comics but to cite the industry's niche status as a warning to videogame publishers who will fund only established models of proven hits, such as brawny spacemarines and brawny barbarians - which undeniably are the immediate images of videogame heroes for the mainstream.
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Lol what? Is this a fakepost or what?
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Originally Posted by Lazarus
I still hate Warren Spector for ruining the Deus Ex franchise forever.
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In the early to mid ninties, there was a issue of X-men something or other that sold over a million copies. The top selling book in 2010 is usually around 100,000 if its amazing.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I'm not seeing how comic books have been "marginalized" at all-
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There are less people buying comic books.
If the industry is on the rebound, good for it, but its still fairly niche.
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That's not really what he's talking about. He's more referring to the idea that for the most part, the graphic novel genre has been completely absorbed by stagnant super hero tropes, to the point where legitimate art like Y can't be taken seriously because it is assumed to be another teen power fantasy. There's a lot of talk of the wasted potential of the comic book medium that I assume he's referring too, and he fears videogames' love of shooting things may lock it into a similar niche.
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Originally Posted by Kasoh
In the early to mid ninties, there was a issue of X-men something or other that sold over a million copies. The top selling book in 2010 is usually around 100,000 if its amazing.
There are less people buying comic books. If the industry is on the rebound, good for it, but its still fairly niche. |
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How is this relevant?|
Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Comics/comix/graphic novels are still in the process of penetrating the mainstream in the US, and it will be some time before they overcome the stigma that still lingers from 50s Seduction of the Innocent anti-comics crusade and resurges in the latest psychological criticisms of superheroes. Art Speigelman - who detests superhero comics - has moved to young adult books, and Robert Crumb - who detests them even more - has moved to France.
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Comics as an art form have an infinitely higher profile than they did when I was haunting the racks in convenience stores. There is a much wider variety available in a much greater range of venues. While long underwear books may still be looked down on as 'kid stuff' the recognition of comics as a legitimate venue of artistic expression suitable for adults has been proceeding apace for my whole adult life.
When I was younger only the nerds read comics. Now lots of different people read them. Lots of different people create them. You can get them in lots of different places.
That's not marginalization, cultural or otherwise.
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| Neither of them has been on the bestseller lists for a while, and they're the most prominent and recognizable comics figures as far as mainstream success goes (notwithstanding the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy). |
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| National comics distribution is a niche market dominated by long underwear types. |
Not sure what that has to do with the public perception of comics as art form.
Anyone who cares to look will find a much greater range of available material than I had access to in my formative years and comics and their creators are much more in the public eye.
If we're pretending that cultural relevance is dictated by methods of distribution and sales figures then he might have point. I don't think that's an accurate or fair measure.
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| Trade publishing remains reluctant to acquire graphic novels. |
I don't work in publishing so I have no idea how enthusiastic or resistant to such things they are, but the very existence of the genre is a massive shift in exposure and priorities from back in the day.
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| Manga translations from Japan - where comics are read regularly among all ages if we're looking for an example of real mainstream success - have been the biggest growth sector in bookselling for the category. |
R Crumb, who you ceded some cultural weight to earlier, was always a marginal, underground figure who eked out a spare living during his artistic prime. If we're to judge his impact by sales he shouldn't even exist.
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| While there are some independent comics exceptions to mainstream generic offerings, it's nothing like their heydey in the 80s. |
Heyday for superheroes and Big Two wannabes, maybe.
There's a much broader range of work on offer right now than there ever was in the 80's.
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| And when one compares the range of popular comics' genres in the 50s to the contemporary titles', there's no question the field has contracted. Ultimately, the problem is that people don't think twice about going to the cinema or a bookstore but would never set foot in a comic book shop. |
But regarding the supposed 'marginalization' argument, I'll note that you don't HAVE to set foot in a comic book store to get comics these days. You can watch them on the big screen, rent them from Video On Demand, stream them on Netflix, check them out from the library, buy them at Borders or Barnes and Noble.
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| But Spector's point wasn't to deny the artistic merits of comics but to cite the industry's niche status as a warning to videogame publishers who will fund only established models of proven hits, such as brawny spacemarines and brawny barbarians - which undeniably are the immediate images of videogame heroes for the mainstream. |
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Neil Gaiman has shifted most of his energies to writing novels and has gained far more mainstream credibility as a consequence; Alan Moore has essentially retired from comics to pursue his eclectic multimedia muse; and Frank Miller, well, Frank's producing precisely the kind of long underwear power fantasies that most people still think of first when they think of comic books.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I can think of several fairly 'mainstream' creators who're still active in the genre and have a higher Q rating than either Art or Crumb- Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Frank Miller.
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| R Crumb, who you ceded some cultural weight to earlier, was always a marginal, underground figure who eked out a spare living during his artistic prime. |
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Heyday for superheroes and Big Two wannabes, maybe. There's a much broader range of work on offer right now than there ever was in the 80's. |
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| There are plenty of progressive comic shops where 'respectable people' feel comfortable these days. |
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| But regarding the supposed 'marginalization' argument, I'll note that you don't HAVE to set foot in a comic book store to get comics these days. You can watch them on the big screen, rent them from Video On Demand, stream them on Netflix, check them out from the library, buy them at Borders or Barnes and Noble. |
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| He may or may not have a point regarding the thrust of popular videogames, but comics as an example of cultural marginalization is a position built on fail. |
Comic books as modern cultural drivers is heavily limited to being IP fodder for movies. Disney didn't buy Marvel because they want to keep pumping out "Captain America" to the decreasing number of comic book stores who serve a dwindling audience.
Even the term 'graphic novel' was partly developed to get away from the stigma of being a 'comic'.
Spector's point is that video games need to get away from being power fantasies for boys if that industry wishes to avoid being limited to an increasingly niche audience. Now, he might just be thinking of superhero comics - which have dominated the US market for quite a while now - and not be considering how popular manga and graphic novels have become among younger groups (with the traditional comic industry often denigrating and / or ripping off manga in equal measure) but his point is valid.
I understand Spector's point, though I find it amusing that a forum about Comic and Hero/Villain Culture is decrying superhero comics as infantile and low-quality by nature.
Such is the nature not only of geekdom, but of anything intellectual; I see the same things in discussions of publishing, for example.
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I also don't think these sorts of issues are about "marginalization" so much they're about the fact that creativity and imagination just aren't that important to many people. I've had a number of people say they could never play an online game or a tabletop RPG because, "That's too creative," which they declaim in much the same tone they might say, "That's too stupid."
One particular person who once said something like that to me also said something that I think is more telling for this issue: "You know a lot about literature, but you read science fiction. I don't understand how you can do that, since it's the worst kind of trash there is." This is the sort of assumption that I think Spector wants video games to avoid. Rather than being the emotional property of a subculture, he wants them to be familiar and accessible to everyone within a society, as sports generally are in the United States or as "literary" and "commercial" fiction are in the book world. In a sense, it's about marginality rather than marginalization.
Personally, on this issue, I think he's shutting the barn door not only after the horse has been stolen, but after the barn has burned down and its ashes have cooled. Video games will always appeal to a subculture. They've simply gone too far down that road to be otherwise, no matter what they develop.
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The most important part of this thread is the mention of the possibility of anything, but anything, based on Scrooge McDuck. This must be made now.
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"If we don't break out of the big buff guys with swords and space marines," warns veteran game designer Warren Spector in his keynote address for GDC Europe. "We're going to get marginalized the way that comic books have been in the United States. I hope we can break free of the content of comic books."
But beyond the issue of cultural ghettoization, the Renaissance game designer nonetheless believes that videogames should also incorporate the strengths of other media. (His keynote's title is, after all, "What Videogames Can Learn from Other Media What We Can't And What We Shouldn't.") Comics' economic storytelling and iconographic artwork provide better models for game design than the current trends of sprawling but thin narratives and flashy photorealism. Likewise, he expands, radio's advantages in sound design and offscreen narrative and tabletop gaming's role of an active game master can all teach something to aspiring videogame designers.
The most dangerously seductive medium, he argues, is at present the most popular: movies. Cinematic editing's emphasis on creating "magic moments" is one of the worst temptations for videogame design. "We all know about those moments in games when dogs fly through windows, but games are not about magic moments, or one-shots. Games are about the repeated action. Our job is to change the context around the repeated action. {...} We need to stop telling players what to do. We need to get them to tell their own story. {...} Other media can create feelings. Movies can evoke emotions. But what we do is, we can offer the reality of choice."*
And when Spector gets back to work at Disneys Interactive, he's going to continue lobbying for a videogame based on Scrooge McDuck, a character whose popularity rose thanks to comic books, not cartoons.
* Which Going Rogue now offers CoX players, of course.