Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

The action is in the margins Posted: 23 Dec 2010 08:19 PM PST This post gets around to video games a few paragraphs in. I hope you'll stick with me while I try to set the table. Earlier this week a stunt double named Christopher Tierney was injured when he fell 30-feet to the stage floor in a preview performance of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, a $65 million musical (the most expensive in Broadway history) beset with problems. Tierney's fall was the fourth accident to occur during the show's pre-opening run. The female lead who plays villainess Arachne suffered a concussion after being hit by a rope, a dancer broke both wrists in a flying sequence, and another injured his foot on the same stunt.[1] Given Spider-Man's many production woes, the inevitable impulse is to question its creators' intentions. As one critic asks, "Is Broadway trying too hard to be like Hollywood?"[2] Theater, the thinking goes, should stick to what it does best and leave the epic visuals and high-tech stunts to the experts in Hollywood. Theater is a live, flesh-and-blood event. Its primitive nature is its biggest strength. An actor on the boards before a live audience - it was enough forShakespeare. Everything else is window dressing. That is, unless you get it right. When that actor playing Spiderman defies gravity and flies across the stage, casts his web and sticks his landing to the amazement of a live audience, suddenly the Hollywood comparison gets turned around. Why would I want to watch a CG-enabled Tobey Maguire pretend to execute acrobatic stunts on a screen when I just saw a real guy fly 30-feet over my head, somersault in midair, and attach himself to that wall?! We routinely overvalue originality and undervalue boring stuff like precision and shrewd execution. Anyone who glances at a list of lifted-from-Hollywood productions that pass for Broadway fare these days: Elf, Billy Elliott, The Lion King, Mary Poppins, among others, could be forgiven for thinking the Old White Way ought to be relabeled Tinseltown East. Whatever happened to originality in the American theater? But cursory glances can lead to misinformed assumptions, and that's precisely the case with two of the shows I mentioned above. Yes, Elf and Mary Poppins might best be described as showy cash-ins aimed at the tourist crowd, but that cynical description hardly suits The Lion King or Billy Elliott, two outstanding musicals that transcend the Hollywood material which inspired them. Billy Elliott is a grittier depiction of its title character and his dire circumstances than the movie version, and the sensational dancing flows from a palpable sense of desperation in Billy. The Lion King (directed by Julie Taymor) remains one of the most exhilarating re-imaginings of original source material ever staged. So what does all this have to do with video games? In recent years we've seen plenty of criticism (including mine) leveled at video games that rehash old ideas; games that rely on genre formulas; games that ape the language of film. Games, we're often told, need new ideas. Games need to grow up. Games should leverage their defining interactivity. Cutscenes are lazy. Let movies be movies. Players want to write their own stories. Games don't need authored narratives. Games don't need linear stories. Games don't need stories. All games should be fun. No they shouldn't. The problem with these reductive arguments is they fail to account for how art rails against boundaries; how artists inevitably seek to situate their work in the margins no one can own. Artists instinctively push back against "don't," "shouldn't," and "must." This is why we give them genius grants. It's also why we put them in prison. The real action is in the margins. Julie Taymor's Spider-Man won't succeed or fail based on its recipe of ingredients or fidelity to the language of stage or cinema. Its success will ride on the production's ability to entertain and communicate its core vision to an audience. In Taymor's gifted hands, that vision is likely to include a blend of theatrical and filmic elements that define her sensibilities as a director of both media. This is why we should stop worrying about games that try to be like movies, comic books, or anything else for that matter. The mechanical syntax and visual language of existing media and genres inevitably inform each another, and we should celebrate these confluences when they work. When they don't, the problems are likely to be less about modes of expression than about execution. In other words, a good idea is an idea that works, regardless of its origins or the format used to communicate it.  Uncharted 2 is a great game, in part because its cinematic elements frame the player's experience and successfully convey its formal narrative. Minecraft is a terrific game too, partly because its primitive blocky visuals align with its player-focused building-block DNA. Interestingly, we tend to haggle over the merits of the first, but see the genius of the second as self-evident. Retro graphics suggest an artsy choice, but verisimilitude means somebody sold out. Neither preconception is reliable. Good designers make formal choices that help express their creative goals. It's the critic's job to examine the meaning and impact of those choices. Why did Ian Bogost purposely constrain himself to chunky graphics and 4 kilobytes of memory for A Slow Year? Why did Krystian Majewski rely on high-res still photography for TRAUMA? Why did Daniel Benmergui choose text as a primary visual stimulus for Today I Die? Why does Monobanda offer the player no instructions for creating a tree in Bohm? If we critics can meet games at the places they come to us; if we can examine their materials and try to understand why they were chosen and how they function; if we can allow every game to stand in our consideration untethered to other games or preconceptions, we will better comprehend how they work and why they succeed or fail. In the process, we will more ably fulfill our role as servants of the art form. Here's hoping Spider-Man the musical overcomes its difficulties; but if it flops, sign me up for the autopsy. This one has a lot of moving parts.

Infinity Blade

The most important game of 2010

'Tis the season for reflection. Peering into my 2010 rear view mirror, it's easy to spot the Bioware Space Opera, the Bungie Space Opera, the Blizzard Space Opera and the Nintendo Space Opera. Ever the nonconformist, Rockstar bucked the interstellar trend with a Sandbox Oater. We also got more war games.

One game looms large in this rear view mirror of mine, but you won't find it listed on any GOTY lists. This game isn't the best or most innovative game of 2010, but I contend it's easily the most important game released this year. 

Infinity Blade, the first mobile game to use the Unreal 3 Engine, is the game that will matter most in the long run. It comes closer than any previous game to leveling the playing field between handheld devices and consoles, and it caps a year in which mobile gaming finally proved its case.

The bad news for Nintendo and Sony: Infinity Blade demonstrates why dedicated portable gaming devices like the DS and PSP can no longer assume superiority among gamers looking for "serious games." The next wave isn't here yet, but Infinity Blade is the harbinger of its imminent arrival. If I wanted to make Ian Bogost blanch, I'd say Infinity Blade is a game changer. Wait, make that GAME-CHANGER!

2010 is the year of the mass handheld migration. The game-on-the-go casuals are abandoning the DS/PSP for Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, and Cut the Rope. Seven of the ten top-grossing iOS apps this year were games. A Media Measure study published last week says 52 percent of tablet owners use the devices to play games, outnumbered only by the 58 percent who use them for web surfing.

Other numbers are more telling. 2010 is the first year a Pokémon game release failed to crush all other portable contenders. HeartGold/SoulSilver did well enough, selling 9+ million copies worldwide; but it hardly compares to Angry Birds' 42 million. Granted, "only" 12 million of those were iOS purchases. The wildly popular Android version of the app is free. But it's worth noting that developer Rovio monetizes that free version with ads that generate well over $1 million per month.

The numbers look worse the more you scrutinize them. Nintendo reported total unit sales of 1.7 million for all new DS titles through the first nine months of 2010. The top handful of iOS games routinely surpass that number in nine days. 

I'm no market expert, but it's hard to see how publishers can continue to sell handheld games for 30 bucks a pop when high-quality titles go for less than $10 - usually less than $3 - on iOS and Android. Maybe a market for $30 Zelda or Mario or Pokémon games will always exist, but as major devs like Epic, Sega, and id jump into the iOS pool - playing catch-up to established mobile devs like ngmoco and Chillingo - the prospects for 3rd-party development on Nintendo and Sony hardware appear to have dimmed. Perhaps the forthcoming 3DS and rumored PSP phone will prove me wrong. Nintendo has rounded up an impressive list of devs for its new system. We'll see how many of them stick around.

The app store game avalanche is just getting started. Epic Games VP Mark Rein announced last week that the Unreal Dev Kit used to create Infinity Blade is now available to iPhone and iPad developers. This is the same scalable tech used to build Gears of Warand Mass Effect and includes bump offset mapping, normal mapped architecture, texture blending, global illumination, dynamic specular lighting, and real-time reflections and animation. I have a vague notion of what all this means, but a couple of game dev pals I consulted tell me it's mighty impressive stuff.

Apple doesn't need to convince us that its app store contains a satisfying array of accessible casual games. Infinity Blade - along with id's Rage HD and other 'hardcore' games on the way - suggest tablet and mobile devices are viable platforms for games at the opposite end of the spectrum. All the major games media outlets who regularly ignore iOS games - Eurogamer, 1UP, Destructoid, IGN, Joystiq - reviewed Infinity Blade (quite positively, btw) and covered its development for months.

Why is Infinity Blade the most important game of 2010?

The least interesting thing about Infinity Blade is the game itself. It's a repetitive, fantasy-medieval hack'n'slasher on rails. Punch-Out meets Groundhog Day on a touchscreen. Nothing wrong with that well-worn formula if it works (and it mostly does), but novelty doesn't matter in this case because Infinity Blade is more proof of concept than full-fledged game, and there it fully succeeds.

As every nearly drooling reviewer has noted, this game is goooorgeous. Infinity Blade is the iPhone/iPad game you force your buddies to stop and gawk at. The designers at Chair/Epic clearly love their visuals too because they take every possible opportunity in the game to establish locations with sweeping camera views and rising crane shots. It gets tiresome after awhile, but I must say I never stopped admiring the view.

Fortunately, Infinity Blade's charms are more than cosmetic. The game also boasts remarkably responsive controls. Swipe to slash or block; tap to stab or dodge - it all works beautifully and intuitively. Infinity Blade is the first iOS game I've played that imparts tactile gesture control of an avatar.. At no moment playing this game did I long for a controller.* Did it surprise me to learn Infinity Blade was originally conceived as a Kinect title? Nope.

Infinity Blade is the fastest-grossing app in history of the iTunes Store, grossing over $2 million in its first four days. One might argue the game's relatively high price ($5.99) diminishes that feat; but I contend its price suggests another reason the game matters so much. It successfully demonstrates that iPhone/iPad owners are willing to spend more for premium games, which will inevitably attract more premium game development to the space. 

I hope no one misinterprets me to mean the current crop of iOS developers is somehow lacking. The arrival of developers like Epic and id doesn't suddenly add respectability to a field of 2nd-tier studios. I've poo-pooed iOS games for two years in this very space, only to concede the unmistakable quality of games like Osmos and Mirror's Edge on the iPad. Did you know World of Goo is now available for iPad. Did you know it's the best version of the game on any platform?

2010 will be rembered as the year mobile/tablet games came of age, and Infinity Bladewill likely be forgotten. Other more remarkable games will transcend it, and we'll all take for granted the viability of ambitious games on these miraculous devices we carry with us.Infinity Blade proves such games are possible, and that's why it's important.

*For what it's worth, I played Infinity Blade on an iPad using a BoxWave Stylus, but I also played the game with my finger and saw no decrease in performance. I prefer using the stylus because it adds a bit of useful distance between my hand and the screen and feels more natural to me for fast-paced games