Hacker CinemaLife Is Strange
2012 · Film · documentary · 96 min
Directed by Isaac Hertz
This is an independent documentary film that tells the stories of Jewish people who were displaced by the Second World War, but concentrates on the vibrant cultural and family life they experienced in their youth that ultimately was most influential in their lives. It explores the connection between old age and childhood, asking questions about what remainsof childhood in our later years, as well as engaging interesting issues of self- identity, Jewish identity, and the struggle to make any sense of our experience. It includes interviews with Shimon Peres, President of the state of Israel, Walter Kohn, Nobel laureate in Chemistry, Robert Aumann, Nobel Laureate in economics, and Children's book author Uri Orlev.
4 positive2 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
I definitely disagree with this, it sounds like you're only taking into account the big budget titles that the media talks (and complains) about.
My favourite story game, Life is Strange from DONTNOD, literally brought me to tears. Going through the Steam reviews, you'll find this is a common reaction. It was still in my mind weeks after I had completed it. Easily the most compelling piece of entertainment (and yes, Art) that I have ever experienced.
No movie I have ever watched has solicited that response.
Even something like the quest line in Warframe I've found more compelling than most movies (shout out to DE's writers on this one).
It's hard to say for Citizen Kane specifically, but I'd wager more people have seen Avengers: Endgame than any particular contemporary equivalent. Just as more people have played Fortnite than either of the games I've mentioned above.
You can definitely find truly powerful art in the video game medium, if you're willing to look.
Lately I’ve been finding that I enjoy very story-centric games more and more. I loved Night in the Woods, Detroit: Become Human, Red Dead Redemption, Life is Strange, God of War and others for their story telling ability. I still play other games and am a big fan of FROM SOFT games (although they have incredible storytelling in their own way), but the story-heavy games suck me in like no TV series or movie ever has. I think it’s a mixture of interactivity and simply being longer than a movie that makes it easier to connect with and care about characters.
As an aside, I almost hated Celeste. I’d given up on it and uninstalled it, but was prompted to try again by a YouTube comment (of all things) and when I did, a few screens after where I stopped, it got good. Incredibly unbelievably good. I’m glad I gave it another chance!
I'm a game designer and a hobbyist writer, and I traditionally have had a terrible time of putting stories into my designs...but yeah, there's some really fun interactive narrative / rpg games out there and I don't think the author has bothered to give them a try (he's only focused on the recent 'walking sim' genre in the article).
Phoenix Wright, Danganronpa, Persona 4 and 5, Life is Strange... all really great, and that's just what I've played in the last year. I've already got Nier Automata on deck for whenever I finish Persona 5.
I also tried playing Steins;Gate this year, one of the more influential graphic novel games, but I'm having a harder time getting into that one (I already saw a good chunk of the anime, so the game feels like a major downgrade visually).
The multiple path/ending thing is something books and films have never done terribly well. Clue is the most effective and successful movie that has attempted multiple endings, and even that could only provide 3 ~5 minute endings to an otherwise static (but really fun) movie.
Meanwhile quite a bit changed in my playthrough of Life is Strange based on my choices (although still not quite as much as I would have liked, certain plot points couldn't be altered), and I got 3 different endings in Persona 4 Golden, with each of the endings leaving some of the mysteries left unanswered (I haven't gotten the 'true' ending yet).
Being a huge fan of the genre of "interactive narratives", I have to disagree. Games like Gone Home, Life is Strange, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Fallout, Deus Ex, and others have had a profound impact on me. The author doesn't seem to make a compelling point why they would be better as books or movies. I haven't really been able to derive a more coherent argument from the article than "they're worse because they're worse, so they should not be games". I think that is a bit harsh on the incredible achievements of the games that painstakingly build an interactive narrative on a medium that is both technically and artistically extremely challenging. Take Mass Effect for example, to me the whole franchise has been one of the most successful science-fiction stories ever. It rivals Star Trek, Star War, and The Expanse. Especially since Mass Effect came out during a period where Hollywood had pretty much given up on the genre as a whole. Mass Effect constructs this beautifully detailed and coherent universe set in a future where mankind discovers advanced technology from an ancient race. This propels mankind into a new era of exploration, conflict and intrigue. Te reason why Mass Effect "works for me", besides the "world building", is that you have the ability to construct a secondary narrative on top of the one presented by the game itself. You are allowed, and encouraged, to make decisions and reflect upon them. While it's all arguably superficial and closed-world, the moment you immerse yourself /in the character/ it offers something very few books and movies can: the ability to guide the story, and become a "person" in a complex world. Then again, I'm biased…but so is that author it seems.
I can empathize with your displeasure here but this argument represents a complete misunderstanding of games and how they're constructed.
'100-150 hours or more of play' is completely meaningless. A game can be 150 hours because it's completely padded out with awful grind (i.e. WoW's widely reviled kill 10 rats formula, widely disliked formulaic Ubisoft Open World Games with repetitive side-quests), or a 5-hour experience with adjustable difficulty, optional objectives and high replayability (multiplayer!)
You simply can't judge the value of a game based on play time, no more than you can judge the quality of a piece of software by the length of its features list or the quality of a film by its running time.
I would make arguments that the quality of the experience you get out of retail games is much higher than a decade ago, due to increased budgets, better technology and general design refinement:
* Almost universally better tutorials
* More widespread access to options like control remapping and sensitivity adjustments
* Access to patches that fix obscure bugs and performance issues found after launch
* More consistent UI and narrative feedback telling you where to go in a game (so you don't get lost if you take a break)
* More consistent availability of adjustable difficulty levels and 'gimme' help in response to multiple retries
* More games that offer alternative paths and solutions
* Cloud saves
* Automated checkpointing
You can view some of these things as steps back from what you liked in (picking random examples here) Final Fantasy 7 or even Final Fantasy 12, but for the vast majority of game players (now a HUGE audience compared to a decade ago) these changes make games more accessible and are generally steps forward, despite some weak points.
I'm the sort of person who happily dumps 100+ hours into a JRPG, but I still find that things have generally moved forward. Most of the high-profile 'short' games I purchase are stellar experiences, some of them are genuinely on par with movies. Others are cheap enough that the short duration is not a weakness - I didn't spend much on Life is Strange or Firewatch but they were very memorable and delivered exactly what I paid for. If you want a big sprawling RPG those are still out there, and they're great - Witcher 3 and Final Fantasy 15 and Xenoblade X are 3 recent titles that I thought stacked up well here for a lower cost (considering inflation) than you would have paid in the past (especially if you use Amazon prime to buy games below retail!)
Agree with everything you're saying here. But the argument reminds me of a similar one, where the established industry leaders try and define what skills and processes go into cinema. Such as no sound vs sound, or film vs digital. The fact that it's story telling on a screen is what in my mind defines cinema.
There is cinematography in current virtual storytelling, such as firewatch, life is strange, and grand theft auto. While none of those are VR, they could be adopted to that medium as well. Cinematography is much more than camera angle, and lens choice, imo, especially in the digitally generated world. There are other techniques to lead the viewers attention, not so different than techniques used on a well made imax.
Also of interesting note, 360 moving image recording is not new, and has been around since the 1950s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle-Vision_360°