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Denver, 12:25 PM
Tue Dec 1
65 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/09/09
I don't see that sort of controversy around Metroid, though. It's great but not Kane great.
I still hold that the greatest video game of all time is SMB3
10/07/09
Also if you really really want it to be like citizen kane then it mostly must flop due to its innovativeness and sort of panned but people discover its technical greatness much later.
I doubt it's the Metroid Prime Trilogy.
10/07/09
If it doesn't exist, then we just need to wait. A comparison like this can't actually be made until it is no longer current. You need to look back to compare them, not say "I think this is similar" and assume that the public opinion will be the same after, especially when something like that would need to inspire other game makers, leading to a change in the industry. That doesn't just happen overnight.
And, with so many genres, you can probably point to at least one game per genre that's comparable, if not more. FPS games have both Doom and, depending on who you're a fan of, Halo/Half Life. Action/Adventure/Stealth games owe a lot to Metal Gear Solid, as do many other types of games.
The point being, there may not just be one, and a truly comparable game probably won't actually come out for years. I think in the mad rush to develop the industry and the fact that people like to borrow from other industries that have been around longer, we forget how new the gaming industry is, and despite the fact that right now, the Xbox and the PS3 are pushing the limits of what can be done, they're going to be remembered the same way we remember black and white Silent films now. We'll get our "talkies", our "Citizen Kane". Somewhere along the line, we'll eventually get our own "Stanley Kubrick". But right now, we're still finding our identity as an industry.
10/07/09
Where Shadow of the Colossus was experience like no other, MGS3 was a game that perfected storytelling in video games and provided dozens of memorable in-game moments.
10/07/09
I think my Citizen Kane of Video Games would have to be MGS1. It FOREVER changed my expectations of what a game should be, how a video game can tell a superb story and have groundbreaking action, stealth atmosphere, production values and emotional engagement with the characters.
I think for me there was a "before MGS1", and an "After MGS1".
That and it was the first game to ever make me cry (Sniper Wolf's death among others)
MGS3 come very close, and even surpasses MGS1 in terms of sheer emotional involvement (cf The ending), but MGS1 wins because it came out first; it pioneered all of this.
GTA3, Super Mario Bros, Tetris, GT1 get honourable mentions.
10/07/09
Far from it...
10/07/09
10/06/09
Since MP has actually been played by the youth of america and anti-nintendo fanboys question it's status as a fantastic title on a regular basis it can't be the CK of gaming. Quite frankly nothing can as the medium is too young.
I would predict that psyconaughts will be the CK of gaming in the future as seemingly nobody bought the thing and yet nobody has anything bad to say about it.
Btw this in no way reflects the actual quality of the games. In terms of quality MP could be considered of the best if not THE best series of all time. But that wasn't the question asked now was it? ;)
10/06/09
HOW can one possibly make this connection?
How the hell are you going to compare the greatest film of all time, which in turn is also one of the most compelling character studies in all of film....to a video game where the protagonist HAS ZERO character development....let alone NOT A SINGLE LINE OF DIALOGUE.
Part of what made Citizen Kane so fascinating was Charles Foster Kane's descent from an idealistic young newspaper tycoon...to a sad old man who loses everything and dies alone. Seeing a man change like that (made convincing by the fantastic make up and Welles' acting) are like looking into the abyss.
Seriously....this conversation pisses me off....video game people are so unsure of our medium, that we are constantly trying to compare the best of our medium to a completely different medium. Its a total apple and oranges situation. Why can't our good games be praised for being just that....good games? Why is it that every time someone tries to make an argument that some game is 'the greatest game ever,' that we have to equate it to something from a completely different medium?
10/06/09
10/07/09
Some of us are into games for more than just interesting mechanics.
10/07/09
I can't comment on the "Citizen Kane" comparison, as I haven't personally seen the film, but I think that there's more to these games than just the action, even if the characters don't speak. The fact that the person you are controlling doesn't speak actually helps massively with the immersion, as it's rather jarring when you're told explicitly "THIS IS HOW YOU SHOULD FEEL AT THIS POINT". I think that allows you to distance yourself from the events somewhat and react the way you feel is right, not how "your character" does. Another example that does this fantastically is the Half-Life 2 games.
Of course, with films you're already distanced as you're not directly controlling any of the characters' actions, so it's much easier to find a movie which people loved for the storyline than it is a game. But I think that there are a few games which do have the power to tell stories, and tell them well.
10/06/09
10/07/09
10/08/09
10/06/09
In regards to the former, Metroid Prime isn't a bad comparison. It was years ahead of its time, and you'd be hard pressed to find another game that resolved as many game design issues plaguing the industry at the time than Metroid Prime. Books could be written about its innovations, both technological and in the presentation of narrative. Where the Metroid Prime comparison fails, however, is in regard to the aforementioned idea of the auteur.
As with film, there were certainly early pioneers in the gaming industry who mostly had creative control over their work. For every Chaplin and Eisenstein of early film, there's a Miyamoto and Will Wright. However, with some exceptions, it was rare for game designers to be given a budget and complete freedom to create whatever experience they fancied, regardless of whether or not it was marketable. From a corporate standpoint, game designers were largely interchangeable.
Recently, however, the idea has caught on that otherwise obscure games are marketable when the name of an established auteur is attached to it. A game with the name Hideo Kojima on the box will attract more attention than many established, marketable IPs will. Similarly, it's in Sony's interest to let Fumito Ueda spend five years making one game of questionable marketability, as the success of The Last Guardian is completely dependent on Ueda having the means to fully express a cohesive artistic vision.
Hollywood didn't learn this for a long time. The studios butchered "The Magnificent Ambersons" and otherwise held back Welles for much of his career. It wasn't until he filmed "The Trial," twenty-one years after Citizen Kane, that Welles felt he once again had complete control of the creative process. Contrast this to, say, Stanley Kubrick. With the exception of Spartacus, he had final cut and full control over every aspect of the production process of all his films, including marketing. Lolita (Which, come to think of it, lacked much of the eroticism of the novel due to censoring regulations back then, thus serving as the only other instance in which Kubrick didn't get his way), Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and A Clockwork Orange all attracted significant attention (for completely different reasons), and so the Kubrick name began to carry as much weight when attached to a film in some circles as the names Bette Davis or Humphrey Bogart would in others. Directors eventually became as big of stars as actors and actresses. I think it was Ryan O'Neal (though I can't be sure, and a quick Google search did little to assist me) who once said that the real star of a Kubrick film was Stanley Kubrick, commenting on the fact that, despite being the star of Kubrick's three-hour Barry Lyndon, he is hardly the point of focus for the film-enthusiast. Today, attaching Spielberg or Tarantino to a project is a better way to sell tickets than to flaunt the names of the actors or actresses in the movies, unless they're unstoppable box office machines like Will Smith.
Gaming companies are becoming increasingly aware that the name of a designer can carry as much weight as an established IP or character. The names Tetsuya Miziguchi and Suda51, when dropped in a press release, will guarantee sustained interest from a subsection of the hardcore gamer demographic. Psychonauts and Jericho, despite having both bombed, received as much attention as they did mostly by being associated with Tim Schafer and Clive Barker. Sure, Psychonauts was a great game, but similarly great off-beat games (for example, anything by Kenichi Nishi) fail to gain as much publicity without an iconic character like Schafer printed on the box. For the moment, though, the marketing appeal of the auteur is restricted to the hardcore demographic. Until game directors all have their names on the cover art, there won't be any mainstream recognition of our industry's visionaries. Don't be surprised, though, if in twenty years, people start walking in stores, looking for games by director rather than by series.
If I had to pick a gaming equivalent of Citizen Kane at this point, paralleling the two areas in which I consider it to be most historically significant, I would have remarkable trouble. Donkey Kong might be one, as it pretty much invented narrative in games and pioneered the cutscene (I'm going of Chris Kohler's thesis, here), along with launching the directorial career of gaming's most notable auteur. It also summed up a decade of progress in game design, similar to what Citizen Kane did with early film. I would love to say Majora's Mask is another possible equivalent, as it's incredibly sophisticated and has a form of narrative that is essentially impossible in any other medium (everything else is derivative from OoT, so the 3-day cycle and its narrative consequences are the only points of interest here), but Aunoma simply has not become a recognizable name, and has yet to work on anything but Zelda to establish a reputation for himself. Metal Gear Solid is another possibility, for obvious reasons, though I don't think it's at a level of quality suitable for such a declaration (Don't flame please). The remaining options, I would say, are Rez, Killer 7, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus (primarily because Fumito Ueda didn't become well known until SotC). Of these, I'd probably pick SotC as I believe it'll maintain the reputation of marking a turning point in game design. However, there really is no ideal parallel between the film and gaming industries that allows us to liken any of these games to Citizen Kane.
To re-iterate briefly: though there have been some incredible, landmark games with as much sophistication and beauty as the great movies (Tell me Ocarina of Time isn't every bit as brilliant as Bicycle Thieves, or that Super Mario 64 is a lesser experience than Berlin Alexanderplatz), none can really be compared to Citizen Kane in terms of their significance in history or effect on the industry, especially at this point in time.
10/06/09
and sorry but i only read the part about Citizen Kane.
10/07/09
10/06/09
I love the Prime series a lot. One of the best 2D-to-3D transitions. But would I say it's THAT good? Eh... I don't know about that.
10/06/09
10/06/09
10/06/09
People keep trying to equate certain video games with landmark films in order to form a concrete assertion that video games have artistic merit not unlike the silver screen gems of yore.
The thing is, drawing comparisons serves no purpose. Movies are not video games, and vice versa. Some video games try to be like movies, and some movies try to be like video games, but video games are a media form that is really unlike any other, and trying to shoehorn a game into a role that makes it, somehow, the gaming equivalent of a film (a great film, but still wholly irrelevant to gaming) is really beside the point.
If film can be considered an "art", then video games can be considered "art" as well. We should try to stop defining and classifying games based on the way we look at popular film, and start viewing games on their own merit, otherwise it looks like the gaming culture is insecure about the legitimacy of their favorite art form.
10/06/09
It's infinitely repayable, being a challenge still after decades. It's practically flawless in it's simplicity.
It's the definitive puzzle game, spawning millions of cloned efforts. It inspired countless other games. It's more or less, the reason for most modern puzzle games.
Everyone, from a child to an elderly man, can pick up and play it within seconds.
It's blocks, themes, etc, are absolutely iconic.
It's also one of the first games that really was impossible to replicate the feel in any other media It simply doesn't work as anything else then a video game. Metriod, mario, etc, can be translated into comics or motion picture. Tetris cannot. Just like a Citizen Kane wouldn't have been as magnificent as anything else but a film, Tetris is only best as a videogame.
10/06/09
Metroid Prime did neither of these things - it's simply a really good game.
If you really wanted to label something the "Citizen Kane" of gaming, I'd say that Final Fantasy VII is a much better fit.
10/06/09
10/06/09
10/06/09
Also, FFVII had a rather normal narrative structure, outside of a couple of key moments in the game. Final Fantasy VII isn't unlike Metal Gear Solid, in that respect.
10/06/09
More on-topic, why are we even looking for this "Citizen Kane" of gaming? How far do we want take that analogy? Video games are just another word for interactive media; shouldn't the "Mona Lisa" of gaming be something that takes interactivity to a new level? Along those lines, I submit Wii Sports Resort as the mostly likely extant candidate, though I am open to the idea that some mindblowing software for Natal (or Sony's wand, whatever it's called) could change my tune.
10/06/09
The closest thing gaming has to Citizen Kane would be Super Mario Bros, and even that's a stretch.