This is smart, and I love that you're grounding it in the VHS/streaming dichotomy. However, instead of calling the instinct to let artists like Forman always have director's cut the "teacher-god" principle (with the reader/viewer as the student/disciple), how about calling it the "influencer/fan" principle instead? Fan culture and literary theory have so thoroughly dumbed down/smarted up both the role of the artist and the reader/viewer that we can't look at things without obsessive attention to what the artist "really wanted" (see fan culture) or what the art "really means in context" (literary theory). We're just really bad readers/viewers of ambiguity and nuance. I'm a bit of a technological determinist, so I see a lot of this as simply an effect of the dissemination of fan culture and literary theory through the internet/streaming and the corporate domination of culture through through those vectors. Artists make "content," like influencers do, and the role of the corporation is to deliver the maximum amount of it to fans. In the old, slow system of intensive curation (the dreaded "movie studio notes," or "my book editor keeps returning my draft"), the artists at the top of the pyramid answered to a bunch of very conservative curators, but in the new system, there's no curators at all, just a fire hose of content that must be doled out as quickly as possible for an artist to have any hope of making the same amount of money that they did before. So artists become influencers, and readers/viewers become fans, obsessively consuming all of the retread content of a very small number of people at the top of the pyramid (Swift, T., Disney/Marvel/Star Wars content, the Kardashians, etc.) and ignoring the "middle class" of artists making their first or second or third novel/album/movie/tv show, desperately showing more and more of themselves in an attempt to turn readers/viewers into fans.
I asked this question about over-explanation on Reddit, and here's a reply I got:
"I definitely find an excess of exposition in tentpole movies these days. And to make matters worse, most of it is just mcguffin gobbledygook.
I can tell you as a television writer that over-explaining is now mandated by networks who acknowledge and embrace the fact that people are usually scrolling their phones, cooking, or doing laundry while they watch. So there is an amount of exposition I feel is necessary for an audience and I am usually noted into doubling that amount.
Televisions are referred to as ‘second screens’, with your phone or tablet being the first."
Ouch. That's even worse than my theory above: not only is fan service mandated, but STUPID fan service is mandated because our attention is always assumed to be divided. I appreciate how you dove into Reddit to answer this. The technological determinism of divided attention forcing artists to over-explain falls apart a bit when you use the internet to gather together like-minded people (as in this substack!) to discuss ambiguity and nuance, and I've sometimes found that Reddit can function that way. Of course, sometimes subs on Reddit also create a dunking-on-them culture like Twitter, where ambiguity and nuance die a whole different kind of death than in director's cuts.
Important things to keep in mind, especially when you're writing a novel. The major theme of a novel I'm working on is betrayal and lies, and it's demanding to ensure that not a single line in the book uses either of those words. You have to trust the reader to understand what's a lie and when betrayal occurs.
My intuition here is that much of this impulse is derived from the desire to remake the world so that it aligns with the author's morality - a kind of "ought to is" narrative fallacy.
It's the desire to erase ambiguity and complexity in characters, morality, and narrative. An impulse to flatten the contradictions of reality into a more ordered framework that feels better.
Great article. I recently watched Amadeus for the first time and had an odd experience because of these two editions. So a slight correction is that the first DVD of the movie released in the late 90s is a double sized disk that shows the theatrical edition. My library had that copy but unfortunately the bottom half was too scratched to finish. I then finished the movie on Amazon which was the extended edition.
The pacing was noticably different so I read about the differences and watched that scene with Stanzi. I completely agree that it was unnecessary and it's very disappointing that it's so hard to see the original version.
Thank god for this comment, I was reading this essay and going "I have absolutely no memory of any of these scenes Chris is describing from the DVD I watched, is this early-early-onset dementia???"
My favorite science fiction author is C.J. Cherryh and I wonder how many younger readers would be put off by her work because she refuses to explain *anything*, essentially throwing you into the deep end of a future that is very much a "foreign country" and expecting you to sink or swim. Her books are also a sort of "cinematic universe" avant la lettre (she started in the late 1970s) but they work better than modern universes precisely because they don't explain anything. Each novel you read gives you more context to understand all of the others. All sorts of things that might make no sense or simply go unnoticed suddenly acquire new meaning when viewed in the context of other books in her "Alliance-Union" setting.
Sorry yea this was way too reductive lol but i’ll try to not ramble like i do: games, as the most profitable entertainment medium and the one most beloved by young people (am zoomer so this isnt just kids these days talking - well maybe a lil bit) has taught a lot of them incorrect lessons about the enjoyment of art. Because games dont have great writers working on them, but excel at simple themes and the audience’s understanding of those themes is part of the win condition. I think most young people who analyze art come at it from a gamer turned reader/watcher/listener’s perspective
For example one of the few games I think can be argued as high art or at least art by a great auteur is the Oddworld series, specifically the first two (and an honorable mention to Stranger’s Wrath which covers the same themes). The premise of Oddworld is it’s set on an alien planet and you play as a Mudokon called Abe, working as a slave at a meat-packing plant. Mudokons are creatures with feathered ponytails with a spiritual connection to the land, and their enslavers are a race of cigar-chomping executives literally called Glukkons. All the other creatures - Scrabs, Paramites, Meeches, who were once thriving are now being hunted to extinction with the exception of Sligs who were implied to have been the very bottom of the food chain but with advanced tech given by the Glukkons are now #2 in order to keep the Mudokons in slavery. The first game has a scene where upon escaping Abe sees his race’s handprint on the moon above their planet, revealing to himself and the audience that his species are indigenous to Oddworld and by the same token the Glukkons are not only technologically advanced industrialists destroying the environment and brutalizing the innocent but are also alien invaders making them a colonial power
Essentially all of this is incredibly obvious as allegory: Glukkons represent American Capitalism, Mudokons are Native Americans, Sligs can represent anything from White America to the Military to the Police to essentially any group that could be considered a class-traitor or normally weak but given unfair power to avoid solidarity with workers. I think the difference with why I love Oddworld and why I think Oddworld would be enjoyed by a modern audience is this: I think modern audiences are impressed these themes exist at all, where I appreciate these themes for how it showcases the perspective of the author and how the game expertly utilizes the themes as its gameplay. Killing and blowing up and essentially violently overthrowing Glukkons and Sligs is the point of the game, every puzzle is finding a way to outsmart them and their technology and becoming a revolutionary hero in order to get the good ending. Freeing slaves is a game mechanic, which you do by talking to them with the buttons and getting them to follow you to an escape route. If you dont save enough slaves you get the bad ending
So as you can see gameplay and story are used to communicate the message flawlessly. It’s good vs evil with a satire of America thats unmissably in your face. Worldbuilding is hardly Tolkien, it doesnt suggest any alternatives to Capitalism and it doesnt question the morality of killing entire races labelled as the bad ones. However like Tolkien a simple morality isnt a problem because otherwise the story wouldnt exist and the themes wouldnt be affective. You dont need to be a Catholic reactionary or a Hippie revolutionary like their respective creators in order to like either property, because there’s a veil of satire in Oddworld and well written prose in LOTR that means there’s other qualities that make it different from a Chick Tract. I think most conservatives would like Oddworld, they wouldnt identify with the Glukkons merely because they represent Capitalism because it’s so absurd they would recognize they can agree in-universe with violent revolution without contradicting their values. And I know Left people have loved LOTR since the 60s
However the difference between Oddworld and LOTR is that since LOTR is passive there’s a lot you can interpret authorial intent or unintentional character motivation into. You dont need to agree with Frodo on everything in order to enjoy the story, because you aren’t Frodo. When he spares Gollum you are either on Sam’s side or Frodo’s side, even if the theme is on the side of Frodo by the end. In Oddworld if you disagree with an action the author wants you to take that’s a failing on the part of the game designers, because you have to agree with Abe 100 percent of the time in order to keep playing. LOTR and Star Wars aren’t high IQ things to “get” but even by games’ standards they would have to be dumbed down, you would have to spare Gollum in order to progress so Gollum would be given way more redeemable traits or be an outright reformed villain or they would just have it be done in a cutscene without player input (which nobody would like). Same thing if they made ROTJ as a game first, sparing Vader wouldnt be a tough decision that ultimately saves the day it’d be the only non-evil decision
And thats how this bleeds into every other industry. Now the audience looks at fiction as a series of evil and not-evil actions. One of my favorite quotes to illustrate this is “you missed the point by idolizing them”, used by people to shame someone who likes Walter White, Scarface, Tyler Durden, etc. by telling the person who thinks so that theyve entered the Game Over state of media literacy. Now it’s hard to defend people like that because they are a specific phenotype that’s detestable but I would say liking the protagonist is something that is kind of the point of all those characters. Because they are given redeemable traits and understandable motivations. And i think the writers would see it as a victory! I dont think the intention of Scarface is for you to be shaking your head when Tony kills Mark Margolis’ character for wanting to kill a kid, or even when he’s become a druggie monster. Youre meant to be entertained while objectively acknowledging that Tony has fallen as a person. The modern audience is incapable of enjoying a well directed, well acted, well shot scene about something bad happening if they think the author wasnt miserable or enraged writing it shaking his fist at the villain protagonist. Like I said this is hardly nuanced stuff I cite, but Breaking Bad is written by great writers and the writers themselves like Vince kind of enjoyed Walt being a pulpy “badass” whilst also intending it as a moral fall from grace
Now imagine the modern audience when theyre forced to understand something where the point is NOT to understand. They turn on the work. TV Tropes is a great example of this, where I hateread it frequently and they said that in Go Set A Watchmen the Scout character choosing to not walk out on her father for being bigoted is seen as this weird endorsement of bigotry because the tv tropes article writer if they were: a) a little girl in the 60s, in the South b) had a lawyer dad who saved a black guy (in Watchmen he’s aquitted as it was an earlier draft), and c) was also a racist, they wouldve done the opposite of what Scout did. Now that’s all well and good for them if they believe they would have done that, but it suggests a lack of an ability to put themselves in Scout’s shoes and also an aversion to the idea of weighing bigotry and evil acts versus good and kind acts to decide if a person is truly good, that informed this thought process. Because after all, shouldnt Scout be more like Abe?
Edit: ofc. I in my explanation leaned too much into a more tangential topic of moral judgment, whereas this in games happens with everything from theme to motivation to game mechanics and has now bled over, but the takeaway I want to give is that usually writers that overexplain morality overexplain everything else and thats common in games due to a combination of hack writers and like I demonstrated needing the player and main character to have the same motivation in order to keep the player playing
Thanks for that really detailed response and I'll have to re-read to fully understand. But I like your point about how some people want literature and movies to function more like games, where certain premises must be accepted before progress is allowed. How do you factor in open world games into this framework?
Yea sorry if it's a little scraggly im not sure if youve played much video games youre more of reader and watcher whereas i forgo that for gaming (im a proud phillistine lol) so it probably reads worse to the non-converted. anyway yea i think that mentioning open world is a good question and i would say that for me i love open world games but i dont know if they change this problem with games narratively tho in terms of gameplay they can promote some out of the box thinking
Open world games like GTA, Red Dead, Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs have a lot of space and opportunity to mess around but a big criticism I and a lot of people have of them is that in terms of mechanics when exploring you have a lot of freedom but then during story progression theyre still putting you on a linear road. GTA IV and V had multiple endings but instead of those endings being given to you as a result of your choices in the story it's instead a decision at the end of the game that you get given via menu. You literally pick A, B, or C using your in-game phone which is funny. Red Dead 2 I felt did this a lot better, where your ending is given to you depending on a meter that goes from bad to good depending on your actions in gameplay, like if you kill and rob innocent people too much you get the bad ending. Unfortunately since again the game defines actions as good and bad inherently youre really just given the same choice as in Oddworld except the bad option is now fleshed out to have its own sets of dialogue and payoff. I dont mind it in RDR2 honestly, what I like about that morality system is just how impressive it is that the character feels in-character no matter what you do. You feel a gradual transition in his behavior as you play the game and pick different options. Another shout out I want to give with gameplay choice is Shadow of War, which I've been playing a bit of again and I love how the game reacts to your actions by having specific named enemies you can fight, flee from or defeat which then bring up previous encounters with you. However I bring that up because while there's lots of flexibility there the rest of the game is pretty standard and linear: go to waypoints, kill a bunch of orcs, mission complete, rinse repeat. The enemies are what give variety
I feel like a truly interpretive game is Minecraft. The game has an end-goal but you as a player dont have to pursue it. You can destroy a forest to build a castle or replant every tree and live inside a cave. You could breed animals for food or grow wheat and essentially go vegan. For as much of a culture warrior Notch is now the man was a genius at making art where the politics comes from within the player projecting it onto the game
A lot of games work in the contradiction of freedom of gameplay with theme and narrative being so strict and defined. The excellent Hitman World of Assassination Trilogy is all about exploring maps where you choose or make opportunities to assassinate the target, by messing with the AI, but the actual character is defined by his morality being given to him by other people. The last level instead is a linear train meant to symbolize how while you the player felt free, he never felt that way and now the game is giving you a taste of the character's inner conflict using level design. Doesn't entirely work when you as a player have been having fun with the freedom of the gameplay and are now being told it wasnt true freedom, but hey it's making a clever thematic statement that isn't just metacommentary on the nature of game design and is trying to do character work so I'll give it a pass
I feel like games are just inherently restricted by not being as easy to make as books, tv or even movies. You need to give a player choice, because that's the point of a game. However unlike D&D you have to spend hundreds of hours creating and play-testing every option. I brought up Shadow of War and the reason why enemies can dynamically react to you is because they recorded thousands of lines and then added in a procedural generation system to then make the enemies seem truly dynamic
So overall I dont think games are at that point yet where they can create something truly interpretive, because the budget isnt there yet. Obviously if every game had true freedom it'd be a shit game, an option to retire and become a stockbroker in GTA would be true freedom but wouldnt fit the themes. I hope that one day there's a way to make it easier for games to create dynamic choices where you can decide for a character, whilst that character remains in character and it generates a different pathway for that. Undertale came close honestly but it was kind of hampered by how its good ending was so obviously the one the creator thought everyone should prefer
Thank you for your article, it made me stop and think about my own art. When I write poetry, I have no desire to explain the depths of meaning behind it bc it can resonate with the reader in different ways, and the poems are usually very specific moments in time that seem to flow into me out of nowhere. With my paintings, they are abstract, and tell an emotional, layered story. I would find it interesting to know what the observer sees first. I’m not sure how much I would want to explain my own meaning unless it was a one on one conversation. With writing, I want my thoughts to be succinct, but if it’s fiction, I would want to leave it as nuanced. I DO enjoy movies that are not spelled out, though. I appreciate your writing, and the fact it makes me want to prevent myself from over-explaining.
This is smart, and I love that you're grounding it in the VHS/streaming dichotomy. However, instead of calling the instinct to let artists like Forman always have director's cut the "teacher-god" principle (with the reader/viewer as the student/disciple), how about calling it the "influencer/fan" principle instead? Fan culture and literary theory have so thoroughly dumbed down/smarted up both the role of the artist and the reader/viewer that we can't look at things without obsessive attention to what the artist "really wanted" (see fan culture) or what the art "really means in context" (literary theory). We're just really bad readers/viewers of ambiguity and nuance. I'm a bit of a technological determinist, so I see a lot of this as simply an effect of the dissemination of fan culture and literary theory through the internet/streaming and the corporate domination of culture through through those vectors. Artists make "content," like influencers do, and the role of the corporation is to deliver the maximum amount of it to fans. In the old, slow system of intensive curation (the dreaded "movie studio notes," or "my book editor keeps returning my draft"), the artists at the top of the pyramid answered to a bunch of very conservative curators, but in the new system, there's no curators at all, just a fire hose of content that must be doled out as quickly as possible for an artist to have any hope of making the same amount of money that they did before. So artists become influencers, and readers/viewers become fans, obsessively consuming all of the retread content of a very small number of people at the top of the pyramid (Swift, T., Disney/Marvel/Star Wars content, the Kardashians, etc.) and ignoring the "middle class" of artists making their first or second or third novel/album/movie/tv show, desperately showing more and more of themselves in an attempt to turn readers/viewers into fans.
I asked this question about over-explanation on Reddit, and here's a reply I got:
"I definitely find an excess of exposition in tentpole movies these days. And to make matters worse, most of it is just mcguffin gobbledygook.
I can tell you as a television writer that over-explaining is now mandated by networks who acknowledge and embrace the fact that people are usually scrolling their phones, cooking, or doing laundry while they watch. So there is an amount of exposition I feel is necessary for an audience and I am usually noted into doubling that amount.
Televisions are referred to as ‘second screens’, with your phone or tablet being the first."
Ouch. That's even worse than my theory above: not only is fan service mandated, but STUPID fan service is mandated because our attention is always assumed to be divided. I appreciate how you dove into Reddit to answer this. The technological determinism of divided attention forcing artists to over-explain falls apart a bit when you use the internet to gather together like-minded people (as in this substack!) to discuss ambiguity and nuance, and I've sometimes found that Reddit can function that way. Of course, sometimes subs on Reddit also create a dunking-on-them culture like Twitter, where ambiguity and nuance die a whole different kind of death than in director's cuts.
Important things to keep in mind, especially when you're writing a novel. The major theme of a novel I'm working on is betrayal and lies, and it's demanding to ensure that not a single line in the book uses either of those words. You have to trust the reader to understand what's a lie and when betrayal occurs.
"I lied," he said, betrayingly.
Arghgh, no! Don't post these things!
Another great piece, Chris!
My intuition here is that much of this impulse is derived from the desire to remake the world so that it aligns with the author's morality - a kind of "ought to is" narrative fallacy.
It's the desire to erase ambiguity and complexity in characters, morality, and narrative. An impulse to flatten the contradictions of reality into a more ordered framework that feels better.
Great article. I recently watched Amadeus for the first time and had an odd experience because of these two editions. So a slight correction is that the first DVD of the movie released in the late 90s is a double sized disk that shows the theatrical edition. My library had that copy but unfortunately the bottom half was too scratched to finish. I then finished the movie on Amazon which was the extended edition.
The pacing was noticably different so I read about the differences and watched that scene with Stanzi. I completely agree that it was unnecessary and it's very disappointing that it's so hard to see the original version.
Thank god for this comment, I was reading this essay and going "I have absolutely no memory of any of these scenes Chris is describing from the DVD I watched, is this early-early-onset dementia???"
Oh sweet, maybe I'll have to hunt down that DVD on ebay. I do have an external DVD drive!
My favorite science fiction author is C.J. Cherryh and I wonder how many younger readers would be put off by her work because she refuses to explain *anything*, essentially throwing you into the deep end of a future that is very much a "foreign country" and expecting you to sink or swim. Her books are also a sort of "cinematic universe" avant la lettre (she started in the late 1970s) but they work better than modern universes precisely because they don't explain anything. Each novel you read gives you more context to understand all of the others. All sorts of things that might make no sense or simply go unnoticed suddenly acquire new meaning when viewed in the context of other books in her "Alliance-Union" setting.
I blame video games for this
Can you elaborate?
Sorry yea this was way too reductive lol but i’ll try to not ramble like i do: games, as the most profitable entertainment medium and the one most beloved by young people (am zoomer so this isnt just kids these days talking - well maybe a lil bit) has taught a lot of them incorrect lessons about the enjoyment of art. Because games dont have great writers working on them, but excel at simple themes and the audience’s understanding of those themes is part of the win condition. I think most young people who analyze art come at it from a gamer turned reader/watcher/listener’s perspective
For example one of the few games I think can be argued as high art or at least art by a great auteur is the Oddworld series, specifically the first two (and an honorable mention to Stranger’s Wrath which covers the same themes). The premise of Oddworld is it’s set on an alien planet and you play as a Mudokon called Abe, working as a slave at a meat-packing plant. Mudokons are creatures with feathered ponytails with a spiritual connection to the land, and their enslavers are a race of cigar-chomping executives literally called Glukkons. All the other creatures - Scrabs, Paramites, Meeches, who were once thriving are now being hunted to extinction with the exception of Sligs who were implied to have been the very bottom of the food chain but with advanced tech given by the Glukkons are now #2 in order to keep the Mudokons in slavery. The first game has a scene where upon escaping Abe sees his race’s handprint on the moon above their planet, revealing to himself and the audience that his species are indigenous to Oddworld and by the same token the Glukkons are not only technologically advanced industrialists destroying the environment and brutalizing the innocent but are also alien invaders making them a colonial power
Essentially all of this is incredibly obvious as allegory: Glukkons represent American Capitalism, Mudokons are Native Americans, Sligs can represent anything from White America to the Military to the Police to essentially any group that could be considered a class-traitor or normally weak but given unfair power to avoid solidarity with workers. I think the difference with why I love Oddworld and why I think Oddworld would be enjoyed by a modern audience is this: I think modern audiences are impressed these themes exist at all, where I appreciate these themes for how it showcases the perspective of the author and how the game expertly utilizes the themes as its gameplay. Killing and blowing up and essentially violently overthrowing Glukkons and Sligs is the point of the game, every puzzle is finding a way to outsmart them and their technology and becoming a revolutionary hero in order to get the good ending. Freeing slaves is a game mechanic, which you do by talking to them with the buttons and getting them to follow you to an escape route. If you dont save enough slaves you get the bad ending
So as you can see gameplay and story are used to communicate the message flawlessly. It’s good vs evil with a satire of America thats unmissably in your face. Worldbuilding is hardly Tolkien, it doesnt suggest any alternatives to Capitalism and it doesnt question the morality of killing entire races labelled as the bad ones. However like Tolkien a simple morality isnt a problem because otherwise the story wouldnt exist and the themes wouldnt be affective. You dont need to be a Catholic reactionary or a Hippie revolutionary like their respective creators in order to like either property, because there’s a veil of satire in Oddworld and well written prose in LOTR that means there’s other qualities that make it different from a Chick Tract. I think most conservatives would like Oddworld, they wouldnt identify with the Glukkons merely because they represent Capitalism because it’s so absurd they would recognize they can agree in-universe with violent revolution without contradicting their values. And I know Left people have loved LOTR since the 60s
However the difference between Oddworld and LOTR is that since LOTR is passive there’s a lot you can interpret authorial intent or unintentional character motivation into. You dont need to agree with Frodo on everything in order to enjoy the story, because you aren’t Frodo. When he spares Gollum you are either on Sam’s side or Frodo’s side, even if the theme is on the side of Frodo by the end. In Oddworld if you disagree with an action the author wants you to take that’s a failing on the part of the game designers, because you have to agree with Abe 100 percent of the time in order to keep playing. LOTR and Star Wars aren’t high IQ things to “get” but even by games’ standards they would have to be dumbed down, you would have to spare Gollum in order to progress so Gollum would be given way more redeemable traits or be an outright reformed villain or they would just have it be done in a cutscene without player input (which nobody would like). Same thing if they made ROTJ as a game first, sparing Vader wouldnt be a tough decision that ultimately saves the day it’d be the only non-evil decision
And thats how this bleeds into every other industry. Now the audience looks at fiction as a series of evil and not-evil actions. One of my favorite quotes to illustrate this is “you missed the point by idolizing them”, used by people to shame someone who likes Walter White, Scarface, Tyler Durden, etc. by telling the person who thinks so that theyve entered the Game Over state of media literacy. Now it’s hard to defend people like that because they are a specific phenotype that’s detestable but I would say liking the protagonist is something that is kind of the point of all those characters. Because they are given redeemable traits and understandable motivations. And i think the writers would see it as a victory! I dont think the intention of Scarface is for you to be shaking your head when Tony kills Mark Margolis’ character for wanting to kill a kid, or even when he’s become a druggie monster. Youre meant to be entertained while objectively acknowledging that Tony has fallen as a person. The modern audience is incapable of enjoying a well directed, well acted, well shot scene about something bad happening if they think the author wasnt miserable or enraged writing it shaking his fist at the villain protagonist. Like I said this is hardly nuanced stuff I cite, but Breaking Bad is written by great writers and the writers themselves like Vince kind of enjoyed Walt being a pulpy “badass” whilst also intending it as a moral fall from grace
Now imagine the modern audience when theyre forced to understand something where the point is NOT to understand. They turn on the work. TV Tropes is a great example of this, where I hateread it frequently and they said that in Go Set A Watchmen the Scout character choosing to not walk out on her father for being bigoted is seen as this weird endorsement of bigotry because the tv tropes article writer if they were: a) a little girl in the 60s, in the South b) had a lawyer dad who saved a black guy (in Watchmen he’s aquitted as it was an earlier draft), and c) was also a racist, they wouldve done the opposite of what Scout did. Now that’s all well and good for them if they believe they would have done that, but it suggests a lack of an ability to put themselves in Scout’s shoes and also an aversion to the idea of weighing bigotry and evil acts versus good and kind acts to decide if a person is truly good, that informed this thought process. Because after all, shouldnt Scout be more like Abe?
Edit: ofc. I in my explanation leaned too much into a more tangential topic of moral judgment, whereas this in games happens with everything from theme to motivation to game mechanics and has now bled over, but the takeaway I want to give is that usually writers that overexplain morality overexplain everything else and thats common in games due to a combination of hack writers and like I demonstrated needing the player and main character to have the same motivation in order to keep the player playing
Thanks for that really detailed response and I'll have to re-read to fully understand. But I like your point about how some people want literature and movies to function more like games, where certain premises must be accepted before progress is allowed. How do you factor in open world games into this framework?
Yea sorry if it's a little scraggly im not sure if youve played much video games youre more of reader and watcher whereas i forgo that for gaming (im a proud phillistine lol) so it probably reads worse to the non-converted. anyway yea i think that mentioning open world is a good question and i would say that for me i love open world games but i dont know if they change this problem with games narratively tho in terms of gameplay they can promote some out of the box thinking
Open world games like GTA, Red Dead, Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs have a lot of space and opportunity to mess around but a big criticism I and a lot of people have of them is that in terms of mechanics when exploring you have a lot of freedom but then during story progression theyre still putting you on a linear road. GTA IV and V had multiple endings but instead of those endings being given to you as a result of your choices in the story it's instead a decision at the end of the game that you get given via menu. You literally pick A, B, or C using your in-game phone which is funny. Red Dead 2 I felt did this a lot better, where your ending is given to you depending on a meter that goes from bad to good depending on your actions in gameplay, like if you kill and rob innocent people too much you get the bad ending. Unfortunately since again the game defines actions as good and bad inherently youre really just given the same choice as in Oddworld except the bad option is now fleshed out to have its own sets of dialogue and payoff. I dont mind it in RDR2 honestly, what I like about that morality system is just how impressive it is that the character feels in-character no matter what you do. You feel a gradual transition in his behavior as you play the game and pick different options. Another shout out I want to give with gameplay choice is Shadow of War, which I've been playing a bit of again and I love how the game reacts to your actions by having specific named enemies you can fight, flee from or defeat which then bring up previous encounters with you. However I bring that up because while there's lots of flexibility there the rest of the game is pretty standard and linear: go to waypoints, kill a bunch of orcs, mission complete, rinse repeat. The enemies are what give variety
I feel like a truly interpretive game is Minecraft. The game has an end-goal but you as a player dont have to pursue it. You can destroy a forest to build a castle or replant every tree and live inside a cave. You could breed animals for food or grow wheat and essentially go vegan. For as much of a culture warrior Notch is now the man was a genius at making art where the politics comes from within the player projecting it onto the game
A lot of games work in the contradiction of freedom of gameplay with theme and narrative being so strict and defined. The excellent Hitman World of Assassination Trilogy is all about exploring maps where you choose or make opportunities to assassinate the target, by messing with the AI, but the actual character is defined by his morality being given to him by other people. The last level instead is a linear train meant to symbolize how while you the player felt free, he never felt that way and now the game is giving you a taste of the character's inner conflict using level design. Doesn't entirely work when you as a player have been having fun with the freedom of the gameplay and are now being told it wasnt true freedom, but hey it's making a clever thematic statement that isn't just metacommentary on the nature of game design and is trying to do character work so I'll give it a pass
I feel like games are just inherently restricted by not being as easy to make as books, tv or even movies. You need to give a player choice, because that's the point of a game. However unlike D&D you have to spend hundreds of hours creating and play-testing every option. I brought up Shadow of War and the reason why enemies can dynamically react to you is because they recorded thousands of lines and then added in a procedural generation system to then make the enemies seem truly dynamic
So overall I dont think games are at that point yet where they can create something truly interpretive, because the budget isnt there yet. Obviously if every game had true freedom it'd be a shit game, an option to retire and become a stockbroker in GTA would be true freedom but wouldnt fit the themes. I hope that one day there's a way to make it easier for games to create dynamic choices where you can decide for a character, whilst that character remains in character and it generates a different pathway for that. Undertale came close honestly but it was kind of hampered by how its good ending was so obviously the one the creator thought everyone should prefer
This is a great, great comment that should be its own SubStack post.
>Now the audience looks at fiction as a series of evil and not-evil actions.
BINGO BINGO BINGO.
Wrote about something similar here: https://www.decentralizedfiction.com/p/literary-culture-is-purity-culture
Thank you for your article, it made me stop and think about my own art. When I write poetry, I have no desire to explain the depths of meaning behind it bc it can resonate with the reader in different ways, and the poems are usually very specific moments in time that seem to flow into me out of nowhere. With my paintings, they are abstract, and tell an emotional, layered story. I would find it interesting to know what the observer sees first. I’m not sure how much I would want to explain my own meaning unless it was a one on one conversation. With writing, I want my thoughts to be succinct, but if it’s fiction, I would want to leave it as nuanced. I DO enjoy movies that are not spelled out, though. I appreciate your writing, and the fact it makes me want to prevent myself from over-explaining.