HDR Imaging is Stunning

A few weeks ago a San Francisco based studio called Soviet Montage Productions produced the world's first high dynamic range video, as seen above. For those of you who have never heard of HDR (i.e. most people), it basically refers to images that display greater light and dark values than traditionally possible through conventional methods. There are numerous ways to accomplish this but the simplest is to capture multiple images of identical content at different contrast levels and then merge them. If that sounds like gibberish then maybe the image below (c/o Wikipedia) will help to explain:

An HDR image (above) and its source images (below)

As you can see the products of HDR imaging are, in a word, stunning. For a better explanation of the technique(s) involved check out the fascinating Wikipedia article on the subject. Below you can see an example produced by photographer Andrew Rees. His video is a black-and-white HDR time-lapse of Cardiff, Wales, and as Gizmodo points out it looks very much like a sketch pad come to life. Simply breathtaking: 

I just wanted to share some of these incredible sights and the corresponding Wikipedia article. I'll leave you now with an amazing shot of New York City at night, one of the most impressive examples of HDR imaging I've seen thus far. I only became aware of this photographic technique a few weeks ago but it's quickly become fascinated by the potential it displays (ha). It's more vivid and lifelike than anything I've ever seen, and I'm very curious to see what intrepid artists (especially cinematographers) can do with it.

(Shamelessly stolen from Geekosystem and Gizmodo)

Fake Painting Photography

A friend posted this link on Facebook, and when I went to the website it took me a solid minute to realize what I was seeing. Through the link is a series of photographs by Washington, DC artist Alexa Meade in which acrylic paint has been applied to subjects. The resulting images are look uncannily like paintings on canvas but are actually installation pieces.

I've included a few of my favourites here, but definitely check out the full gallery over at Bored Panda. This is the most effective realization of a "living painting" that I've seen since What Dreams May Come (say what you will about that movie, it was visually stunning). This is one of the most interesting and unique concepts I've encountered in recent memory, and I'm very curious to see what else Meade can come up with.

Thanks to Bekky for the link.

A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible

I'm a fan of webcomics, and one of my all-time favourites is A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible. It was written by Dale Beran and illustrated by David Hellman (later of Braid fame) and between 2004 and 2006 they published over 40 strips before going on hiatus. The comic used surreal imagery, a wry sense of humour, and an existential attitude to explore subjects like relationships, depression, consumerism, and accomplishment. If you follow those links they'll take you to strips that I think correspond with each concept, though that is by no means the last word on their potential meanings. Beran and Hellman used the comic to reflect upon the nature of human life from various angles, and each piece incorporates vast amounts of emotional and psychological content. The strips are more akin to paintings, and each one is beautiful and elegantly conceived.

If you've never heard of A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible then I strongly recommend taking a look through their archives. Even if you don't like comics it's still easy to appreciate the complexity and depth of Beran and Hellman's work. Each script is written with a poetic sensibility, and the illustrations display a wide breadth of styles and techniques; the resulting images are some of the finest artistic works I've seen. I'll leave you with my favourite A Lesson Is Learned stip: the sprawling and medium-challenging Christmas Disaster Special from 2005. I would absolutely love to get a print of this one for my wall, if only to see it fully realized instead of constrained by the limits of my computer monitor.

Click the image to see it in full

From Around the Web - 4/30/10

Sculptor Adrian Tranquilli elegantly depicts superheroes' vulnerabilities, as seen above.

How do you see if Schrodinger's Cat is actually in its box? This post on io9 claims to know how!

A fantastic essay on the question of whether or not video games are or could ever be art.

Games As Art: Roger Ebert and Final Words on Heavy Rain

Tunnel vision?

Following the overwhelming response to his dismissal of video games as a potentially artistic medium, Roger Ebert returned to the subject in a recent blog post. After looking into the matter further, his new conclusion is that he was right the first time: video games are not art, and furthermore never will be during the lifetime of anyone currently alive. The response from the gaming community has been pretty vocal, albeit not as universally outraged as last time.

Ebert's latest post is written with the same flippant disregard that has characterized all of his public opinions on video games. His responses to Kellee Sanitago's TED talk are superficial and demonstrate that he has done little-to-no further research beyond watching the online video of said discussion. Besides reiterating his original opinion in the comparative context of cave paintings (which he prefers to video games), he mostly argues the subjective semantics of the term "art." He's open about his bias towards film, but then doesn't give video games a fair chance in light of this, instead referring to the financial structure behind the industry as reason enough to discount it as a potential site of artistic work. As though cinema is not significantly dictated by business models and economics.

In discussing Santiago's examples of artistic games Ebert makes it exceedingly clear that he has not played them. His questions about Flower in particular ("Is the game scored? ... Do you control the flower?") demonstrate a complete lack of familiarity with the game. He hasn't bothered to educate himself in a practical sense and so of course his opinion hasn't changed. In order to understand games one has to play them, as the experience of engaging with the interface is equally important to understanding of the work behind the project or the meaning conveyed therein. Judging a game without playing it would be like saying you've seen a movie after looking at a series of still frames.

In Flower you control, you guessed it, a flower petal blowing in 

the wind and try to spread beauty to your surrounding environment

That's actually a point I was planning to make in the context of Heavy Rain. Having played through the entire game and now gotten some distance from it, I want to return to my earlier points about what the game accomplishes.

I spoke a lot about causality and the freedom that Heavy Rain gives the player to make choices and explore their consequences. Having played through the entire game I can now say that the degree to which the game allows you to make decisions with branching narrative impacts is somewhat less than I initially believed. There are certainly an incredible number of choices to make and different endings to the story they can result in, but some of the most important ones are more clearly indicated and binary than I expected. The story is also severely flawed in ways that have been well-documented online.

Despite all of these criticisms, however, I still contend that Heavy Rain represents a significant artistic achievement in gaming. It has many problems, granted, and in a lot of ways it fails to transcend being an obviously rule-based, linear narrative video game. But all of this is easy to say after-the-fact and says nothing of the actual gaming experience. It is in the engagement with Heavy Rain that the game achieves something that I would call art.

In Heavy Rain there are choices and consequences, 

but none of them are wrong in the traditional sense

Regardless of the flawed narrative or frustrating control scheme, Heavy Rain draws you into the experience in a way that few games can. It is incredibly immersive because while you're playing you really do believe that your actions have serious narrative consequences. You feel the weight of every decision in a simultaneously realistic and dramatic sense, and so every choice is compelling. It's easy to criticize the game once you've explored every option and witnessed firsthand its limitations, but in the act of playing the game it makes you feel and consider your options even as you control your actions. That's only one approach to the question of creating art with a video game, but it is a far cry from the winning or losing binary that Ebert describes.

My point is that the actual playing of games is an integral aspect of the medium, and so any question as to their quality, content, or artistic achievement cannot ignore this facet of the experience. If an interactive medium can force you to question and consider our real world existence in any form then is that not art? Again the debate boils down to subjective semantics, but to me art is that which colours human life by appealing to our senses, thoughts, and emotions. It works upon us through the cognitive faculties that give us our very being. I think Mr. Ebert is wrong in saying that video games cannot achieve this.

I have played games that have affected me, made me pause and reconsider my beliefs. Braid forced me to question my memories and thus myself, while playing Bioshock drove me to think about human nature. Through Heavy Rain I explored the nature of causality and the power of choice. These are meagre artistic accomplishments for what is admittedly an infantile medium, but they are important ones nonetheless. They show that there is potential for great things in interactive entertainment, just as there is potential in all forms of the arts.

The lovely and poignant Braid forces us to question our memories and actions 
by using the flow of time as both a plot point and a game mechanic

That the majority of productions are schlock and the industry is dictated by financial gain is simply not enough reason to discredit what good there is or what good there could be. Video games deserve a chance for recognition and in order for that to happen they have to be considered on their own terms. They need to be given the benefit of the doubt, and above all else they need to be played

The debate as to whether or not games can be art goes on, and likely will continue to for a long time to come. I have made it clear where I stand, and will continue to do so with my Games As Art posts. Now, the debate about whether or not art can be games? That's a whole other story...

From Around the Web - 4/14/10

Some of the coolest art I've seen recently, as pictured above.

Joss Whedon? The Avengers? Please yes please!

3D Televisions: Unsafe for Children, Pregnant Women, Drunk People and the Elderly

The furry forest creatures equivalent of Gears of War. Amazing.

Library of Congress acquires entire Twitter archive. I suppose that means my writing is now published and in a library?

Games As Art: Heavy Rain and Choice

I've been excited about Heavy Rain for a while now. In and of itself that speaks to the nature of my interest in video games.




Interactive entertainment has always appealed to me as a medium for working out mental problems, both simple and complex, in a virtually tangible way. Video games like Super Mario World interest me in a similar way to math problems: both present variables to work with in order to find a predetermined solution. There can be different ways to achieve that end, and perhaps even multiple types of solutions, but regardless the goal is always clear and within reach. The pleasure you derive is from knowing and mastering the methods of success.


As I've grown older, however, I have begun to look for more from my games. Sure, I have enjoyed throwbacks like New Super Mario Bros. Wii as traditional and nostalgic forms of entertainment. But those types of games are not the reason that I finally invested in a Playstation 3.


Increasingly I am intrigued by games that explore new types of play mechanics and new ways of presenting narrative: I spent the better part of a year trying to play Braid in some form, and finally bought it the first day it was available on the Playstation Network; I played through all of Portal in one sitting while staying at a friend's house, and it remains one of the best experiences I have ever had with a video game; and the phenomenal Bioshock never once left my PS3 from start to finish and beyond. Each of these games sought to do something new with video games, whether to problematize and critique common gaming tropes, highlight new ways of considering and utilizing 3-D space, or explore complex philosophical questions through an interactive medium. In their own ways each could be considered art.


Despite my recent glorification of Roger Ebert I do not accept his stated belief that video games are not capable of being art. I think the medium is still in its infancy but that evidence is mounting that shows video games can be used to evoke complex questions about reality and humanity. More than that I think that video games could potentially explore these question more effectively than cinema specifically because of their interactivity: through this virtual entertainment our choices can influence outcomes, and then we can replay them and make different choices. With careful and mature design this method could be used to explore human concepts in a distinctly human way. I believe that the games listed above, along with countless others, show that we are working towards a time and context when this will become reality.


This week Heavy Rain finally hit store shelves, giving further credence to the idea that video games can offer insight on our existence.


Heavy Rain is a new PS3 exclusive from Quantic Dream. It's an interactive movie where you play as four different characters trying to catch a serial killer in an East coast American city. The gameplay consists of exploration and quick-time events (QTEs), or on-screen prompts that ask the player to press a specific button in a limited period of time. This type of interactive movie is one of the oldest genres in gaming, with roots going all the way back to arcade games like Dragon's Lair. What makes Heavy Rain different from all that has come before is in the way the story changes in accordance with your actions.

Dragon's Lair

Typically in a QTE based game you can either succeed or fail at any given event. In older games like the aforementioned Dragon's Lair a failure results in the end of the story, often as a result of your character's death. In more recent uses of the gaming mechanic a failure might simply complicate or delay one's progression through the game, as in the God of War series. Certain games like Shenmue have enabled players to noticeably alter the story through their success or failure at certain QTEs; these games are few and far between, however, and the changes to the overall story have always been fairly limited.


In Heavy Rain the player is able to dramatically alter the arc and outcome of the story through their performance in QTEs. There are numerous possible endings to the game, and the player's every action plays a role in determining their story arc. Any of the four playable characters can die in certain scenarios, but if this happens the game continues on regardless; the player simply loses that thread of the narrative and the story changes to incorporate the death. This not only gives greater weight to each action but also greater reason for multiple playthroughs, as each experience of the game has the potential to be dramatically different.

A QTE prompting the player to press the circle button

Quantic Dream's greatest achievement, however, is the way in which Heavy Rain incorporates choice as a gameplay element.


The game presents players with thousands of QTEs, many of which are passed or failed with diverging narrative consequences. There are also some instances in which the player is given the option to take an action but where the necessity or desirability of doing so is left ambiguous. Here the player is able to influence the direction of the story with their own choices as opposed to merely their competence at timed button prompts. 




There are already many great examples of video games that explore causality in human existence, but two stand out in particular: Bioshock and Mass Effect 2. 


Ken Levine's Bioshock explores the nature of choice in video games by addressing the fact that the medium doesn't typically offer much. Spoiler warning ahead. The game consists of a series of objectives that are given to you by a disembodied voice over you radio. They are all tied into the game diegetically through a well-structured narrative, but any regular player recognizes them as the prompts that typify video game structure. One completes specified actions in order to continue progress. The end of Bioshock, however, addresses this by revealing the player to be a mind-controlled goon: the objectives necessary to continue the game were all given to the player within the narrative, but it is revealed that the character was influenced in such a way as to make him incapable of acting differently. 

Bioshock

The video game structure that inhibits the player is suddenly exposed within the narrative as a way of critiquing the blind-faith that the player is guilty of. As one character dramatically insists, "A man chooses" (emphasis added), and evidently the player's character and thus the player do not. This exploration of choice in video games is simultaneously an excellent critique of the medium and a deeply resonant philosophical issue. Ironically it does not leave the player with much in the way of choice on the matter.


Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, allows players to import their character data from its predecessor in order to continue the character story they have already begun. More than that, though, the choices they made in Mass Effect are also imported to the sequel, completely reshaping the experience of the second game into a huge extension of the first. As Rus McLaughlin puts it in an article on IGN, "I wrote my Mass Effect 2 by playing Mass Effect 1. Similarly, I'm writing Mass Effect 3 right now [by playing Mass Effect 2]." 

Mass Effect

The story of the two games is huge, and will be built upon by the third entry in the series. The player's actions from the very beginning greatly influence the direction the story will take, but this is largely relegated to branching dialogue and allegiances. The player is tasked with deciding what to say in order to achieve the desired reaction, and their choices take the story down various branches towards endings that are yet to be determined. Mass Effect 3 will show how the grand space-opera concludes, and the player's actions will greatly determine the ending they receive. 


This concept of choice and consequence is explored quite differently in Heavy Rain. While the Mass Effect series allows gamers to experience the ever-proliferating effects of their branching choices on a massive scale (wonder where they got that name), Heavy Rain explores the concept in a more intimate and human way. Heavy Rain presents choices that are ambiguous in their necessity and effect, and none of them are wrong. While each decision in Mass Effect carries the story forward in a specific way, Heavy Rain tasks players with deciding not only which choices to make but also with which not to. Choosing to place one's hand on another's shoulder might feel at one moment like a show of support, but an instant later seem like a sexual advance. The key is in determining which moment is when, and choosing how to act accordingly. Heavy Rain presents players with the ability to make decisions that are not 'wrong' in a black versus white opposition, but may be undesirable or unnecessary or ill-timed. In this sense it captures an essential human element in the concept of choice.





When I played the Heavy Rain demo I had an admittedly lukewarm reaction to the core game mechanics. They simply aren't that fun. But this game is not about the playing in an input-effect sense, which is the best the demo can offer. It is rather about the idea and sentiment of playing through the story and making it your own through your choices. I read extensively about Heavy Rain and eagerly anticipated its release, and now that I own it I can acknowledge both its promise and its flaws. More than that I see what it is trying to do and how this is a unique moment in gaming.


In contrast to games like Mass Effect, which examine branching consequences, or Bioshock, which muse upon the objective-based nature of video games, Heavy Rain explores the nature of human choices. In every playthrough it forces the player to consider the reasoning behind their every action and the potential consequences. More than that it encourages them see them through to the diverging conclusions, and shows how the smallest choices can have dramatic effects. Cinema has shown us countless stories about human beings act in ways that speak to our everyday lives. Now Heavy Rain is enabling players to influence, consider, and explore those decisions to their full effect. Admittedly it's a programmed medium with predetermined constraints, but then so is film, and to a far greater degree. For the first time the human element of choice has been represented in such a way as to really speak to the characters and the viewer in the same instant.


Heavy Rain shows further evidence that video games can be art, but also does so in a way that we have never before experienced. I hope that people like Roger Ebert will give this game, and all others, the benefit of a doubt before they disqualify the entire medium from aspiring to artistic merit. We are in the twilight hours of video games' dawning as a site for real exploration of human issues and concerns. Even now there are companies willing to provide the financial support necessary for games like Heavy Rain to exist, a risky business move to be sure. For that we should be thankful, and hope that it gets played as much as it deserves.

Games As Art: The Auteur Theory and Video Games

The auteur theory, briefly, is an idea from film criticism which states that a director brings an identifiably unique quality to each of their films. Despite cinema's nature as a collaborative medium, the auteur theory posits that there is an indelible quality that the director brings to their output as the 'core' creator. For example, Steven Spielberg makes movies in a way that is identifiably distinct from the way that, say, James Cameron makes movies. It's a complex theory, and worth reading up on, but that's the basic gist of it.

The question is: is this theory of authorship applicable to video games?

Brian Ashcraft's article on Kotaku, "The Search for Video Game Auteurs," explores this concept, and makes some interesting observations. The names of successful developers often signify a consistent and identifiable style or level of quality. Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto, David Jaffe, Ken Levine. All are individual developers whose games have engendered consisten respect from the gaming community. On the other hand there are creators like Tim Schafer who have likewise earned reputations as (possibly eccentric) innovators. There are expectations that precede games based on the individuals behind them, whether of quality or style or raw uniqueness.

Some games are furthermore sold using the name of their "creator," similar to the way in which Hollywood uses directors' names to sell their films. This can engender positive results, as with Sid Meier's Civilization IV, or Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds; it can likewise backfire when low-quality products are sold on reputation alone, as with John Romero's Daikatana, or Transformers: A Michael Bay Film.

More interestingly, however, Ashcroft points out that development studios are sometimes identified in much the same way that the auteur theory treats directors. Fans of games by Blizzard, Maxis, Lucasarts, Quantic Dream all expect a specific type and quality of game from each of the studios. These are not individual creators but rather collaborative entities that have developed distinct identities in gamers' minds. This begs questions as to the reasoning behind the consistencies in their products: is the auteur-esque less a personality and more a set of basic principles? Can their commonalities be explained on a flowchart, and if so is this type of logic extendable to film? Probably on both counts, but what does that mean?

Torchlight, a Diablo rip off?

A game like Torchlight problematizes this identification. Many have noted its similarities to Blizzard's Diablo series, and the fact that former Blizzard staff founded the studio behind Torchlight, Runic Games. So is Torchlight a "Blizzard game" then? Or are the individuals behind the new game responsible at least in part for the Blizzard persona? How responsible? How many former Blizzard staff does it take to create a Blizzard game? Curiously, is Diablo 3 a Runic Games game?

The upcoming Diablo 3, a Torchlight rip off?

The application of the auteur theory to video games is problematic because of the collaborative nature of the medium, but it's actually more complicated than that. One also has to consider the business behind the industry, and more crucially the fact that it is a medium of literal codes. People come together to create something but they do so under a company that retains the overall rights to the intellectual property, likeness, and the code. With this they can give the assets to newcomers to produce something like Bioshock 2. Considering Ken Levine's absence from the development team it would seem difficult to argue that it is 'his' game, like System Shock 2 and Bioshock are. At the surface level, however, there seems little reason to avoid this designation: the game clearly evokes his style, and on a spreadsheet breakdown it hits all the right bullet points. Why not call it Ken Levine's Bioshock 2, both colloquially and commercially?

Because video games are built with strings of codes they can be replicated without any alteration. This could not be possible in film: even if a director consciously chose to replicate the style of another they would still make their own choices as to what that constituted, in both form and content. With video games there is simply the code.

Walter Benjamin spoke of the loss of an artistic work's aura in the age of mechanical reproduction, but the issue is multiplied in the age of digital reproduction. More than that the concept of authorship becomes central when one considers the question, "can video games be art?" But that's a subject or another day. For now I will just say that the auteur theory seems ill-suited to the medium, but then the medium is still young. Things are just getting started.