I don't know if this is still a big topic, but back in the 2010s one of the biggest controversies in gaming was, weirdly not microtransactions in video games, I mean that was big, but it doesn't seem like it was as big as whether or not Dark Souls should have an easy mode. Yeah, this was a weird argument, because there were two sides arguing for something "bad" in general, one side wanted "to remove the point of Dark Souls", and the other side "didn't want it to be accessible", in fact accessibility seems to be a dirty word in gaming for some reason. I don't know, you'd think people would want their favourite hobby to be more accessible so that hobby could... you know, keep existing. What I think about the idea of Dark Souls having an easy mode, honestly it's irrelevant at this point, I've made it my life goal to never play Dark Souls to spare my wallet, my game controllers, my sanity, and probably someone's safety... I have anger issues. Yet it has always been nagging in the back of my mind, and there is a really good reason for it.
Dark Souls is not a game I can ignore easily, beyond the fact that it is a popular franchise. Dark Souls appears to be a game with deep lore, unique characters and a very intricate theme, which is what people point to when they say Dark Souls should not have an easy mode. This is stuff I want to experience because I am a big proponent of games being art, but again... anger issues. It's like wanting to watch a horror movie despite the fact that you're easily scared, which is one of the arguments made in defense of Dark Souls not having an easy mode, and that makes sense. I mean, you can't really make a "Not scary" horror movie, right? Oh wait... they have.
I remember seeing this argument on a Tumblr blog ages ago, and it irked me then, but I didn't quite know why. At the time I simply brushed it off as "Video Games aren't movies, stop comparing them", but now I think I know why that argument irks me. Yes, video games aren't movies, because they treat genre as two separate things.
What is a genre? A genre is essentially a category with tropes and mechanics that denote which movie, game, book or whatever, is. Really it's a label with expectations, for example a Gross-out Comedy movie is going to be a movie that is hopefully funny with a lot of bodily jokes, and a First-Person shooter video game is gonna be a video game from the perspective of the player character where you shoot things. Immediately I think you can see the difference, video game genres focus more on mechanics while movie genres is more about content, which is not to say that video games can't be labeled by content, but I think most people will say that Telltale's The Walking Dead is an "Episodic Adventure" before they say it's a "Drama".
Video games tend not to be labeled as "Comedies" or "Thrillers", not because there aren't games that can be labeled as such, but because those labels don't describe how the game works, the term "Metroidvania" may be confusing to gamers who don't know what Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are, but if you're even vaguely familiar with how those games work, a game like Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, Dead Cells, or Cave Story can be understood. Likewise, if you're familiar with how Dark Souls operates, you'll be able to understand how other "Souls-likes" work. Movies work in a similar but different enough way, for example rather than knowing how a "Gross-Out Comedy" or a "Slasher Horror" would "Work" per se, it's more of what to "expect". To put it simply, Video Game genre labels imply how the game works, Movie genre labels imply what to expect. Arguably they're similar things, I mean, you know what to expect when I say "Metroidvania" and you know how a movie will work when I say "Slasher Horror", but specifically looking at what they mean for their respective medium, that is where the differences begin to matter.
This especially matters a lot with "Genre Mixing", which is when a movie blends two genres together. The example I'm going to use is gonna destroy the notion that you can't make horror movies for people who don't like horror movies, because there have been movies like that made, usually they blend comedy in with the horror to make it less scary. Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Beetlejuice, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, we can even throw Young Frankenstein in there even though that one is more of a spoof comedy than horror comedy, I mean these aren't traditional horror movies but they have elements and tropes of horror in them. On top of that, it isn't just comedy that you can do this with, you can make a horror superhero movie (The Crow), a horror musical (Repo: The Genetic Opera), a horror romance (Warm Bodies), horror fantasy (Pan's Labyrinth or Coraline), and the best thing about it is that they can all ease viewers into more traditional horror.
You can also mix some parts of video game genres too, like you can have a Fighting game that's also a platformer (Super Smash Bros.), or a First-Person Shooter game that's also a Hack and Slash (Red Steel 2), or a First-Person Shooter that's also a puzzle game (Portal), but those are more exceptions to the rule, as most fighting games are more like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, most First-Person Shooters are more like Call of Duty or Doom, and most hack and slash games are like Devil May Cry or Dynasty Warriors. Each game may have their own twist on the mechanics, their own identity from each other, but at the end of the day, they are still within their genres.
I think my ultimate point is the very obvious, "Video Games are not Movies", which... quite frankly nobody needed a long blog post to be convinced of, but I wanted to go more into the "why" of it. Why aren't video games the same as movies? Why should we treat them as separate entities? I think this may also go to explain why a lot of Video Game Movies and Movie Based Video Games just straight up suck, you know, other than the obvious "Nobody cared to make something good and just wanted to strike while the thing was popular" answer. I think I also want to stress that accessibility is more than just features in a game, it's being helpful outside of the game. If you see someone who is struggling to get into Dark Souls, maybe you should help them by giving them hints and tips, or you could offer them a game that is similar but probably more their speed. After all, if you can't make someone a horror fan by immediately showing them John Carpenter's The Thing, how could you make someone a Dark Souls fan by doing essentially the same thing?
Also, don't expect me to talk about video games that much here, this is just something that's been on my mind and I wanted to write it out.
No comments:
Post a Comment