Technically – the play mechanics, game balance, what they did with light and shadows – it was brilliant. The writing was stellar, too – some of the best I’ve experienced.

But the plot, for all it seemed to promise from the start, did not deliver in the end.  I’m not even entirely sure what happened at the end.  I suppose I should’ve been wary from the beginning when Wake quoted Stephen King about how a good horror story never reveals the nature of the threat.

Had the “dark presence” just been some force with no explanation, or even a very vague one, that would’ve been fine.  But Alan Wake told us a lot about the nature of the threat, unfolding several separate but related story threads that it never tied together at the end.

It was plain anti-climactic.  If the developers never intended to reveal the threat, then they shouldn’t have led us into thinking that they would.

All that said, would I recommend Alan Wake?  Absolutely, but only for the sake of gameplay and atmosphere.  If you’re expecting a satisfying story or resolution, you may be sorely disappointed.

Actor Joey Ansah, who played the character Desh in The Bourne Ultimatum, known one of the best fight scenes in any film, has created a short film called Street Fighter Legacy. Regarding the project, he said:

It was clear to me, that given the way the movie industry worked, we would never see a super faithful, darker toned and more adult themed (or just plain good!) incarnation of Street Fighter unless a die-hard director or filmmaking team with game canon knowledge stepped up to the plate to helm such a project. [Emphasis added]

And this is really what it comes down to, not just for making a solid Street Fighter movie, but to adapt any video game property into a film.  I would even take it a step further.  Any serious writer or director can do their research – read up on the story and characters, and hopefully play the game.  But there is a certain spirit contained within video games that only devoted players can tap into, that undefinable something that changes casual players into fans – or dare I say it: “hardcore”.

Rather than spending numerous paragraphs trying to pinpoint a definition of this elusive video game element – which fans already understand and non-players will not, regardless of how well I explain it – I will give you a perfect example.

The video below features two gamers playing Street Fighter III in a tournament.  The main display shows the game itself, while the inset shows the players and the spectators.  One of the players, Daigo Umehara, is regular competitor and made quite a name for himself as a master player.  At the start of the video, Daigo – playing as Ken – is on the verge of losing in an upset.  Watch what happens.

If you have no idea what you just saw, then the short explanation is simply that Daigo made an incredible comeback against very difficult odds.  If you’re familiar at all with video games – fighting games in particular – then what Daigo did involved a series of precisely timed inputs, about 12-15 of them, with zero margin for error.  With that he avoided defeat, and then followed up with another well-timed manuever to win the match.  The reaction of the crowd speaks volumes.  It was an incredible moment.

This brings us to a simple truth.  If in watching the above video you don’t feel anything stir inside of you, any sort of excitement or marvel or amazement, then you would have no business making a Street Fighter movie.  It is not enough to know who all the characters are, to memorize the entire franchise wiki, or even to play the game for hours and hours on end.

If playing or watching a game at no point illicits the kind of response shown by the crowd in the video above, then that “spirit” of video games escapes you, and you are not qualified to make a film adaptation.

A similar situation can be seen in the recent string of successful comic book films versus the endless series of terrible films from years past.  The writers and directors chosen for these newer films tend to be fans of comic books, and those franchises in particular.

Video game movies fail because the writers and/or directors are merely looking to capitalize on a successful franchise, but do not have any personal emotional investment in the project.  They are unable to tap into the “spirit” of games, and that disconnect manifests on screen with disastrous results.

Here’s hoping that Joey Ansah understands the spirit, lest another terrible Street Fighter movie be added to the endless series of awful video game adaptations.

UPDATE: Street Fighter Legacy is finished, and by “short film”, Ansah really did mean short – the whole thing clocking in at just over 3 minutes.  But he does seem to capture the essence of the franchise in that time.  There are some changes I’d make – like making the Sho-ryu-ken at normal speed, but overall I think it was well-done.  Maybe if it gets enough of a following, and generates enough buzz, we’ll see it become something full-length.

And it affirms something to which I’ve long attested:

…the film critic’s pathetic lot – to forever claw and scratch for recognition by other film critics, since no one else – namely those other film students who went on to actually make films – gives a damn.

What is art?

This question is one that has been debated perhaps since the beginning of human history – indeed I would venture a guess that even the cave painters Ebert mentions in his post argued the validity of those works, unaware as to how they would inform historians of the social context in which they were created.  It is only at the modern heights of arrogance that could one claim to be able to answer this age-old question with any certainty.  And it is hardly possible to be any more arrogant than making a universal truth claim, let alone one expected to hold for eternity. The whole thing is laughable.

I have argued in the past that video games are the ultimate form of expression, and what is art if not expression?  Indeed video games are a convergence of art from just about every medium – audio, visual, literary – and their social impact is ever-increasing.  Ebert makes his statement by observing video footage of a few games offered up as art, already prepared to deny the possibility.  Aside from the sheer fallacy of denying art as a form of expression, there is also the matter of his evaluation not being made from the proper standpoint.  As I argued in the above-linked essay, what sets video games apart from film, television, music, books, and other mediums is their interactivity.

That one thing [that sets video games apart from other media] is interactivity. You can rip a page out of a book in frustration as a story takes an unfavorable turn, or you can yell your lungs out at movie screen as the stupid teenage girl wanders down the dark hallway alone towards the lurking killer, but chances are that you’re not going to change anything. In a video game, however, a person is given a measure of control over the characters and environment presented.

To evaluate any video game without playing it is as dubious as evaluating a piece of music by only reading the lyrics or reading the sheet music, or evaluating the merits of a film based on – insert laughter here – a critic’s review.

If the art is expression argument alone doesn’t validate video games’ status as an art form, then allow me to speak from a more personal place, because is not the meaning of art in any context entirely subjective?  I can attribute to two single moments in the games Chrono Cross (Playstation) and Lunar: Eternal Blue (Sega CD), the abstracts that would expand to become the cornerstone of my personal philosophy.  The former, in that one moment, had me question how color could correspond to sound, and the latter had me considering the relationship between creation and destruction, which I would later come to understand more abstractly as two forms of change.  In that art has often sparked philosophical inquiry and introspection – for the creator and the audience – video games clearly fit the bill.

Furthermore, my ethics – manifest in my sense of justice – if not founded in, was certainly bolstered by the lofty ideals of good vs. evil I found in video games as a child.  The evolution of video game conflicts from black and white conceptualizations of good and evil in the “old school” to the shades of gray now explored through the tough moral choices players have to make in the “new school” not only showcases video games’ increasing complexity, but also their increasing relevance to the real world.  Art, as a medium, is nothing without its flexibility, and its ability to evolve as a reflection of the surrounding social atmosphere.

My inspiration to write came from video games as well, at first little more than an emulation or reworking of video game plots, but soon thereafter the expression of a burgeoning imagination, forged in outlandish worlds and impossible situations.  Video games spoke to me in ways that other mediums simply did not, and if we are measuring art in terms of social or personal impact, then Ebert’s claim is not only false for me, but a personal slight to me and others like me, for whom games have been either a subtle or direct influence.  His claim invalidates me, personally – dismissing the countless hours in which I was visually, aurally, physically, and emotionally invested and engaged – as frivolous, or a waste of time.

This is saying nothing of how it invalidates the creators of video games – themselves musicians, painters, 3D modelers, programmers, writers, choreographers, actors, and more – each of which, outside the context of the video game itself, Ebert could hardly argue were not artists.

So, on what sort of project, exactly, could established artists from many different fields come together, only to miraculously create something that is not art?

To propose that such a project could even exist is to stand at the very apex of stupidity.

For someone who is without a doubt – no matter how one chooses to define art – not an artist himself, and one who has never been touched by the myriad forms of expression contained within a video game, Ebert only proves himself incapable of making such a judgment.  He also proves, for his increasing detachment from an evolving media culture, his sheer cultural irrelevance.

Jane McGonigal is not simply comparing games to real life, but is talking about tapping into those abstract qualities that gamers bring to bear against game challenges – applying that determination, hard work, and idealism to real world endeavors.

It can, has been, and will continue to be argued that games are simply games, that they are designed to be won, and that the real world has no such safeguards against failure.  But the game McGonigal most talks about – World of Warcraft – ultimately has no point.  It has no happy ending. It is game that never ends, which works well for the developers, who continue to make millions upon millions of dollars every year.

You can overcome the most epic of epic challenges, but soon thereafter the game resets to the way it was before that challenge was met, to enable others to do the same.  There are people who continue to play Warcraft even though they have achieved the maximum level, have defeated the ultimate boss, and have done almost everything there is to do in the game.

But they will go through it all again, with the same determination and idealism, to help another player have that experience.  In the real world that could translate into people helping those less fortunate – i.e. at a “lower level” – after they have solved their own challenges.  It is not about pity or guilt, but about mutual understanding of a problem, and collaboration to solve it.  It is this kind of idealistic, high-minded, cooperative determination that McGonigal is suggesting we need to employ to take on world challenges.

Mass Effect 2 is every bit the middle game of a trilogy.  It lacks the impact of the first game – the introduction to a galactic-scale conflict, the first look at a thoroughly conceived sci-fi universe, that first unnerving dialogue with Sovereign.  And it necessarily reserves all of the big surprises for the finale.

For those who did not play the first Mass Effect, this game amounts to little more than a pretty-top notch shooter built on the pretext of a galactic recruitment drive, with a meaty chunk of story seemingly added on as an afterthought.  That is to say that there seemed to be no connection between the quests to acquire Commander Shepard’s teammates and the greater adventure.  In terms of story, there were few surprises – the only “big” revelation completely underwhelming, and the one intriguing bit of lore development – the bit about the Geth – left mostly unexplored.

Back in October of 2007, when BioWare fans first heard that the company had been acquired by Electronic Arts, there was a collective sigh of dismay – or perhaps even a roar of indignation.  The fear was that creativity and originality would be traded for whatever best fit EA’s business model.

Mass Effect 2 provides case in point.

Everything was streamlined, dumbed down, simplified for the “casual gamer”, who the big-wigs in marketing assume have the attention span of gerbils.  Casual gamers, surely, could not be bothered with such tiresome things as inventory management or deep character customization.  Strangely, though, it was determined that the casual gamer would not find it at all tedious to drag a slow-roaming cursor across planet after planet to collect resources – a rough equivalent to earning money, although there is already a money system in place.

The galactic codex remains in tact for fans who want to soak up every last detail about the Mass Effect universe, and Bioware kept the elaborate dialogue trees  – albeit within a weaker narrative.  But Mass Effect 2 is entirely a shooter, with some RPG elements thrown in, as opposed to the original game, which was an RPG with shooter mechanics.

So why has the balance shifted?

Probably because the sales figures of games like Halo and Gears of War suggest that the market is fertile for more of the same. And if EA was going to put its formidable capital and marketing power behind the franchise (e.g. higher production values and the 2 minute television spot during the NFC Championship Game), then there needed to be some serious risk vs. rewards calculations.

Mass Effect gained the role-playing genre even more ground in the collective attention of the mainstream – it was a game that almost everyone could enjoy.  The critical acclaim was near-unanimous.  But clearly its success wasn’t enough for a company that has proven that it is safer and more profitable to churn out the same game year after year (Madden) than to take risks on things like creativity and originality.

Furthermore, the sparse narrative in Mass Effect 2 highlights another aspect of EA’s business model – the focus on downloadable content (DLC).  This game provides us with a sort of main course – maybe even only the meat of the entree – and undoubtedly within a few weeks or months we’ll have a chance to purchase the sides, the drink, the dessert, and perhaps the appetizer after the fact.

I say all of this knowing full well that I’ll be amongst the first to snatch up every bit of DLC the moment it is released – hoping beyond hope that they’ll serve to fill in some of ME2’s missing details.  So, if nothing else, it does represent a strong business model.

In spite of all of this, I can say that I did enjoy Mass Effect 2 – but perhaps only because it allowed me to return to the universe I had come to know and love in the first game, to once again take the reins of Commander Shepard and save the galaxy from certain peril.  As a standalone game it does just enough right to as a shooter and as a basic RPG to hold its own in the market, and to enroll a new corps of casual gamers into the franchise.  As the middle game in a trilogy, it does just enough to satisfy fans’ two-year hunger.

So overall is Mass Effect 2 a success?  Certainly.  Is it everything I expected?  Not even close.