The United States of America is a very individualistic society. We work and live for ourselves. We’d rather not have someone else’s name emblazoned on our work. Even when we fail, we understand that it’s not the fault of an invisible force, but the force of our own wrongdoings. When Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, suggests we should consider that there’s an external specter that controls our creative process, it’s unsurprising to see us scoffing at the idea.
George Lucas may not believe in this, but he does believe that films such as Star Wars can be powerful tools for educating people. He feels that people can relate to characters in movies, and can learn from them. But, in order to keep people engrossed, you need a decent, thought-provoking story. J.J. Abrams uses the sense of mystery to keep people watching. But it’s not only him. At his March 2007 TED talk, he lists off various ways the essence of mystery (or “mystery box”) is used in the fourth episode of Star Wars.
“Look at Star Wars. You got the droids; they meet the mysterious woman. Who's that? We don't know. Mystery box! You know? Then you meet Luke Skywalker. He gets the Droid, you see the holographic image. You learn, oh, it's a message, you know. She wants to, you know, find Obi Wan Kenobi. He's her only hope. But who the hell's Obi Wan Kenobi? Mystery box! So then you go and he meets Ben Kenobi. Ben Kenobi is Obi Wan Kenobi. Holy shit!” -J.J. Abrams, in his TED Talk The Mystery Box
Part of the reason viewers watch movies is because of how enticing the sense is not knowing, and finding out what’s next. Is Luke Skywalker going to destroy the Death Star? Who is Darth Vader? Why did Kenobi’s body disappear when he died? If you keep watching, you may find out. Along the way, you may even notice the many religious references in the movies. While movies have thrived on this essence, video games haven’t been so lucky.
While creative people try their best to create beautiful works, they aren’t good at everything. Daniel Floyd brings up many games that are great in every way except for having a decent, though-provoking story. Game designers craft sprawling worlds with exciting gameplay, but more often than not, video games fall short on story.
In the earliest of video games, stories were rare. Unlike today, that may have been more of a technical limitation. For example, the Magnavox Odyssey used plastic overlays that players put in front of their televisions because without them, they probably wouldn’t know what they were looking at, other than a series of dots. If you put up an overlay of an ice rink with hockey players, you were suddenly playing ice hockey, no explanation or story needed. These games did not embrace the sense of mystery. These games did not embrace story. They ignored them because they had no place in video games.
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| The aforementioned overlay for Hockey, released in 1972. |
Nowadays, much has changed. What once took an entire cartridge fills a minute fraction of a disc. Computers have become so powerful, they can duplicate the functionality of older video game consoles through mere software. The severely limited color palette older developers had to work with has expanded almost infinitely. Yet, most games still don’t rely on story, like movies do. Instead, they focus on mere spectacle and fun. Those that do aren’t very enticing, and don’t have the same sense of mystery that directors like J.J. Abrams crave. This is starting to change, however. The developers of the multimillion-dollar video game franchise
Call of Duty realized the importance of story and enlisted the help of Stephen Gaghan to write the single-player story. Story-driven “non-games” like
Gone Home, The Wolf Among Us, and
The Stanley Parable have exploded in popularity.
The Walking Dead and
The Last of Us turned stoic, mature men into emotional, sobbing heaps. When Floyd made his video on games and storytelling, most games weren’t story based. Thankfully, that’s about to change.
With this new emphasis on storytelling, videogames will have even greater potential to captivate us, and teach us new things. The video shown during the TED Talk
Are Games Better Than Life? shows a future that’s about to be realized today. Now, you don’t have to be a veteran to realize why war is hell. You can stand beside your fellow brothers and fight for survival. With the advent of affordable virtual reality on the horizon, videogame experiences will become infinitely immersive. We’ll be able to experience things we would otherwise never dream of. Developers will make experiences that are impossible in real life. That’s when games will be better than life.
If we’re talking about art forms, it’d be daft to ignore music. Take Dan Ellsey for example. Who knew he could compose music? Before Tod Machover (TED Talk: Tod Machover + Dan Ellsey: Inventing instruments that unlock new music) and his team at MIT developed Hyperscore, we would be none the wiser. Not only him, but thousands of kids have the ability to make music thanks to Hyperscore. As the Radiolab episode Musical Language reveals, children are more likely to have perfect pitch when they grow older. If we keep exposing more kids to music (and especially Hyperscore) earlier, we can essentially breed a new generation of talented musicians. They will be among the very best we’ve ever known: Mozart, Chopin, even Stevie Wonder all had it. If more people have perfect pitch, there’s a good chance that many of them could be even better musicians. Musicians who discover their inner genius before many others. People who go on to compose beautiful, award-winning works. And that, is music to my ears.
