BriceMorrison.com Life is a Game

In the late 1800’s, film was a young medium.  Through now as common as the air we breathe, at that time it was only recently that celluloid film was invented, allowing recording to occur in real time.  This invention left aspiring filmmakers as well as audiences scratching their heads as to what people were supposed to do with these “motion pictures”.  How were they different from the theater or the opera?  Could you emulate them?  Could you do things with film that you couldn’t do in other media?

It was a time of experimentation and discovery.  Some of the earliest films stumbled upon the basic rudiments of camera movements, shot selection, and recreating common plays.  Filmmakers learned to establish characters and express stories.  Slowly but surely, film was being welcomed as a new medium.  But there were many more genres left to explore, as well as obstacles to overcome.

Taking film in a new direction

A monumental leap forward for the film medium came in 1896, when Thomas Edison recorded a 47-second film of an event that had never appeared on a motion picture.  It was of a couple who was in love, and they were kissing.

When Edison debuted his short film, aptly titled “The Kiss”, to the public, the response was less than a warm hug to a new medium, attempting to go where only books and theater had gone before.  Instead, the response was outrage.  Newspapers called for police action and censorship, claiming that capturing such as intimate act as a couple cuddling and kissing was inappropriate.  Reading about romance, or seeing metaphors for romance on the stage were fine…but this?  With this film, it seemed, the country was on the road to perdition, pulled along by this new fangled technology.

This is not the response that we would expect today.  Looking back at the places film has taken us into the depths of romance, from Casablanca to Titanic, Cary Grant to Julia Roberts, moviegoers of today should thank Edison for pioneering the areas that film was capable of exploring.  Now a common act, the great romance films climax with a kiss for the ages, kisses that awaken our spirits and give us hope and joy in finding true love.  By taking a step in the direction of romance, of daring to bring a very emotional subject into a medium that had yet to be fully understood, Edison was helping to pave the way for an acceptance of the silver screen that would continue to grow and learn to delight millions.

The first-person hug

Welcome back to the present, a time where film is well established, but video games are still being explored and discovered.  Recently I was watching a friend of mine play through Mirror’s Edge, a first-person parkour game where the player takes on the role of a woman named Faith.  Early on in the story, Faith has an emotional discussion with her sister where they discuss the difficult situation they’ve just fallen into.  While deciding what to do next, the conversation is cut short.  It was at this moment that something beautiful happened.

Faith gave her sister a hug, and the player performed the hug in first person.

This was something that I had never seen before.  And as a game designer, I was a little disappointed in myself at my reaction: I chuckled.  Why did I laugh?  Well, to be honest, it was a little awkward.  First-person video games that take themselves seriously aren’t a medium where the player actually “hugs” someone, right?  Maybe in a children’s game, but never out of a sincere need for emotional support.  For years games have been a realm of entertainment and action, excitement and danger.  Emotional sentiment is there, but it is certainly not common.  That made the first-person hug very strange to me.

But of course, learning from history, there isn’t anything inherently odd about a hug being displayed in a new medium; it’s just that such an action in games is new and unfamiliar, an act rendered within a game that had not been rendered before.  A hug in a book or a opera?  Definitely.  In a movie or a graphic novel?  Sure.  But in a video game?  That is new territory.  I was unfamiliar with it, and my chuckle revealed the limitations I was putting on the medium.

After doing some research, I learned that Half Life 2 also had a first-person hug, and other games have apparently attempted a first person kiss, though I can’t confirm these.  The fact is that it was a rare event, the first on the map, the pioneers.  These are the moments that games of the future are going to look back on as their ancestors.

A happy ending

It would be easy to overlook these events as insignificant, with all of the excitement about casual games and other hot topics that are also revolutionizing the industry.  But if the history of film is any indicator, these presently funny interactions are the first steps towards deeply romantic and emotional interactive experiences.  I wouldn’t be surprised if we begin to see more games which take advantage of the human interactions such as hugs or kisses in order to convey emotion. Games like Facade are also taking stabs at human emotion, something that seems strange now because of it’s unfamiliarity, but ultimately making progress in the realm of intimacy in a virtual space.

This doesn’t mean that all of the sudden, gamers will be crying all over their controllers and making out with their TV screens.  Trends are slow but steady.  While these first glimpses of emotion are met with skepticism, these reactions will fade as games learn to do what mature media do best: disappear, and leave nothing between the player and the experience.