Media Cooperation: How Film and Interactive Media Have Changed Each Other

By Emmanuel Gundran

The short cutscenes in Ms. Pac Man developed a simple love story between Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man

Film and video games are two completely different media with different relationships to their audiences. Film is a passive medium, meaning that the audience does not have any direct impact on the experience, while video games are an active medium, meaning that the audience can directly impact the experience through decision-making. Though they are so distinct, in recent times these two media have changed by exchanging certain traits with each other.

Early video games such as Pong (Atari, 1972) started out with nothing but direct impact from the audience, but this would change in the years to come. Games like Ms. Pac Man (Bally/Midway, 1981) and Donkey Kong (Nintendo, 1981) included short scenes that moved the game forward to the next level. These scenes could be as simple as the big monkey Donkey Kong stealing the damsel-in-distress away from your clutches and to the next floor of the building. Jumping forward a decade and a half, the Sony Playstation toted games with not only fully-rendered CGI scenes but also voice acting. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Konami, 1997) featured characters with voices accompanied by text on-screen. Because it was such a recent development at the time, the voice acting in the game was not refined like voice acting in gaming today. Voice acting would become a common inclusion in high-budget video games and more professional actors in the film industry would be hired for projects.

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Castlevania: Symphony of the Night's opening confrontation scene, featuring cheesy voice acting.

Perhaps the current peak of film's impact on the gaming industry can be seen in David Cage's Heavy Rain (2010). The game revolves around struggling parent Ethan Mars and his unyielding pursuit of a mysterious serial killer labeled 'the Origami Killer' who kidnaps his son Shaun, holds Shaun hostage, and forces Ethan to endure grueling challenges that test his love for his son. Heavy Rain (Cage, 2010) featured multiple endings depending on the player's actions. The story would change depending on whether the player chooses to put Ethan through excruciating pain to save his son or to refuse a challenge to save his own skin. For game reviewers, according to David Cage, Heavy Rain (2010) gives them more interesting points to discuss. First-person shooters, for example, allowed reviewers to discuss points as few as, "how great it looks, how many enemies, how many levels, etcetera. But here with Heavy Rain all journalists had to analyse the medium and take a position."

In Heavy Rain, the player controls Ethan Mars, a struggling single dad who would do anything for his son.

While the impact of film on the gaming industry is much more detectable, gaming has also changed the film industry in recent times. Andy Serkis, an actor well known for his roles as computer-generated characters, argues that the relationship between film and gaming has been reversed, especially in the digital department. "There was probably a time when people in the games industry wanted to emulate films, but now it's very much the other way around: the technology is driven by video games...virtual production, pre-vis, many of the tools we use in the film industry have come out of the games industry." Peter Gornstein, a global cinematic director at Crytek, praises the recent Xbox One for its innovations in digital visual technology and allowing developers to bridge over the 'uncanny valley,' "the idea that, in computer-generated realism, little details that are slightly off render proceedings creepily unrealistic."

On a smaller scale, YouTube has also been developing a 360 perspective feature that allows the viewer to interact with the video by looking around the surroundings on-screen. This new development would thus bridge the gap between the passive and active media from the other side: making a passive medium more active. CorridorDigital's video, "Where's Waldo 360" places the viewer in different locations and allows them to search for Waldo within a time limit. A video or short film on YouTube can now feel more like an active, immersive video game. As technology advances, film and gaming will continue to change together and offer more unique experiences.

360-perspective YouTube videos pulls viewers into the world that the videos set up.

Works Cited:

Boxer, Steve. "How video games are transforming the film industry." The Guardian. Nov. 17, 2013. Web. Mar 13, 2016
Welsh, Oli. "Heavy Rain's David Cage: The interactive dramatist on reviews, future plans, orange juice and mud."
            EuroGamer. Feb. 17 2010. Web. Mar. 13, 2016