2012 Game of the Year

I don’t like finals. You’d think after everything you learned over some four months, would all culminate to this college moment. Hours of cramming late nights in the library and it’d all come together to create something worthwhile in the end, and suddenly you realize, “Wow, none of this actually matters to me…” Or, at least that’s what happened with my film final that one Friday morning. That film class, of all the irony that semester, was a disaster. Our professor didn’t teach us anything in the art of filmmaking, only the technicalities; though this is an Intro class, you’d think there’d be more weight or grandeur into the art of filmmaking. Needless to say, my final for this dreadful class didn’t end well. I felt awful yet careless afterwards, so I took the three-minute walk towards the JSAC building after it was over. I took in the fresh oxygen under such a blue sky; the trees were blossoming green; the grasses, however real or fake they were, the lime of fruits; spring truly settled in that morning, and somehow I missed it.

Reaching the JSAC, it was understandably empty, all except for one dark little room. A group of students, whom I recognized from the Gamers Club, had their consoles and setups around one of the campus TVs. While I normally didn’t communicate with this group, I was curious as to what they were playing. Normally I pass this group by in the middle of a Mortal Kombat match or split-screen FPSs, that I rarely ever stop and look. But this time, I stopped and looked. See, they weren’t doing some side-scroller or shooter that I’d normally associated them with. What I saw through the reflection of the window wasn’t anything like that. This was more colorful, vibrant, eclectic… yet more simple, mysterious and oblique. They were playing this game I recognized as Journey on their PS3.

It was an awkward introduction between myself and the club; though we love our games, my quiet and questioning demeanor doesn’t really blend with the anime collections and Magic decks I associate this group with. Somehow, though, our differences didn’t matter at the moment. We didn’t watch this game as gamers or students, but as spectators in the moment. Our eyes were glued to the colorful vistas of the environments, the magical particle-effects of the sand on our feet, the mystery of our clothed character, and the echoes of cellos and flutes that made a soundtrack…

Developed by indie-famed Thatgamecompany, Journey exemplifies how it’s not the destination but the journey, not just in its namesake but in its game code. Your only objective is to head towards a mountain, your destination. It takes roughly two hours to reach the mountain, but in those two hours your gaming space will have been changed.

The only gameplay in Journey comes from a scarlet scarf you wear along your trip. As you trek towards the mountain, you’ll come across glowing glyphs that add length to your scarf, and the longer the scarf, the longer you can activate its strange abilities to levitate into the air to activate other clothes or puzzles. Its use isn’t challenging, but it reminds you that this is a painting for you to interact with.

And you won’t be going about this journey alone. Along your journey you’ll come across a second character online. This isn’t an AI, this is a real-life PSN user on the other side of the bandwidth. What’s unique, and what keeps this game as pure as possible, is that there’s no identity or technical communication. With no PSN ID or mic/chat settings, this second player is just as mysterious and curious as you are. Your only means of “communicating” are with little chirps from the ‘O’ button. Cooperation isn’t necessary to complete sections of the game, but it can add layers of excitement to the game, especially as you and your fellow stranger get closer to completing this adventure you’re both sharing.

And then there’s the third character to the experience: the accompanying music. I was shocked by how young composer Austin Wintory was during the making of this game. While his birthdate isn’t clear to me, I can only imagine Wintory must’ve had one heavenly childhood growing up, because what he’s made for this game is nothing short of heavenly. From the opening scene, a feeling of birth; sliding through sandhills, a feeling of joy and thrills; the final treks to the mountain, a feeling of fear and power; to the final moments of the game, a glimpse into something unholy and otherworldly. The soulful energy of this game concept simply couldn’t be as impactful if it weren’t for the powerhouse of strings and flutes. Like your online partner, the music follows with your footsteps as you careen through the sands and snows and sky, tensing as you tense, relaxing as you relax, and lifts you up as you ascend towards your final confrontation. It is bluntly one of the grandest orchestral scores ever made, and has to be heard by everybody, gamer or not. Period.

When these aspects are all combined, what ultimately makes this game is the journey itself. There is a story underneath your character as you walk towards the mountain, but attempting to describe it would be a complete disservice to anyone who’s about to attempt this journey. Again, this isn’t about the destination. While getting to the mountain is scripted, the experience getting there is not. Everyone’s journey won’t be the same; each will have their own interpretation of what they saw or felt as your harrowing trip nears its conclusion. This is a game of feeling and thought, driving you forward with unconventional spirituality and reflective naturalism. This isn’t about the story of Journey, this is about your story.

These are the kind of stories you wake up for, going so far into a goal but remembering what it takes to get to it. Remember the joys, the fears, the thrills, and the dangers it took to get where you always wanted to be. Remember to see the sites and meet the people and places along the way to get you where you want to be. That’s what this game was to me. Whoever I was playing in this game, this character is you and me: curious and afraid, but longing for that light at the end of the tunnel. In this case, that tunnel is the mountain. Unlike many games this year, this is a game that knows what it’s trying to do for you.

This isn’t just an outstanding game, this is a game-changer. It is a symbol, not only for this year, but for years to come, that video games can truly be what we want them to ultimately be, and that’s to NOT be a waste of time. It is the experience, something that our wallets can pay more than the usual $60; that our controllers can do more than point weapons or drive destruction, and that what we see doesn’t always have to be another shooter or WoW. In fact, this is the game that treats those other genres like a dime-a-dozen. Compared to those, Far Cry 3, Halo 4, and COD: Black Ops 2 are just another first-person shooter; Mass Effect 3, Assassin’s Creed III, and Borderlands 2 are just another action/adventure game, etc. Trust me, all mentioned have their merits for the year of 2012, but in the end, it’s something we’ve ultimately seen before.

Journey is something we’ve yet to grasp until now.

This is the game that we’ll show our families, our friends, and heck, even our Congressmen, that there’s more to this picture than just violence and terror.

This is the game we’ll tell stories of, whether we played it in one-sitting, or over and over just to remember the joys of sliding down the shimmering sanddunes, or the fears of those Collosi-like beasts haunting the skies and our dreams.

This is the game that has you playing the unknown, a creature with no human face, no religion, no politics or any worldly backgrounds, but all the worldly emotions we quietly share in our daily lives.

This is the game with the most quaint yet resilient multiplayer element, somehow matching you with a fellow online gamer as you two play through stages, as strangers but sharers of this experience.

This is the game serenaded with the most varied and haunting orchestral score of any entertainment blessed to be made for a video game, an unparalleled enigma of strings and flutes that correlates moment-to-moment into this whole-hearted experience of mystery but awe.

This is the game that stands in its own art museum, the game DaVinci or Michangello would’ve developed had they been here today with our powerful yet wasted tools.

And this is the game that not everyone will pick up and get, something that is understandably fine. Aforementioned, while it is unlike anything we’ve played before, it is unlike anything we’ve played before. There is an endgame, but there are no deaths or game-overs, no blood or injury, no guns or killstreaks, and no polygon-counts or customization. It doesn’t demand patience, but like the pre-labels before every screening at a movie theater, it gently asks you to tune out of that reality for abit and soak in this show. It asks you for an open-mind and an imagination, to ignore what is and play what could be; to see the sites, to hear the sounds, to feel the emotion, and to reflect on something after the two hours of gameplay is complete (it really is like a movie).

Literally, from top to bottom, from the moment you press Start to the last shot of the credits, this is the game of 2012. It isn’t your first-person shooter, your driving game, your MMO or RPG, and granted, it isn’t from AAA developers or multi-millionaire blockbuster sellers. Journey may not be the talk games like Mass Effect 3 was this year, but it is the little engine that, without question, will be the talk of thinkers, dreamers, artists, composers, and believers for years to come. It disregards the technicalities we all associate with video games, embraces the inner body of its computer code, showers its viewers with beauties the world over, and leaves an intensity in the air when your journey has ended. It compares to many games with its endgoal, but it is more than that. It is your journey, one unlike anything you’ll ever play.

It is Journey, my Game of the Year for 2012.

- Ant

RUNNER-UPS
Max Payne 3

Assassin’s Creed 3

October 2012 Updates

Hey,

If you've been keeping up to date on what's been going on at Fymantics, 1) thank you, 2) no, seriously, and 3) a lot has been updated and made official. If you need a refresher, because I think I do too, here's what's been going on:

- We are now Fymantic Pictures. After our work under FilmANTic Manny, to the shorter but understated FilmANTics, we merged into one clear word, a merge and twist between the "film antics" run we've been doing lately.

- This change also gave us an opportunity to play with logo-design. This experiment made us self-analyze our priority at Fymantic. Despite our interests in making the dramatic and realistic, we also want to expand to the adventurous and artistic (creating "film antics"). With this outlook in mind, our logo played around with lines, symmetry, and just something astray from the fonts and layouts we're used to seeing. I'm really happy with the turnout.

- Obviously, the new logo has omitted my favorite little addition, the Manny the skeleton sketch. During experiments, Manny honestly did not fit in with our new appearance. While we updated his look as well as ours, it still didn't match. This doesn't mean he's out of the picture completely; he's still a part of Fymantic, a twisted but quirky representation of what our outlook is. He will still appear as a secondary logo when we think is best.

 - Ever since my run-in with Gaming4Respect, I will also be providing gaming footage and videos in collaboration with Gaming4Respect. The admins at G4R have been incredibly supportive of our work and ambitions and more than want us to write and video-edit for them. As an expanding gaming community site, this gives us a huge opportunity to show thousands what we can do.

- Why am I updating you all so late? Easy. College. And work, since I just began a new job at the local theater. This would mean I have far less time to tinker with videos, but surprisingly, I've had numerous opportunities to capture footage of events around me; between birthday parties, school events, or day-to-day little things, there's a lot of experimenting to go. When I'll manage to actually get to editing and uploading, is beyond me. But rest assured...

- We have a lot in store to show you.

In time.

- Ant

The Dynamics of Film-Adaptations

Late this summer, I had the opportunity to write for a local gaming site, Gaming4Respect. One of the editors, Keith DePalma, found some of my writing and immediately asked me to join and write for their site. Though school and a new job were on the horizon, I, of course, signed up. The same night I joined, the admins and I were discussing an IGN article (link below) posted that night about the forthcoming Uncharted film-adaptation, and it got me in a rant. Thus, here is my first article for the site, an analysis on film adaptations and how to do it right (finally uploaded for my Blogspot & MyIGN viewers).
 
Just recently this week, Keith DePalma and I were explaining to Mary Cosgrove the impact of the Uncharted franchise for PlayStation 3. Whatever preferences we gamers pick, there is no denying Uncharted has set a generation-defining benchmark as both an excellence in cinematic story-telling and a craftsmanship in production value. While we talked about this, I pulled up an article uploaded from IGN that same night.

Once again, an Uncharted film-adaptation is put in production hell. Having been in production hell since the acclaim of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, directors, writers, and actors have continued to drop in and out of the adaptation. This is all-and-good, but there was a bigger problem I found when I read this: It is an adaptation of the established Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune from 2007.

The choice of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune startled me more than these movie articles usually do, and it brought to mind the relationship between gamers and their games; and filmmakers and these games: there isn’t one. The Uncharted franchise, as I mentioned, has already established itself as a cinematic gaming experience. From its character development, plot directions, and overall pacing lends itself as a movie experience the likes of which we compare Spielberg’s Indiana Jones franchise.

The article got me to rant with Keith & Mary about this problem, because it is a problem. Hollywood is planning to copy/paste the story the three of us already know, into a movie we will have already seen and experienced, and give little incentive for the experienced gamer to see what we already know. What I am saying is, do we really want to see a shorter, two-hour version of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, when we can instead experience it ourselves for well over 8-hours?

Of course, this is not the first time we have had this dance with our beloved video games. Ubisoft has been working towards an Assassin’s Creed adaptation; CBS Films has been in-discussion of a Deus Ex adaptation after last year’s hit, Deus Ex: Human Revolution; and just recently, Paul W.S. Anderson announced his scriptwriting for a Castlevania adaptation. Normally if you are a gaming enthusiast, seeing your favorite video game on the silver screen would be a joy. But time and time again, we have not only been given more immersive games, but also given more mediocre adaptations. Doom, Max Payne, Prince of Persia, Resident Evil, and the always-reliable Uwe Boll are a testament of the disappointment we’ve come to expect from these adaptations, and create an understandable worry of disappointment from film-adaptations.

The key difference between film and game is experience. What Hollywood is missing from our world is that the craft, and really the heart and glory of video games, is the sensation to not see a character-driven narrative, but to virtually experience the narrative. We are not being given 90 minute-to-two hour stories in video games (unless you’re playing COD), we are being given some 10-20 hour experiences with us, the player, driving the main character forward and creating our own fun in this story.

Examples from the PS3 console alone can come from Naughty Dog & the Uncharted franchise (and their upcoming survival-thriller, The Last of Us), Guerilla Games & the Killzone series, Sucker Punch & inFAMOUS, and Santa Monica & God of War saga. For Microsoft, Halo is an obvious choice, as are Fable, Gears of War, and Alan Wake. The possibilities can be endless. So what can be done to balance the forces between filmmakers and game developers? As an aspiring filmmaker, here are a few tips I feel will give some justice to our pride and glory:

1) TELL A DIFFERENT STORY
I have had my own challenges making my parents sit down and watch a few cutscenes from Uncharted. It is people like these that are missing out on a great gaming experience, but there can be a generational gap. While newcomers will enjoy our games more from the movie theater, however, it will leave gamers watching something they have already experienced. For example, many of us already know the story of Ezio Auditore in Assassin’s Creed, and after three games, I am kind of tired of playing more of it (Assassin’s Creed: Revelations basically concluded his quests, all-together).

Instead of ripping from the stories we already know, why not tell a different story? Creating a completely different tale from the same universe would be a new experience for both the movie-goer and the gamer. Assassin’s Creed? Instead of Altair or Ezio, maybe a different Assassin from a different universe and objective. Uncharted? Maybe delve more into the origins of the Nate/Sully characters, or a prelude adventure film before the games?

2) CREATE AN ACCURATE CHARACTER
Max Payne from Rockstar Games was a gruff, worn-out addict with a thirst for revenge and desperation for justice. Max from the movie adaptation, was not. Not only was he not Max Payne, but even as a stand-alone character he was not interesting. As with both films and games, a compelling and fresh character matters just as much as the narrative and atmosphere.

Finding the right actor for the role may be tough, but someone to perform the solid-straight enigma of Master Chief in Halo, the quick & charming Nathan Drake in Uncharted, or heck, the kick-ass-chew-bubblegum attitude of Duke in a Duke Nukem adaptation, would make all the difference in an adaptation.

3) USE THE ORIGINAL TEAM
The character analysis above brings to mind another suggestion. If you are going to make a game-adaptation, who knows how to make it better than the original game developers themselves? After all, much of the mistakes from prior adaptations come from a lack of similarities between the film and game, as well as a lack of input from the gods of the game. For example, the Uncharted adaptation earlier is being written by somebody who is not Amy Henning. The creative directors and concept artists for the game worlds would also be as crucial to giving an authentic adaptation. Or the music? An Assassin’s Creed movie would not be the same without the score of Jesper Kyd, as would a Halo adaptation without Marty O’Donnell.

4) REMEMBER THE FANS
Above all else, remember why this movie is being made. This is not a quick-profit production; this is an art, with an opportunity to be appreciated by the mainstream. Past attempts have failed to give results, instead only distancing gamers from believing, and providing more nails to the coffin of possibilities. Focusing less on the flash and more on the story, character, and understanding of our world will make all the difference in bringing together two of the most immersive and atmospheric industries in entertainment, into one oh-so-sweet adaptation.

- Ant
- edited by Keith DePalma, Gaming4Respect

Copolla, Spielberg, Fincher, Tarantino, Mendes, Welles, Hooper, Capra, and Brooks.

But Copolla. It's always Copolla.

- Ant

On Cronenberg and TDKR

"Anybody who works in the studio system has got 20 studio people sitting on his head at every moment, and they have no respect... a superhero movie, by definition, you know, it's comic book. It's for kids. It's adolescent in its core. That has always been its appeal, and I think people who are saying, you know, 'Dark Knight Rises is, you know, supreme cinema art,' I don't think they know what the fuck they're talking about."

- David Cronenberg (8/15/12)

Alright. As a person and filmmaker, he's entitled to his opinions, we all are. People are entitled to see whatever they want, and sure people will say Spider-Man 2 wasn't great, or the Dark Knight trilogy was too political, whatever have you, agree to disagree...

But to say that the core audience for superhero films doesn't know what it wants, or don't know what they're talking about and are being childish for watching these movies, is childish in itself. It's not only wrong, it's stupid and disrespectful to people who pay for top-dollar for these movies (or maybe even a R-rated Cronenberg movie) and enjoy them. Or the people that gave $2billion for The Avengers, or went to midnight-screenings for TDKR even after the Colorado tragedy.

To bash at your audience and believe it doesn't know what it's saying or watching, is just shameful and pathetic, Cronenberg.

Enjoy your success with Cosmopolis.

- Ant