By Jim Rossignol on June 21st, 2008 at 9:22 am.
University of Connecticut Associate Professor of classical studies Roger Travis has started a blog comparing videogames to the classic tales of the ancient world. His latest post, “The profundity of Halo and Bioshock (and the Iliad)”, puts our favourite first person shooters up there with the greats of Ancient Greece.
Am I saying, a critic of video games might ask, that Halo and Bioshock are capable of the depth of artistic-philosophical expression reached by the Iliad in the Choice of Achilles? After all, when the Homeric bard has Achilles say that maybe the undying glory isn’t really worth it if you lose your life, he’s doing an artistic thing that we’re not used to thinking video games can do.
Here’s the answer: Yes, I am saying that.
Duke Nukem is more like Odysseus, you see. (Or is that Serious Sam?)
21/06/2008 at 09:36 Jochen Scheisse says:
Man, gamers always get the nutjobs.
The profundity of that moment, or of corresponding moments in Halo when you absolutely must do something or the game won’t proceed, comes from the interaction of the necessity of doing that thing with the meaning of the thing you must do. The most obvious example in Halo is I think the end of the game, when the player must drive a jeep through a hostile landscape in a short enough time that the Master Chief can make it off Halo (the ring in space) before it explodes.
What exactly is an Associate Professor? Is that when you have been drunk with a real Professor once And he told you you can use his first name?
21/06/2008 at 09:43 Pidesco says:
Is the University of Connecticut crap or is this guy just the exception?
21/06/2008 at 09:52 Okami says:
Well, this guy is leaning a bit too much out of the window BUT comparing games to the classical legends of greece and other ancient cultures isn’t as stupid as it may sound at first.
After all these legends were mainly about people killing loads of other people (and sometimes laying their moms) often for really ridiculous reasons. There wasn’t a whole lot of character development going on, the protagonists were unsympathetic brutes as often as not and over the top power ups were handed down left and right.
But of course the guy’s wron, because video games are really like operas!
21/06/2008 at 10:01 Billy Ogawa says:
“Here’s the answer: Yes, I am saying that.”
Here’s me saying that I really wish you weren’t saying that. Where was this fool when Planescape: Torment came out? Certainly that game had more going on intellectually than games like Halo and Bioshock.
21/06/2008 at 10:37 Al3xand3r says:
Has he even ever read the Epics he speaks of (via a decent translation that conveys the same feelings with detailed notes, or better yet the actual original Ancient Greek pieces) or did he just watch the Hollywood editions to save time?
21/06/2008 at 11:22 Matt says:
Well clearly he just blogged it in his lunch break or something I don’t know if it is fair to be too hard on him. It is also worth noting he says that these games fail to achieve the complexity that the quote used above suggests, he only states that they can do so. Which as a statement isn’t really news to anyone.
Also I don’t think it is fair to question whether a professor of classics has read a good translation of the classics he talks about or not.
But then we here are PC gamers, that guy freely admits he is an Xbox gamer! So what can we expect, we should thumb our noses at him and walk away. Your PC is for gaming professor not writing blogs about Xbox gaming!
21/06/2008 at 11:29 Albides says:
Okami,
Word. Probably the most remarkable thing of all is that our heroes haven’t changed all that much. Hell, Master Chief even wears SPARTAN armour, doesn’t he?
This guy is just mad, though.
21/06/2008 at 11:31 muscrat says:
HALO? Why…. HALO? Even Bioshock fell to pieces after meeting andrew Ryan…… Besides the comparison is just…. *sigh*
21/06/2008 at 11:32 Al3xand3r says:
Actually, Matt, I can question him all I want when he says stuff like Halo can compare to them.
Especially with quotes like “corresponding moments in Halo when you absolutely must do something or the game won’t proceed”.
Seriously, is there ANY (non sandbox I guess?) game, simple or complex, with or without any meaningful storyline or characters, where you DON’T have to do something very specific to proceed?
Super Mario sure was as good as studying the Odyssey then. Going on a lengthy journey through foreign lands in order to save his beloved princess. Such self sacrifice, dedication and willpower he displayed as he endured the harsh conditions and all those lethal attacks without once thinking of quitting. And let’s not forget the apparent divine interventions of extra lives and continues, as well as the fact Mario possibly thought he was going through his journey alone when in fact a God-like (player) entity was helping and guiding him throughout, unnnoticed.
Having that kind of self boasting title and banner created for that blog alone suggests it was more than a rushed lunch break brainstorm, you know? This guy clearly wanted our attention so let him have it.
21/06/2008 at 11:39 Rob says:
I just … I … and this isn’t parody? The mind boggles.
21/06/2008 at 11:50 Alex says:
What a strange man.
21/06/2008 at 11:50 Matt says:
Well I didn’t say you can’t question him just it isn’t a strong point to contest. And your post is not revealing any flaw in his knowledge of the classics just implying a questionable connection between their narrative and that of a game. Which incidentally I agree is not a point he makes well.
I’m not saying it is a good article just he probably does know something about the subject he specialises in, even if he doesn’t know much about games. It would be better to focus criticism on the flawed aspects of the article than supposition.
21/06/2008 at 11:54 Valentin Galea says:
I initially wanted to make a comment but all the guys above really spoke my mind out!
Go go RPS zeitgeist!
21/06/2008 at 11:55 Al3xand3r says:
Matt, his posts don’t reveal any deep understanding of the classics either (so why assume there is such?), I can’t prove his lack of knowledge by quoting when he never attempts to delve into them in any meaningful way, just as he can’t prove his understanding of them with his idiotic rants, which are enough of a reason to question him. Besides, I think his posts at the very least prove he doesn’t understand the actual games he tries so hard to relate to the classics.
Anyway, obviously, ancient told stories like the Iliad or the Odyssey have become the archetypes of modern story telling, especially given their depth and wide range of themes and situations which make most any modern day story able to be pointed at as using this or that pre existing element.
That certainly doesn’t mean that mere copycats or wannabes or non wannabes that happen to exploit some of the same elements or themes are actually as good, or “close” as he specifically says. Far from it. Just look at Hollywood’s editions of parts of those specific stories for simple proof that using similar themes doesn’t make a story as grand as the originals in any way shape or form. They’re only sad caricatures messing with them in ways they should not feel the need to given the original quality.
21/06/2008 at 12:05 rob says:
Sorry Matt but your argument is ridiculous and without merit. I am going to have to disagree.
How could you possibly know this? Maybe he wrote the post of an evening when there was nothing good on TV. Maybe he wrote it during a tea break to take some time away from his difficult work of reading books. To begin your argument with such baseless speculation does not bode well for what is to follow.
Your sweeping statement is as wrong as it is stupid. What about those of us who are a bit thick? Do they factor into your narrow world-view even slightly?
Again you use the word fair. That is twice you have used this word. Twice.
I didn’t read the rest of your post but if it is anything like the bit I did read it was probably a good decision.
21/06/2008 at 12:05 Matt says:
All universities have profiles of their staff unless it is an elaborate scam he is a professor of classics, you can read his CV and everything.
21/06/2008 at 12:10 Matt says:
As for you rob, clearly there is no need to respond as you are the inferior rob in this thread, you have no capital letter at the start of your name and no picture of a horse.
21/06/2008 at 12:12 Al3xand3r says:
Maybe, but that was the least of my points which is why I removed it from the post as it broke its flow. But it means a lot that it was the only bit you bothered commenting on.
21/06/2008 at 12:13 Matt says:
Well it was the only bit I thought I didn’t agree with. And really in my posts I have been responding to your subsequent posts where you continued to contest the issue.
21/06/2008 at 12:15 rob says:
Don’t take it personally Althreexandthreer, he didn’t bother commenting on my post at all.
21/06/2008 at 12:21 Al3xand3r says:
Yeah, well, since you agree with those posts… In regards to your original points then, I think it’s actually pretty fair to completely humiliate and trample this guy’s blogs because this kind of thing is not what he should be polluting his students’ minds with, even outside class. Besides, he’s not being fair to the classics with such comparisons, I’d expect more respect, not half assed comparisons with subjects he clearly doesn’t understand enough to draw such comparisons to in the first place.
21/06/2008 at 12:40 Jim Rossignol says:
I’m inclined to think that this guy isn’t so far off the mark. He’s being a bit wacky, but that seems deliberate. The Halo remark is a little peculiar, but, well, the classics are essentially classic because they’re like basic benchmarks for story-telling. And Halo just retells stories we’ve seen before, right?
Also, Bioshock *does* have some literary cleverness going on in it, even if we largely disagree with its conclusion, execution, and merit as an game. Bioshock might not have been particularly compelling as a shooter, but it was nevertheless awesome to see Levine’s team able to play around with some big ideas in the context of a videogame.
Don’t write this chap off because Halo is rubbish. The free will stuff is interesting, I think, even if it’s not particularly insightful.
21/06/2008 at 12:50 WCAYPAHWAT says:
*sigh*
21/06/2008 at 13:03 Al3xand3r says:
Sad caricatures of archetype stories don’t mean games, or at least the specific games he comments on as being “close” are anywhere near as good. Most every story told today has elements of the classics. That doesn’t mean most all of them are “close” to the classics’ quality or impact since they merely rehash them in vastly inferior ways. And yes, you can’t do much more than rehash themes of the classics since they were so all encompassing but he could at least pick examples of well told stories (of which there are very few in video games), not examples where the stories are merely an excuse to drive gameplay and not in ways that are so vague that accepting them makes almost every single game or story ever created just as good. He’s really pathetic in my opinion.
21/06/2008 at 13:12 Jim Rossignol says:
Better than simply ignoring games, as most academics and cultural commentators seem determined to do though, eh?
21/06/2008 at 13:26 Al3xand3r says:
Not really better if they’re ridiculed like this, cos I’m sure no other academics will take such rants seriously. If they do, well, I’ll not have faith in them, their opinions’ ability to impact people in meaningful ways, or their ability to properly teach future generations. I’m equally against both condemning and praising video games in such unfounded ways. Praise them for what they really are, don’t relate them out of the blue to widely accepted as praise worthy things just because you felt like it…
21/06/2008 at 13:28 WCAYPAHWAT says:
A good story doesn’t exactly have to be a ‘classic’, let alone well written. It’s about what you, the reader/player/viewer/whatever, get out of it.
Just a point to consider, before taking a hard stand on your opinions.
21/06/2008 at 13:31 Al3xand3r says:
No, it doesn’t have to be a classic, especially when talking about video games since the part that really matters is the gaming. If I really believed that all stories have to be close to classics then I’d not have played more than one or two video games in my lifetime or watched more than a handful of movies. That’s not what I’ve been saying at all. But if it’s not a classic it should not be compared so faborably to actual classics. Praise it for what it is, don’t try to say it’s something it is not is all I’ve been saying with my posts. And don’t praise stories that aren’t praise worthy, even if the game or whatever they ended up in is good as entertainment (or just to your liking, since “good” is so subjective).
21/06/2008 at 13:42 Heliocentric says:
This guy sounds like one of the jocks at school deffending the geek from getting bullied because their moms know each other.
Just as this guy doesnt sound like he actualy understands games. Yes, greek myths had crap stories, so do some popular games. In other news pop music just catchy as birdsongs!
21/06/2008 at 13:59 Al3xand3r says:
It sounds like you haven’t read the classics in question either really… Having a brief description of them through public domain knowledge or some video games or movies or books inspired by them isn’t enough to judge them I’m afraid. It’s like judging LOTR as some Dungeons & Dragons hackjob…
21/06/2008 at 14:23 Jochen Scheisse says:
IMO the art of interactive storytelling is in the interesting aspects not comparable to classic storytelling. As a role player, I see that gaming has already adapted and invented countless niches that have revolutionized storytelling. Of course there are a lot of games that railroad you though a story, and Halo is a prime example for uninnovative and largely also unimaginative storytelling that serves primarily as a vehicle to justify the player repeating the same basic mechanisms over and over again. Most games that really want to convey a strong, coherent and complex story need to railroad. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But Halo is totally devoid of meaningful choices that elevate the interactive story above the classical story that resembles the picture book/novel/film mechanisms.
The special and new aspects of games that also tell stories is in how far they either stimulate the player’s brain to tell their own story when following the game mechanisms (I remind you of Tom Chick’s awesome review of that ‘Manage Rome’ game) or in how far they adapt to the personality of the player to tell a story related to their choices.
Now honestly that was a rant that does not really relate to what he said, because as he teaches classics, he’s obviously not searching for innovations. That’s okay, of course he can choose his own field. I just wanted to point out the validity of games as a new medium.
This is why I don’t like his post in particular: Of course you can compare every story to every other story, and of course that’s valid to some degree, because basic storytelling devices apply to every story. But it doesn’t say anything about the medium as such, and in his special case it doesn’t even repeat the basic stuff about storytelling properly. Prince of Persia = MacBeth = Ren&Stimpy is nothing new, and I don’t see why I as a gamer should support people doing that. Of course you can also teach drama by letting people analyze the story of Halo or a Daily Soap. But as a geek, as a connaisseur of games, I don’t see that this guy has proven any insight or any taste. He just proves that somehow, everything relates to the basic mechanisms of storytelling, and he also proves that a person with too much knowledge will be able to interpret a pattern into unrelated things. The escape scene of Halo thing is just a prime example that this guy has through his education aquired a chest of knowledge and is willing to squeeze everything into the drawers, however meaningless the chest and the drawers become through that. That is bad science, and I don’t support it.
Finally, don’t worry. Knowledge and acceptance follow the impact on society, on history, and they also follow the money. GTA has earned more money that Hollywood movies. It won’t be long until scientists will write positive and clever stuff about games. It’s just that this guy will need to improve a lot to better the image of games in the scientific society.
21/06/2008 at 14:24 Bjørn Stærk says:
This is always a problem when academics bravely venture out to use their analytical skills on “pop culture”. Whether this is a parody or not, there is a genuine desire among academics to understand all that entertainment the rest of the world cares about, but they often don’t do a good job with it. Part of it is because they aren’t all necessarily that smart, (a physics professor has to be smart, a professor of literature may be smart or just good at parroting jargon). Another part of it is that their analytical tools aren’t necessarily all that good. Academics feel that they need something that is a bit more rigorous than subjective opinion, (otherwise what’s the point?), and so they invent elaborate and clever-looking frameworks for analyzing art, but while those frameworks may be rigorous and give the appearance of objectivity, they don’t necessarily give us any useful or interesting insights. This becomes very apparent when these frameworks are applied outside their field, to something a lot of people are familiar with. In this case to an entirely different medium as well.
In my experience the smartest analysis of a medium or genre is usually provided by its smartest fans, people who live and breathe that world, and not by outside academics, (who may be fans themselves, but haven’t gone deep enough to learn anything that isn’t already obvious). Here’s an example from another medium and genre of something an academic could never have written.
21/06/2008 at 14:28 Q.W. says:
I actually have read the Illiad and the Aeneid (though not the Odyessy) and I have to say they’re decent stories but pretty shallow. Their only remarkable feature is extreme age. I haven’t played Bioshock but I would say that the classics have a better understanding of character than Halo – but given that Halo is about a brainwashed cyborg weapon and a damaged AI fighting a bunch of aliens you wouldn’t expect much humanity from it. Frankly none of them compare to, say, Kafka or even a good children’s writer like Philip Pullman. So, well done videogames, some people think you’re only 3000 years behind the storytelling curve.
21/06/2008 at 15:01 Jochen Scheisse says:
The basic premise of the Illiad is 3 goddesses fighting over who is the most beautiful. They represent power, wisdom and love, and the decision between them necessarily leads to tragedy. I have yet to find something like that in a computer game.
21/06/2008 at 15:04 Al3xand3r says:
Not spelling them properly doesn’t tell me you know enough about them, I’m sorry. How were they shallow? Even with their perfect poetic form lost thanks to being read in languages other than the original they can still offer a lot in terms of story telling with exploring grand themes and characters in (at least for the time) non conventional ways that are often not done succesfully even today (see the use of flashbacks in the Odyssey for a small example). They also combined different sciences to convey the right atmosphere and grandeour of the moment, for example Homer displayed a great understanding of the human anatomy when describing the grand battles. They’re not what defined the word Epos (Epic) for nothing. Also, Aeneid is not Ancient Greek, it’s Latin, so shouldn’t be grouped together with the Iliad and Odyssey, even if it takes from them.
21/06/2008 at 15:14 InVinoVeritas says:
Ayn Rand’s own works aren’t as profound as the Iliad. So to ascribe that status to Bioshock (Ayn Rand “lite” mixed with the Manchurian Candidate) is mind boggling.
21/06/2008 at 15:17 Roger Travis says:
Thanks for the notice, Jim, and for the kind, if hedged, defense of my work. :D
Two things. First, I’m really glad commenters here are interested enough in my ideas to be debating them so passionately. Second, the post Jim excerpted has a pretty involved context that I think is worth exploring if you want to discuss what I’m trying to do.
(I think my response to the comments at my place is also worth taking a look at–but YMMV.)
21/06/2008 at 15:22 WCAYPAHWAT says:
@Jochen Scheisse
Wasn’t that in Zelda: Ocarina of Time? :D
21/06/2008 at 15:36 Calabi says:
Well it sounds to me as if he’s just trying to get attention or to get the kids interested in mythology.
Saying games could be like them is like saying UFO’s could land on the Whitehouse lawn, they might, but until they do its irrelevant. I dont see that games are even getting there, most of them are dismissive of humanity and reality. Bioshock totally avoided the ramifications and morality of the girl situation. Death has no consequences the NPCs have no responses(mostly). Games now seem to do everything they can not to mirror reality, not to be offensive, or show consequences, not to instigate any emotions other than aggression or excitment.
21/06/2008 at 16:01 Roger Travis says:
@Calabi: I agree completely that Levine dropped the ball with respect to the little sisters, which is why I agree with Tim Rogers that the artistic quality of Bioshock is “the least we should expect from now on.” The problem with the little sisters, though, doesn’t change what I see as the profundity (though not the great profundity) of the non-choice of killing Andrew Ryan.
21/06/2008 at 16:40 Al3xand3r says:
You know, the word profundity alone implies greatness even if you don’t add the word “great” before it.
21/06/2008 at 16:59 Erlam says:
In Quake, you needed to get special artefacts (keys) in order to defeat giant monsters, and in the end fight the God-monster that has been trying to stop you all along.
See, Quake is like the Illiad too! And so is Doom! And Wolfenstein 3D! And Marathon!
Sorry, this just makes me giggle.
21/06/2008 at 17:05 Roger Travis says:
@Alexander: I guess I think works can be compared with respect to their profundity. The Iliad can IMHO be said to be “more profound” than Bioshock, so it makes sense to me to say that the Iliad possesses “great profundity” while Bioshock only possesses “profundity.”
I would also say that it makes sense to me to attribute “greatness” both to the Iliad and to Bioshock on that basis, though the former has the greater greatness. :D
@Erlam: Baseball is like the Iliad, too, but it’s not interesting to talk about that in this particular context, just as I don’t find the similarities of Quake and Doom interesting to talk about. On the other hand, because of other features of the comparison, I do think it’s interesting to talk about Halo and Bioshock in this regard.
21/06/2008 at 17:54 Bjørn Stærk says:
Roger Travis: “On the other hand, because of other features of the comparison, I do think it’s interesting to talk about Halo and Bioshock in this regard.”
It’s still in my view a superficial and irrelevant comparison. Basically what I’m saying is that if you want to do this you need to start at the bottom with fact-gathering, by playing a lot of games (popular and less popular, new and old), and only later, much later, look for conclusions and paralells to other works of art.
21/06/2008 at 18:00 Roger Travis says:
@Bjoern: Why do you think I haven’t played a lot of games? Because I’m a classics professor? Strangely enough, I’ve played many, many games. The reason I’m talking about these reviled popular ones is that I’m trying to change the conversation about games and game culture, and this approach seems to me to be an effective one.
Above all, I’m trying to reach non-gamers. They’ve never heard of Planescape: Torment or Fallout; they may have heard of Bioshock; they’ve probably heard of Halo.
21/06/2008 at 18:39 Bjørn Stærk says:
Roger: I assumed that because comparing two recent games to the Iliad in that way seems like such a naive thing to do. Apologies about that, but it’s still naive. This isn’t about them being “reviled popular” games – in my world there’s nothing controversial about looking at games as an artform, or even comparing them to the classics. This is about the particular comparisons you’re making. When for instance you say that “like a gamer starting a new mission in GTA4 Odysseus gets to decide which way he wants to make his avatar go, and how he wants to make his avatar approach the ancient equivalent of a boss-fight”, that is to me a very contrived and silly paralell. It confirms in my mind what I wrote above about academics and pop culture. Listen to that or not as you like, but believe me when I say that this is well-intended advise, and that I really am interested in intelligent analysis of games as an art form. So good luck with the attempt, but I do think you’re on the wrong track.
21/06/2008 at 18:46 Roger Travis says:
Thanks, Bjoern.
Obviously, I’m not writing on the blog at the level approached by the most sophisticated game studies criticism. The blog is intended to be intelligible by interested non-gamers and by non-theoretically-inclined gamers.
Out of curiosity, what’s contrived and silly about the parallel you mention? The whole context of that post is about a really fascinating passage in the eighth book of the Odyssey where the bard spins a fantasy of what it would be like if a hero could control what bards sing about him. The passage you quote is for me the tip of the iceberg–a hook to draw the reader further into a much more complex comparison.
21/06/2008 at 19:42 RichPowers says:
Did the Odyssey have insidious DRM that limited the number of times you could read it? Did you have to get Homer’s permission to read it more than three times?
I rest my case.
21/06/2008 at 19:53 Rob says:
@RichPowers
Would it have affected the profundity if it did?
21/06/2008 at 19:54 yutt says:
I wish I could reread this entire discussion minus Al3xand3r’s petty one-upmanship.
21/06/2008 at 20:12 RichPowers says:
I question the relevance of 20th century “classics” 200 years from now. Will people be able to play Bioshock or Deus Ex on future PCs due to different architectures or whatever? Will Disney still have copyrights on its works 200 years after the fact, or will it allow them to enter the public domain? Will today’s artistic works be easily accessible by future generation? Or will constantly evolving media formats, copyright restrictions, never-ending royalties, DRM, and closed standards keep them out of people’s hands?
Not trying to turn this into a DRM/copyright/”information must be free!” spiel, but a modern classic is fairly worthless if future generations can’t be exposed to it. Everything should enter the public domain after 50 years (or even less), but that’s for another topic.
But going back to your point: the work can still be an artistic achievement even when locked down with DRM. Citizen Kane would still be Citizen Kane even if I needed my SSN, fingerprint, and DNA to watch it.
21/06/2008 at 20:13 Dracko says:
Such as?
Modern Warfare tells a far better story, and is much cleverer than BioShock even hopes to be. And it does so effortlessly (accidentally?).
But these are the guys who haven’t played Marathon, right?
P.S. The guy has a point about the Halo games, but those could just as easily be seen in so many other games, shooters or otherwise, he may as well concede the point to an entire genre.
21/06/2008 at 20:24 capital L says:
The Iliad and the Odyssey offer a profound view at the way in which the ancient Greeks viewed the world and their place in it. As the stories grew out of an oral tradition they came to represent generations of thought coalescing into myth and common heritage. For thousands of years these two works were of monumental importance and they’ve been disseminated and analyzed by each successive branch of western civilization. No video game has come anywhere close to this–nor has any TV show or movie. Indeed there are not all that many other examples of literature that carry such weight. To say that Halo, Bioshock, or even Planescape: Torment is as profound as the Iliad because they both explore some themes and advance some plot is like comparing the human mind to a computer because they can both solve math problems–sure they can both add and subtract, sure the computer can do some things quicker than the old brain 1.0, but there’s something substantial about the brain that the computer doesn’t begin to emulate, not yet at least.
For that matter, no video game has “profundity” of Greek tragedy as written by Sophocles, Aeschylus, or Euripides; which is, I think, a more realistic (if equally unlikely) standard to strive for.
21/06/2008 at 20:26 Bjørn Stærk says:
Roger Travis: “Out of curiosity, what’s contrived and silly about the parallel you mention?”
When I read the passage you quoted from Homer, I just don’t see a description of a video game. Isn’t it more likely that when the bard talks about a hero controlling his own tale, he is thinking in terms of a medium that actually existed in x00 BC, namely storytelling? So I’m not convinced that there are any more interesting and noncontrived paralells between Homer and Bioshock than between Homer and Michael Jackson.
RichPowers: “Will people be able to play Bioshock or Deus Ex on future PCs due to different architectures or whatever?”
Yes, because of virtual machines. But will they want to? Probably not.. Btw, copyright just means you have to pay to play it, something that big companies are generally eager to facilitate, it doesn’t mean locking it all away in a vault, never to be released, (except for the Warner Brothers and their sister Dot, and those racist Disney cartoons).
21/06/2008 at 20:27 Roger Travis says:
I really want to continue to be a part of the discussion (obviously :D), but I’m going off line for several hours right now, and then am headed out of town tomorrow. I’m going to try to keep up at my blog as much as I can over the next week, so I’d like to invite everyone over there if they feel like it; Flaming Homers are on me.
Thanks for the discussion here!
21/06/2008 at 20:31 Q.W. says:
I concede I’m not the person to critique Homer, haven’t read it in 10 years. But regarding:
“They also combined different sciences to convey the right atmosphere and grandeour of the moment, for example Homer displayed a great understanding of the human anatomy when describing the grand battles. They’re not what defined the word Epos (Epic) for nothing”
Halo does the same thing better, it uses various (pseudo-)scientific and military ideas and terminology in its battles and is on a considerably grander scale, the destruction of planets being at stake.
I don’t think this makes either one good, epicness is fundamentally empty spectacle and something I imagine most of us got tired with during the Star Wars trilogy.
P.S. Just because something is good for the time doesn’t make it good today.
21/06/2008 at 20:37 john says:
Of course, the Iliad and the Odyssey don’t hold a candle to Portal.
21/06/2008 at 20:44 Al3xand3r says:
Bigger isn’t better. All you prove is that the ways Homer found to express his stories are still used today, which means they were and still are good ways to do such.
The fact we’ve grown so accustomed to such content with the many caricatures and copycats that inevitably keep being created doesn’t make the significance of the originals any less profound.
Especially when Homer’s descriptions can still have an impact that seeing hundreds of people die in movies and video games nowadays doesn’t achieve because we’ve all become so distilled to such concepts thanks to overxposure to them. Presenting a good story to go alongside such concepts is (now more than ever) more important than the concepts themselves, as is the way the story is told.
This reminds me of how many people considered western RPGs boring back in the day simply because their stories usually didn’t revolve around the instant gratification of whole world saving missions as loudly as japanese console RPGs attempted. As if the daily life of a more realistic kind of hero was boring because he wasn’t similar enough to a super hero, even though the stories were much better presented and touched on more complex subjects…
Again, bigger isn’t better. A game that touched on these same concepts that Halo apparently does, but took it a step further by talking about the destruction of whole galaxies, would suddenly be better even if the storyline was sub-par compared or even a direct rip off? Just because it would apparently be talking about things that are bigger than “mere” planetary destructions?
Somehow, I don’t think that’s the case.
21/06/2008 at 23:41 Grey says:
I believe this is the man who, prior to the release of halo 3, stated that he would have no qualms with placing it next to the Aeneid on his bookshelf if it stacked up. Correct me if I’m wrong.
If he had dug deeper, he would see that Shadow Of The Colossus, Ico and Portal approach brilliance in any artform. The sole, slightly comparable moment in Bioshock is “would you kindly” (not including the preposterous Andrew Ryan scene – and ignoring the fact that the game itself ignores a huge plot hole arising from this plot twist), and there are no such moments in any Bungie game, or Nintendo game, or whatever commercially focused game developer someone could care to bring up.
Clearly, as people have pointed out – poor imitations of the basic plots of ancient classics exist everywhere – but none can compare. Halo in terms of artistic merit is total rubbish. Bottom of the heap. As a game, it’s somewhat decent. As a use of the medium, again, bottom of the heap. To compare it or Bioshock favourably to the Iliad is insulting to both the humans who created it, and to the interactive medium.
It’s not a question of the popularity of the game, it’s a question of not conjuring up links. It’s better to introduce non-gamers to the GOOD in the medium before you show them the total abominations and failures.
I’ve met people who haven’t heard of The Godfather. While it’s not THE greatest film, many make it out to be, and many references to it should ensure people have at least heard of it, right? Wrong, apparently. Neither should we enforce a stereotype, or adhere to one in bringing up the popular but artistically vacant examples.
Don’t placate the masses, challenge them. And for the love of god don’t send a message out to developers that they should make their games more like Halo and Bioshock if they wish to have profundity on the level of ancient classics.
22/06/2008 at 00:22 Yann Best says:
The stream of commentary here is slightly intimidating, so I’ll keep this short; ignoring the relative merits of the Iliad, Halo and Bioshock. I would have thought that Bioshock – whose greatest quality is its intertextuality – would be more comparable to the later classics, which similarly valued intertextual values highly (not just in an ‘Aeneid riffing on the Odyssey’ way, but through more subtle quoting and referencing), rather than the Iliad, which is most notable (as already mentioned) for its position as an extremely early text (Achilles being important because he’s effectively the first truly complex character in narrative; the first positive character to perhaps challenge the heroic ideals Homer depicts).
22/06/2008 at 05:36 Deuteronomy says:
Bioshock’s biggest problem was its story. It’s essentially a socialist manifesto masquerading as a FPS. Next up is Atlas Shrugged reimagined as a first person shooter with Levin as the end-boss. But I forget only socialists are justified in the use of violence.
Now Stalker was a meditation on man’s hubris that actually rose withing sight of the level of art we’re talking about here. If not on the level of the classics, certainly it’s up there with modern cinema.
22/06/2008 at 11:16 Al3xand3r says:
Agreed Grey, that’s exactly the kind of games that should be praised for using the medium to its full extent to express a storyline. We wouldn’t put those alongside the Iliad either but because they’re a far different medium, not because they’re worse. Just like we wouldn’t put Beethoven next to Homer since they do completely different things. Obviously writing a book about SotC wouldn’t be as good as the Iliad because it’s only a good story in the way that it’s told through the medium it exploits and for what it is, it’s certainly a modern classic.
I should note the above (imo) applies when discussing games as a means to tell (or better yet, actually experience) a story. I CAN and DO enjoy games that tell stories using other mediums (movie-like scenes for example, I loved Panzer Dragoon Saga) or don’t try to tell any kind of story at all and rely on the gameplay. It’s just obvious such games should never be used as examples of story telling in games since in the first case they use a medium that has little to do with actual gaming and therefor only show the power of that medium, while in the second case it would be as silly as mistaking gamey mechanics for advanced story telling like that bit that made me chuckle about how Halo won’t proceed if you don’t do a specific action, which describes every game and story in existence and really doesn’t bring it close to the Iliad, heh…
22/06/2008 at 12:52 Alexander says:
Grey’s post has the profundity of JJ’s Ulysses compared to the other commentary. Any comparison between the horribly epic shows of inability of commercial game-design in general and the infinitely more complex, intricate classics calls for laughter and flames and rapture right there and shows both a misunderstanding of games and classic literature in general. They are as much classics as man’s first encounter with film and its black and white profundity. I believe as we progress with the medium we will be able to control it, so far most complex works simply fail by the lack of control; understanding the medium.
22/06/2008 at 14:51 Andy Simpson says:
To be honest, I don’t think that comparing games and the classics is too far off the mark. Plenty of the Iliad is just finding new ways to say “Achilles/Patroclus/Diomedes/Hector killed Anonymous Trojan/Achaean with spear”
That’s not far removed from Halo’s oft-quoted “30 seconds of fun”.
On the DRM/survival of information issue, that’s a huge problem with the classics! Only a tiny fraction of Sophocles and his peers has actually survived. It’s likely the same thing will happen to our culture – most will be forgotten, but the greats will live on, somehow.
22/06/2008 at 19:05 Kieron Gillen says:
Off topic special.
Deuteronomy: You’re miles off base in thinking Bioshock any kind of socialist piece, man. They come out of it nearly as bad as the Objectivists.
Yann: Thanks for the splendid healing.
KG
22/06/2008 at 19:29 sinister agent says:
Plenty of the Iliad is just finding new ways to say “Achilles/Patroclus/Diomedes/Hector killed Anonymous Trojan/Achaean with spear”
How long before Counterstrike’s death messages are preceded with a biography of each anonymous soldier and how having their face mashed in with a spear put all that to an end, do you think?
22/06/2008 at 20:21 capital L says:
“How long before Counterstrike’s death messages are preceded with a biography of each anonymous soldier and how having their face mashed in with a spear put all that to an end, do you think?”
I don’t know but I’m all in favor of it!
Instead of
Idomeneus (M-16) (headshot) Othryoneus
Idomeneus (M-16) (headshot) Asius
we could have the awesomeness of
Ideomeneus aimed a M-16 and hit Othryoneus from Cabesus, a basement-dweller who had but lately come to take part in the server, as he came striding on. His vest of kevlar did not protect him,and the bullet struck him in the head so that he fell heavily to the ground.
Asius longed to strike down Idomeneus but ere he could do so Idomeneus smote him with his M-16 in the throat under the chin, and the copper jacket went clean through it. He fell as an oak, or poplar, or pine which shipwrights have felled for ship’s timber upon the mountains with whetted axes–even thus did he lie full length in front of his clanmates, grinding his teeth and clutching at the bloodstained dust.”
The downside would be that the pregame would become an unbelievably tedious retelling of how everyone involved in the match came to be there
“Dogturd, the fleet son of Dave, commands clan [GR33K]. He is a little man, and his mouse is not optical, but in the use of the sniper rifle he excels all of [GR33K] and [TRJN]. He came with 20 ping astride mighty packets from Roadrunner.”
Sidenote: the Iliad isn’t particularly profound when one is selectively quoting the most awesome violent bits…
22/06/2008 at 21:07 Jochen Scheisse says:
@ capital L: Brilliance! I demand a mod!
22/06/2008 at 21:37 Quater says:
Well shamefully I still haven’t finished Bioshock, or even got up to the ‘big twist’ that everyone always talks about, so I can’t really comment on that. Comparing Halo to even a trashy airport novel, let alone the classics, would be a preposterous and baseless claim, and I shouldn’t have to explain why. So I won’t.
Now Planescape, on the other hand… that genuinely does stand up as a powerful and profound symbolic literary work in a similar way to something like 1984, perhaps even some of Asimov’s lighter material. But then, Planescape is almost a book anyway.
I really can’t think of much else that compares. Deus Ex 1&2 come second as an at least thought-provoking examination of the role of technology in the continued process of human evolution, if only William Gibson hadn’t already done it all better. Snatcher would be good if it wasn’t just a Blade Runner ripoff. And since I’ve mentioned 1984, I guess Half-Life 2 is basically what would happen if Luc Besson had produced the film adaptation.
I’ve been replaying The Neverhood recently (hence my screenname), and that would genuinely have a shot at some real poetic oomph if it actually used its whole semi-satirical creationist theme in any meaningful way, but as it is it’s just a bizarrely subtle, if charming, joke.
This whole question probably won’t be solved until someone makes a real, concerted effort to, say, make a game adaptation of the Iliad. Would it work? Not unless the developers could resist putting in massive weapons, QTEs and Olympian-grade breast physics. The Iliad was not a story about killing people, it’s a story about wrath, grief, lust and humanity at large which happens to be set around a war. Until someone in games works out the difference and has the courage to set the boundary, we’ll be stuck in sub-airport novel dregs indefinitely.
Oh and hello, by the way. I’m not usually this pretentious, I swear ;)
22/06/2008 at 22:01 Al3xand3r says:
Well I think even a good adaptation of the Iliad in game form wouldn’t be that great to show the power of games as I think it would end up being more about cut scenes or textual stimulation which is not something that is game specific but rather it’s the use of other mediums within games.
Games like Portal and Ico and Shadow of the Colossus on the other hand, while they certainly don’t tell so complex stories, they are up to par in artistic expression and show the power of games as a new medium since they offer an experience of a story rather than simply show or simply tell it via other mediums. And while it’s much simpler stories, they have a big impact because you experience them in such ways. I don’t think that’s possible with very intricate stories (without making them drag on and on and boring I guess) like the classics discussed here.
But like I said, I do also love games that make use of other mediums if they do so well, or if they don’t try to show anything deep and are simply gamey entertainment. So I wouldn’t mind something like say, Metal Gear Iliad (no, I don’t imply it would have stealth). It’s just not what I’d show as an example of the power of games as a medium.
Anyway, I urge everyone to read the classics in their original language if at all possible, it’s really far better and different to just reading non-poetic translations. Such things are sort of like having a Hamlet with the characters speaking in bland, modern slang or something, a lot of it is lost. Hope that description gets my point across to English speakers here…
22/06/2008 at 22:25 capital L says:
Quater:
I’m also intrigued with how to deal with the role of the gods in an Iliad game. The recent movie ignored their active role and all but ignored them all together, which is fine but not true to the text. A video game would be at some advantage, as we are already used to mechanisms that could be contextualized as some sort of divine support– saving/loading, checkpoints, invincible NPCs, scripted events, etc. I can envision a Dynasty Warriors sort of “kill a whole bunch of unimportant people” basic structure, punctuated by set piece battles against the chief heroes, with the godly interventions doing what they did in the books: shifting the momentum or tide of battle, making particular people temporarily unbeatable or vulnerable, removing people (including the player character) from combat just before they die.
You know, the more I think about it, this would be an awesome game! You pick a hero, and the story more or less follows their role in the combat, although if one plans to stay true to the book this eliminates those that died, or perhaps you are able to choose these guys, but when it’s their time you can switch to another character. For my tastes, I reject the idea of altering the story to allow character X to survive or the Trojans to win– one of the themes of the work is fate, so tough titties Troy. I would be in favor of including elements of other classical sources however, especially the Odyssey and the Aeneid as they describe the sack of Troy which actually occurs after the end of the Iliad (which is another of the awesome and intriguing things about the Iliad).
To wrap up this rambling thing, I think the ending, with the Sack of Troy, could be very kickass. You could be Odysseus fucking shit up all over as Troy burns, or you could be Aeneas trying to scram from the scene with your pops on your back.
Al3xand3r: I took Latin for years (high school and college), but I just didn’t (and don’t) have the desire or tenacity to learn Greek. It’s a whole ‘nother set of letters for christ’s sake!
22/06/2008 at 23:02 Deuteronomy says:
Keiron,
You have to enlighten me on how socialism was critiqued in Bioshock. I think it’s clear that the forces that destroyed Rapture were rooted in how Andrew Ryan set the society up – which was some kind of weird misconception of the objectivist ideal. Let me know, I’m curious.
22/06/2008 at 23:27 Kieron Gillen says:
Deut: Fontaine’s religious/charity/socialism, mainly. That’s the biggest irony in the story – Ryan was completely right about socialism and charity. In Rapture, it was just the way Fontaine manipulating people into doing what he wanted*. Levine’s standard argument is Bioshock is about the problem with fundamentalist belief in any idea structure, which I can see, and think it actually handle fairly well.
KG
23/06/2008 at 01:19 Deuteronomy says:
I never made that connection about Fontaine, I understood him to just be a business rival who decided to use whatever means necessary. Damn, now I have to go replay the game.
23/06/2008 at 01:40 Deuteronomy says:
On further reflection, I continue to disagree, although I get where you’re coming from. I see Fontaine as sort of the Neo to Rapture’s Matrix. He is the flaw in the system embodied as a corrupt businessman.
23/06/2008 at 06:18 Grey says:
@Alexanders (both)
It’s nice to find like-minded people.
However I will say that I believe complexity is possible (but not necessary) in telling a story interactively.
I also believe in playing up the medium’s visual strengths, though not to the extent of cutscenes (instead: striking images, backdrops, etc), because it is still a visual medium, even if primarily interactive. And, like Al3x, I can appreciate “cinematic” games or story-less games until they overstep their place and become worshipped for their narrative.
23/06/2008 at 07:57 Al3xand3r says:
Well, it’s nice to see not everyone thought I was being absurd or displaying one upmanship (huh?) with my posts. Anyway, sure, I think we can have complexity also. I just don’t think complexity of the level of the Iliad would be the best thing to happen in a game. I guess I still look at games as entertainment first and foremost so I think that all the slower paced chapters of the Iliad wouldn’t be a very fun game. Of course, if they could actually devise a storyline that is as near perfect as the epics discussed here and at the same time new and exciting all over again I would probably easily reconsider this statement since I could get enjoyment out of the actual story alone even when the gameplay – while everpresent, to fully display the medium’s power – came second in the priorities of some of the chapters. So long as it didn’t overstep the limits either and become a non-game, you know?
But still the likes of Portal, Ico and SotC you mentioned show that often times, less is more and I guess developers should try to master the medium with such before attempting more complex things, when speaking about showing the true power of the medium at least, since we’ve both concluded games that end up using movies or other such mediums to convey their stories can be enjoyable, but simply shouldn’t be used as what all games should look up to if their more powerful moments come from the use of all the other mediums anyway…
23/06/2008 at 09:53 Alarik says:
To all: Well, Halo and Bioshock and Illias have definitelly at least one thing in common – they are/were quite popular.
Simple (doesn’t mean bad) stories about war, bloodshed, little drama and so on are pretty popular (and they always were). People like them, and so do I and you :-)
23/06/2008 at 10:05 Al3xand3r says:
Well, not everyone likes them, but liking something doesn’t make it as impacting or important or profound as the clasics anyway, which was what we were mainly discussing against…
24/06/2008 at 06:37 Grey says:
@Al3x – I’m not sure I can agree with you fully on the following topic:
I remember reading that cinema was spectacle before it was a narrative art. I think there’s certainly place for simple (or complex) interactive experiences – things which cannot be classified by gameplay mechanics. Instead of FPS, the genre would be War for example (based on its content).
I don’t think that it could find acceptance anytime soon.
People need spectacle to ease them into accepting a new use of the medium. Perhaps a game which meditates on violence? Violence is a common thread throughout the medium, and one that could provide violence solely for meaningful messages (sounds difficult) could in effect be that bridge. For cinema, consumer demand caused the shift to narrative. For games, which have been around for thousands of years, there is no current desire. Video games are unique in that they seperate themselves from the rest of gaming history with a pre-built, “living” and visual link.
I’m hesitant to call this new use of the medium “games” not for elitist purposes, but for the sake of shaking connotations which come with the label. A set of rules, objectives, rigid gameplay structure, entertainment value – none are necessary to tell a beautiful story interactively.
I’m fine with having both in our medium. Neither will cannibalise the other – blockbusters haven’t killed the Coens.