Today’s contextual presentation opened up an area I hadn’t
really considered before when looking at games and this was their ability to
act as a documentary. A documentary can be defined as:
“A work, such as a film or television program, presenting political,
social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and
often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration.”
( http://www.thefreedictionary.com/documentary
)
Now looking at games with this definition in mind it is hard
to say that they are exactly a documentary, but they are close to it. For
example the video game franchise: “Assassins Creed” utilises historical themes,
people and places for which the player must interact within. However these are
extensively researched to a similar level, if not more thorough than some
documentaries:
 |
| Assassins Creed - Stunning Accurate recreations of its time period that have had serious historical research as the foundations |
http://cdn4.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/assassins-creed-scenery.jpg
“To make the Holy Land as historically accurate as
possible we did our research in the first six months and designed at the same
time. All the cities are roughly based on maps of the cities at the time. We
found maps from the 200 years of the entire Crusade, of the Holy Land. We tried
to recreate it, but they’re not perfect.” Patrice Desilets (Creative Director – Assassins Creed, 2007)
“We hired a historian who was an expert on the Third
Crusade. The first thing I asked him to do was to get the biggest database of
images possible for us. So he put together a presentation for the team, but
also this bank of maps from the era, all of the city maps – masses of material
that you couldn’t just find on the internet. Because he was a historian he had
access to certain libraries and he scanned them in. He gave a presentation to
us and gave everyone this great solid background…
…When we got to the phase of producing those cities
and making them 3D, we hired other historians to get different perspectives,
like Dr. Paul Cobb, from the United States, he is a specialist in the Third
Crusade and he actually consulted on Kingdom of Heaven. So he reviewed our
script for accuracy and also all of the 3D cities. We sent him videos within
each city and he gave us comments on details like the buildings architecture,
like “Oh this is great because it’s exactly like the souk looked pre-Ottoman
style.
We also had another British guy, to get more of a
European perspective, who is an expert on the third crusade. Actually he wrote
a book about the battle of Arsuf in the year 1191: that’s how we found him.
He’s a professor at Oxford and he did a review. He gave us detailed comments
from his perspective too. That was pretty cool because we got comments back
from both od them saying “ it’s clear that you guys went to Jerusalem… it’s
exactly like being there”” And not one of the team actually went! We just got
really good research material.”
Jade Raymond (Producer – Assassins Creed, 2007)
(Sourced from: Assassins Creed: Limited Edition Artbook (2007) Prima Games)
As can be seen from both of these quotations, the production
of a video game can draw from rich and detailed information sources to create
worlds for the player that are almost documentary like. From the visuals to the
music, the developer aims to entirely immerse the player through the signifiers
of the world.
But yet if one was asked “Is Assassins Creed a documentary?”
the answer would be a no. This is because the narrative is fiction and the
viewpoint of the player character is not a realistic one. Furthermore the
construction of the world – while painstakingly focused on historical accuracy
ultimately must bow to playability over its potential as a documentary of the
world at that time period, after all Assassins Creed is a game and must be
developed as such.
Does this mean that a video games ultimate goal of
playability sacrifices its ability as a documentary? In Konami announced the
release of a title a title called 6 days in Fallujah in 2009. The game itself
was born from the developer’s Atomic working on Military tactical programs,
before being asked by veterans to make their experience a game. In numerous
interviews the developers stated their focus was on realistic depiction of the
events that would in no way glorify the experience, but inform. However shortly
after Konami announced the game, the uproar was huge, with many families and
war veterans stating that it was too soon to begin creating a game about the
war:
'It's much too soon to start making video games
about a war that's still going on, and an extremely flippant response to one of
the most important events in modern history. 'It's particularly insensitive
given what happened in Fallujah, and I will certainly oppose the release of
this game’ - Tim Collins
OBE (Daily Mail, 2009)
The resulting
backlash lead to Konami eventually backing out of the funding of the game,
meaning the game has not been released. Now from a personal perspective I shall
not take either ‘side’ of this pro/ anti six
days in Fallujah argument, but what does intrigue me is how the controversy
follows this ‘Game-umentary’ but yet not documentaries from film, television or
written media sources on the Iraq War. Furthermore the subject of War in video-games
is so much a common topic that often innovation is derived from games that
avoid the subject; so why did 6 days in Fallujah capsize where Call of Duty
thrived?
I think that the
reason this happened is likely the recent and unpopular nature of the Iraq War
in particular and most importantly:
a)
A game will ALWAYS
have to sacrifice realism for gameplay otherwise it is no longer considered a
game – at least in a conventional way. This leads to the argument that the game
will lose its weight as a factual documentary.
b)
The Interactive
nature of a game. The player makes the decisions and ultimately creates the
outcome. A video game is immersive but this acts as a double edged sword in
that it places more weight on every action.
(How I discovered about the Six Days in Fallujah
controversy: )
(Six Days in Fallujah Stuff)
An Interview on the subject – also covering whether games
could make good documentaries:
An interview with the game’s developer, a soldier who acted
as a advisor and the mother of a child lost in that world.
Uproar over the Six Days in Fallujah
