Chinese Purity – Beauty behind simplicity

I am glad I decided to watch IP Man Wednesday. It must have been 10 months since I watched an Asian film which is surprising for anyone who knows my passion for Chinese and Korean cinema. It made me remember why I love them so much. Chinese films tend to be simple and pure. They follow their aesthetic without ever sidetracking. This is something occidental cinema fails too often. Video game seems to have similar issues which are often due to designer’s tendency to over-complicate things.

 

In 1977, Saturday Night Fever came out. What most people don’t know is that one of the most famous dance scene to ever come out of Hollywood almost never made it intact. In fact, the editor called John Travolta and said he wasn’t able to fit all scenes together and parts of his performance had to be cut. John refused to accept that and drove to the studio. In the end, he forced the editor to keep the scenes he wanted to cut by using a single camera which had the entire sequence. This became a very famous scene and it was not the editor’s vision. Fewer cuts ended up being the solution and the editing is definitly one of the reasons for the scene's success...

 

Creators often think too much and lose sight of the simplest solutions. The mistake this editor almost made in 1976-77 occurs in most films today and that is especially true in action movies where guys like Michael Bay reigns supreme with a ridiculous amount of cuts per sequence. Of course, doing cuts can be very powerful and I’m not against it when it serves a real purpose, but it sucks when it becomes the solution to patch director’s laziness.

I always appreciate the way a fight is shot in Chinese films, it’s pure and simple. It’s like Saturday Night Fever but intentional. They rarely fail at this and this is why I keep going back to those films, to experience moments like the one below:

Just like Hollywood, video games often lose sight of the essence. They’re obsessed with this idea to feed players with a quick fix. They lose sight of their goal resulting in a total disconnect between the mechanics and the aesthetics.  Smart designers everywhere are busting their asses to try and deliver the Citizen Kane’s of our industry as Clint Hocking often says. But I am wondering if the problem isn’t in our inability to stick to the essential. After all, we can deliver such a game without necessarily falling into over-complexity.

Open narrative, situational game mechanics, social mechanics and media convergence are all being heavily discussed these days. But every time I read about them, I see complexity over purity. Is it possible to find simple answers to those massive subjects? Maybe I’m stupid but I personally think we have to master simplicity and keep the complexity where it belongs, in the human brain. The hard part is to draw the line at the right place as Albert Einstein once said:

'Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler' - Albert Einstein

Jonathan

 

Comments

[chris]

Dude! you have to check out Old Boy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance if you like Korean films :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy_for_Lady_Vengeance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldboy

Anyway, I just linked to your blog, everyone is expecting more great posts from you, keep it up!

[Simon P]

Yeah, that one-shot hallway fight scene in Old Boy is amazing.

BTW, I agree with the over-cutting and have started noticing it in games too. I think the pendulum is going to swing back soon, though. In a few years someone's going to release a film (or game) that is captivating, all while maintaining a slower pace, and people will think it's revolutionary.

[Martin H]

Bushido blade had that kind of appeal. The simple and pure feeling of distilling mechanics to their core without drowning them in setting - a synergy of elements that neither overwhelmed nor distracted. Also, if I remember correctly, the level design was very minimalist but pursuit of basic elements (type of terrain, water hazard, etc) became extremely effective at heightening the differences between each fighting style, especially when it came to experienced and trained players who could end a fight with a single move.

And to think this was all happening in 1997.. double shame that I haven't seen another game that improves on that kind of virile simplicity. In this context your words ring true indeed.

Very reflective post. Thanks for that.

[Jonathan Morin]

Chris: Yeah I did see the entire vengeance trilogy which also includes Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Those films are amazing and the art direction of all three is pure madness.

Martin: Bushido Blade, wow that brings old memories from the days when Squaresoft took design risks founded by final fantasy profits. They are pretty much in survival mode now which kind of shows a new era of the industry and serious problems in Japanese development. I was not a big fan of the game at the time, but I can still recognize the elements you describe. Back in the days I wasn't paying attention to those things as a player I guess. Interestingly, they had no choice but to go in this direction considering the overall Bushido concept. I mean, after reading stuff like Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, I cannot imagine a game about this art any other way.

If you guys never red this novel from Mr. Yoshikawa, I highly recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Musashi-Eiji-Yoshikawa/dp/4770019572/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249485903&sr=1-1

Thanks for the comments guys.

[Chuan]

Interesting post. IP Man is certainly a fantastic film, and to bring up Bushido Blade as well is quite apt methinks. However, something that game designers have not been doing well is to be more 'considerate' of the player inside the act of playing games.

What do I mean by this? We tend to focus all efforts, and make selling points of new systems and engines however players are still treated as homogenous input devices without experience or ideas impacting on the gameplay. How arrogant that we seek to lay the traps and also be prescriptive about the way through them. Most likely somebody else will think of a better way, that a game designer had not.

How to design for these open-ended systems though? I'm not sure, but procedural content with enough density of rules and meaningful causaility is ahead of us; but then what does this also mean for us as game designers? Surely, we must get off our high horses and proffer a different type of game [ perhaps not something recognisable as a 'game' ] and involve our audience in a more meaningful way than just treating them as very intelligent rats.!

I have some tentative ideas for approaching these problems and my thinking so far has led me to think that yes, there does need to be a split away from how we have been doing gameplay in commercial games for the last 25 years or so. Then again, surely as Orson Welles [ to dig him up again from his rest ] and Jean-Luc Godard were able to reformulate film conventions from the theatrical language that had informed that artform since the 1920's so game makers [ particularly those who have the opportunity to work with a broad canvas in terms of content and audience ] should seek to do similar and be brave.

This is happening now with independent games, however there are limitations I feel to the kinds of experiences one can create unless you're the kind of prodigy [ and charity ] that can support yourself working away in isolation for years at a time. Someone will do it though, and everybody will learn, and things will change, and we will all look back and have a good laugh at how backwards and short-sighted we once were. Then can we have something akin to the simplicity, beauty, and paradoxically complexity of something like the opening tracking shot to Touch of Evil!

Keep up the good words,

-- Chuan

[Free Movies Online]

Good Work ! You have got a good point. I have played lot of times and always stumped. :-(

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