“When it’s done.” Lasse Seppänen, the producer for Alan Wake, has been saying that since the game was announced. Many of us have seen this language before; sometimes resulting in a fantastic but long awaited game, yet others faded away never to be heard from again. Now that the legendary when-it’s-done game—Duke Nukem Forever— is looking like it may have finally been laid to rest, the time is ripe to look at other titles that could fall into a sinkhole of vaporware.

I got a chance to do some interesting digging into the history of Alan Wake to find out what is currently know about the game. While I didn’t pick the bullet-pointed format I feel that it actually worked out for this piece.

So I finished my second semester at college, woohoo. I did pretty well, and even pulled my D in math up to a B. I… don’t have much to say about being back in school strangely enough. It’s a fantastic opportunity that I’m thankful to have, but when I think about what to say about my experience I don’t have much to offer.

Anyways, since I’m not taking any summer classes I’ve decided to get myself prepped for next semester with some study. There are two classes I plan to study for specifically for next semester: Philosophy and Japanese. Philosophy is really something I’ve looked forward to for a while now. Last semester I picked up Aristotle’s Poetics, and while I started to read it I haven’t had much spare time to finish it. I’m not worried that I’m going to do poorly in this class or anything, but I have had this university-level-course-in-a-box thing called The Birth of Western Philosophy: Plato and Aristotle, and I kind of feel like if I don’t use it now I won’t have a need to after next semseter. I broke down the lecture and reading schedule for it and if I do two a week I should be able to get the “course” done in seven weeks, at which point I plan to finish reading Poetics.

Japanese, on the other hand, is freaking me the hell out. It took me five years of Latin classes to finish up Latin 2 in high school (6th grade through my Junior year). I’m terrible with foreign languages. My degree program for UIC requires four semesters of a foreign language. Japanese is the foreign language I’m most familiar with, and also the one that would help me in my career the most. So, for lack of another language option that interested me (French was my back-up) I’ve bit the bullet and registered for Japanese. So that I feel as comfortable as I can going into next semester I picked up that crappy looking My Japanese Coach DS game app. Hopefully it will prepare me enough to get the edge I’ll need to pass the class. As a long term goal for my Japanese study, I hope to be able to watch a Kurosawa film without subtitles. If I do well enough that will be my treat in about two years.

I also plan on doing a bit of reading I have backed up:

Beneath the Wheel - Hermann Hesse (Mostly done, but I ran out of time before finals to finish it)
The Waste Land Prufrock and Other Observations - T.S. Eliot
Poetics - Aristotle
Trigger Happy - Steven Poole (read it a few years ago, but want to read it again)
At least one play by - Shakespeare (I’ve read a few, but have been meaning to read more)

I also will hopefully get Issue 9 of The Gamer’s Quarter finished so that I can be done with that project. Not that I’m eager to kill it, just that I feel like I’ve let a lot of people down taking this long to release it. I also want to make some  progress on a writing project I’ve been mulling over for about a year now that goes back even further. I’ll talk about that more if anything happens with it.

I have one of those really snazzy Logitech Harmony remotes to control my laundry list of electronics. This was the perfect solution for using a different brand TV, A/V Receiver, DVD player, and myriad of game consoles. With the new generation of systems came Sony’s assinine idea of using only blue tooth remotes for controlling the system. The result is a mess, and I own it since I use the PS3 as my main DVD/BR player.

I know it’s not the best idea to use a game system as anything but a backup video player since any extra use just means the system will fail faster, but I don’t really have an option if I want to watch BR videos since the players are cost prohibitive. (I also hardly play any disc-based games on the system since… there aren’t many, so it’s not like I’m killing the disc drive here.) Unfortunately that really nice Harmony Remote that could control my fireplace (if I had one with remote control) can’t control the PS3 at all. I bought the official PS3 remote with a gift card since it’s neigh impossible to control a movie with the PS3 controller, and have regretted it since (follow the above link to find out why).

Luckily I wasn’t the only person in lament. Logitech has known about this and working on a solution. The device is… functional, but all it does is interperate IR signals and convert them into PS3 blue tooth commands. And it’s $60. What a pain in the ass. I blame Sony.

In the 1950’s French magazine Cahiers du Cinema famously coined the theory of the auteur director by pointing out that they are in control of the mise en scene (the medium of the story). This is most easily explained by looking at the rolls of all the other members of a production.

In theatre no matter what the director tells the actors, when the curtain opens he is powerless to change the action. At the same time the actors are powerless to change the events of the screenplay. Hence the playwright is considered the author of the play: Shakespeare, Goethe, and Williams are the names we know in theatre, not the actors or directors. In film the director is the person in control of everything: the action, the camera, the script. All these elements are his to put together in any way they see fit. After the images are imprinted in celluloid there’s nothing anyone can do to change it, even if they try.

The auteur of a videogame is the player. No matter what the director, animator, texture sampler, programmer, or publisher does to a game, after it ships the player is the ultimate author of the game. Every experience is unique. Every playthrough different. This is why speed runs and super plays are so entertaining: we can watch how someone else decided to play out the events, how they authored the sequences and actions.

This is precisely the reason that games don’t evolve. Designers are still trying to deliver the same experience to every player that purchases their game. Sterilized to the point of ubiquity, many games feel like the player’s role is diminished, or even worse unnecessary. The best films are tied to the director, even ones with weak stories or poor writing: that’s not what the medium is as concerned with. Theatre is the realm of writers: even when a poor performance of Hamlet is premiered the writing isn’t what’s criticized. If a player is allowed to turn a game’s world into their own then the writing, acting, and mechanics can be excused.

Morrowind is possibly the strongest example I can think of to prove this. I spent over 300 hours in the game over about 4 different characters. I made the world my own, I broke the systems just as a law could be broken. I explored when and where I wanted. Never was I demanded to follow the tracks of a roller coaster for entertainment. The many, many faults of the game are easily overlooked since I had such freedom. As the auteur of my own experience I owned Morrowind like no one else ever will–well not exactly like anyone else. Games with deep mechanics works the same way, look at any 2D fighter. Diago has dominated his opponents by making every character bend to his will on screen in ways no one else can. His name is possibly more synonymous with Street Fighter than any of the developer’s names.

There are different ways to give the player auteurship (uhh, sure, that word works), and until developers find ways of allowing players to auteur different emotions games can’t evolve. Just putting emotions into the writing, or through actions (Aeris), will never be enough.

More thoughts on this later.