Originally published in print, September 2021.
Given the current state of the world, the way we engage with cinema has changed drastically. Where once we could spontaneously decide to take an afternoon off and ‘see what’s on in the cinema’, we now have to prebook, mask up, distance ourselves from one another, and pay for increasingly more expensive treats. All of this is considerably more arduous than the world of streaming, whose ease of use and swathes of content are quickly breaking down and rebuilding the film industry. But on our at-home television sets, the streaming platforms are often accompanied by another presence vying for our attention spans: video games.
Throughout this lockdown, the place I watch films and the place I play video games has been the same. Slowly but surely, my enjoyment of film is merging with my enjoyment of video games. The distinctions are becoming less clear-cut as I find myself moving between film and video games, and not noticing a shift in my attitude to the television set. When I was younger I often flicked through ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ books where the experience of reading was like that of any novel, however, I was given the power to determine the outcome of the story. Playing certain exceptionally cinematic video games feels no different.
In the video game Red Dead Redemption 2, you assume control of an outlaw by the name of Arthur Morgan dictating his actions and moral compass as you travel across the enormous map spanning a fictitious American frontier. RDR2 features 60 hours of playable plotline, 109 main missions, and countless amounts of scripted cutscenes. All the while you can choose to play and switch between four different camera modes: first-person perspective, two forms of third-person tracking shots and a cinematic mode. What I’m interested in discerning is why and how we can delineate the experiences of playing video games and of watching films. Where is the distinction between the classic westerns—such as A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964) or High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952)—the revivification of the genre seen in Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992) and True Grit (Joel and Ethen Coen, 2010), and Red Dead Redemption?
These two modes of storytelling have much common ground: camera technology, motion capture, animation, scripts, performance. Where they differ is evident in the degree of engagement they demand. When watching films we passively consume the story. Our autonomy cannot go beyond the pause button. The story has one ending, the course of events always play out the same every time we watch the film and there’s nothing we could do about it. This experience of watching a film is almost fatalistic, meanwhile more modern video games force us to engage in a different way. For example, the gamer’s choice when playing Red Dead Redemption 2 is important for not only the furthering of the plot, but for the entire experience. One could choose to ignore the storyline and spend hours fishing in the various lakes, hunting bison, or exploring the expansive map. Red Dead Redemption 2’s cinematic mode allows you to enjoy long, wide angle shots of Arthur Morgan, this blends the freedom of playing an open world video game with the visual style of cinema.
This boundary between video games and films regarding the level of involvement required can only be argued up to a point. Recently, the likes of Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch (A feature length Netflix Original where the viewer has to make decisions as the plot progresses) have blurred the lines further between film and video games. This style of the ‘interactive film’ that the successful Bandersnatch operates off has an interesting history. In 1967 the film Kinoautomat was shown at the Montreal Wolf Fair. At nine points throughout the film, the reel was to be paused and a moderator would stand before a live audience and ask them to vote for whatever scene they would prefer to be played next, thus influencing the film’s ending. Seven years later in 1974 Nintendo released the interactive movie arcade game Wild Gunman where the player has to draw and fire on his opponent before they can: a typical western standoff. If the player was successful or failed, live action footage would be played of the player’s opponent dying, or firing their gun first and winning.
Bandersnatch, however, is a feat of storytelling made only possible by the availability of streaming and the guarantee that a television set can carry out choice mechanics similar to a gaming console. The film has five different endings, over a trillion possible permutations and the ability to range from being 90 minutes to two and a half hours long. What is most interesting about Black Mirror’s story mechanics is the inclusion of a timer popping up on the bottom of the screen whenever a choice is presented to the viewer, this is evidence of both arcade movie games of 1974 like Wild Gunman and the early interactive films of 1967 such as Kinoautomat merging to form the likes of Bandersnatch.
We know that Netflix is only dipping its toes in the water of interactive filmmaking and given Bandersnatch’s success, there will hopefully be more to come with netflix having recently announced that they are expand into games development. When considering the features of heavily cinematic video games such as Red Dead Redemption 2 in relation to Bandersnatch (whose creators are well within their rights to identify as a film), it causes me to ask once again, “What’s the difference?”. Evidently, there is none. The basic mechanics of either style of storytelling operate the same way, save for occasional gunslinging in Red Dead Redemption 2 and the potential to hack and modify the game, which within itself is a whole other argument. Both industries have noticed this loss of a boundary between film and video games. Keanu Reeves made headlines when it was announced he would star in CD Projekt Red’s CyberPunk 2077, and one of Netflix’s most successful recent franchises was The Witcher, whose world and character design was taken from the famous Witcher trilogy of video games (which was in turn taken from the books).
The sooner filmmakers and game designers realise how much they can explore the relationship between film and gaming, the sooner they can play around with the new types of stories that this emerging coalescence of mediums provides. Would a virtual reality open world film, where the viewer can travel and move as the story unfolds, be possible? The constant development of motion capture begs us to ask if a live action video game is possible. 360 degree Virtual Reality cameras are available in most camera stores, and I am of the opinion that it is only a matter of time before someone decides to take a risk and shoot a Virtual Reality film. What then?
Maybe we shouldn’t question the difference between video game and film. Like asking the difference between novel and novella, thumbs and fingers. Perhaps the important thing to ask is instead how we as viewers change our engagement and attention spans in these different types of storytelling.
