no.

>What are your thoughts?

It's a fair comparison.

Religious ritual became theater, ballet, and opera.

Theater, ballet, and opera became film.

Film is becoming video games.

I've read the Veldt; I'm not excited for a time when Occulus-style presentation merges with Tik Tok-style auto-composition.

different profession, different structure of the development team, not really comparable

Should movies have micro-transactions?

I'd argue that story driven games now days requires more acting and directing than a movie. Getting a good videogame with mocap takes longer than a movie and requires drastically more acting work to be done. People im sure are just going to say "lul call of duty movie go brrr" but there there are equally as many shitty time wasting movies that exists as there are CoD sequels. And actually looking into the production of something like Death stranding or even a game like Until dawn it makes making a movie look like Childs play. So no, it would be like comparing a movie director to a book author.

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No.

Maybe. I honestly haven't played enough games to really say. AAA game cutscenes tend to be a little much for my tastes, those from Kojima especially, but I'm sure there are game creators out there who are experimenting with the medium in interesting ways that are just as creative as film.

No.

Like I said, for the most part I would agree but it’s not like The Incredibles didn’t have fantastic shots or Into The Spider-Verse wasn’t beautiful in its own right

Considering Netflix is going to implement ads, I wouldn’t say we are too far off

I can see that argument, good points.

well movies have always had ads

I'm going to say no. It's an entirely different field, and one that really isn't posing as big of a threat to studios as video game industry leaders would have you believe and have told us for the last decade.

Why isn't it enough for Kojima to be considered a world-class video game director? That's the field he's devoted his life to, so if you're going to praise him it doesn't make much sense to lump him into another category that he has nothing to do with.

Honestly having this conversation only cheapens the artform of video game development, as if you have to borrow some prestige from cinema in order to praise video game directors.

I doubt it. A lot more people are not interested in being active participants in their entertainment than are.

That statement feels a lot like the same BS sentiments that crypto scammers used over the last decade. VR isnt as good as people want it to be in order for your prediction to come true.

No. Kojima is a genius but we have to remember the dude can’t actually program or design things. He’s an ideas man. He has whole teams that works hours and implement his plans troubleshoot them till they work. Also Kojima had great designers and musicians work on his games. The water color character designs are just as iconic as any other part of mgs for me. I even have one of grey Fox in my room Bc it looks amazing

Its a different medium. Its like comparing book authors to directors: we could talk about them in the same sphere if we're talking about storytellers, but otherwise theyre in pretty different fields.

Considering GoW was the best "movie" I saw this year.....imo yeah. I don't have the money to play games as much anymore especially AAA $60+ games so I watch them as "movies" on youtube and for sure that was better than any movie this year for me haha.

I disagree that it’s entirely different when animated films have been nominated for awards alongside some of the best films recently.

I’m not saying that they should be considered an extension of film or that game directors should be directly compared with film directors but I do believe there is a conversation to be had.

I don't think so. I mean I play a couple of games a year and they're well done but I think its rare you get a well written or directed game. Most are pretty run of the mill.

>The thought occurred to me while playing Death Stranding and while the game itself is divisive, it is pouring with that Hideo Kojima charm.

I knew this was going to be a Kojima thing before I clicked on it, LOL.

Here's the thing with Kojima - if he wasn't working in a medium as narratively bereft for most of it's lifespan as gaming has been, if he wasn't being provided the ample benefit of the doubt that gaming history has provided him, he'd just be Zack Snyder.

But because he's being measured against an entire medium that has, until very recently, been so stagnant and stunted from a legitimate storytelling perspective, he is afforded a sense of stature and competency that his actual storytelling doesn't deserve. Essentially - his being regarded so highly isn't really evidence of his skill as a storyteller, but a reflection of how debased large swaths of the industry remain. Imagine a storytelling landscape at which Zack Snyder is the pinnacle. That's gaming.

It shouldn't be, and given a few more years, it won't be (storytelling in games is getting very, very, very good and will continue to improve the more creatives grow up in a world where games are a primary storytelling medium) but for now? If the guy everyone points to as a visionary storyteller is that guy? Medium's got a long way to go.

Now, even if you set aside Kojima, and look at other "auteurs" in the gaming sphere - what they're doing with a game is so functionally, completely different than what films are doing in so many ways that the one-to-one comparison is pretty hard to make, much less adhere to past any point.

I like this argument and to an extent agree with it. In Kojima’s podcast with Jordan Peele they discussed how they inspired each other through their work. Like I’ve said to others, I’m not saying there should be direct comparisons but only that they should be discussed in the same sphere as each other.

I don’t think it’s unfair or cheapens the artform by talking about them in the same light. I do think that it opens up each medium to one another.

I also wouldn’t say that it’s lumping one into the other, it would be similar to talking about films and tv. Intrinsically different with shared aspects.

You think movie directors are experts in costume design, lighting, sound editing, prop making, cinematography, all that, and they don't hire specific experts to handle those roles in developing movies just like video game directors do? That's a weird hill to take a stand on.

That’s getting more into the game design aspects of the conversation which wouldn’t be fair to compare as that’s too far into one medium. However, for a couple years now my favourite stories of the year have come from video games.

God of War in 2018, Outer Wilds & Death Stranding in 2019, The Last of Us 2 in 2020. All phenomenal stories with direction to match.

Most are pretty run of the mill but I mean there were ~50 Christmas Hallmark movies released just this year alone. It’s comes with every media.

Why would a game director be called a movie director? It's like saying a novel writer is the same as a screenwriter!

An animated film still has more in common with a live action film than it does with a video game, and has been a part of that world since the dawn of the industry. Shoot, Snow White and The Seven Dwarves won an Oscar in 1939.

There is no conversation to be had, personally. Just because they utilize similar technology doesn't mean the fields can be compared, nor should they be.

Yeah but I mean to say that there are a lot of good movies where as the number of good games is limited. I'm not talking about the levels and the word the game uses I'm talking about the characters amd the story.

No. No. No. No. No. No.

No.

No.

For a couple reasons:

1. Vastly different mediums.
2. Lack of definition on what a "video game director" is... for film, the guilds have very precise definition and division of labor for what a director does (vs. producer or other responsibilities). There is no such thing in video games. You can just call yourself the director. For some games, the closest match ("vision of final product") is the head game designer (there is no director) for other games (those with more story) maybe there is something closer. Then you have cinematic scenes, which may have an actual director (but not responsible for the whole game)

In my near 30 year game making career, including some very big recognizable AAA+ titles, for some productions it was the "Executive Producer" who might closest map to "film director", in others it was the game designer, or in other cases is was a writer who filled that space.

It's rare that there is a single visionary (despite what game media and hype tells you) that is as responsible for a game the way a director is responsible for a film.

Video games don't have the demographically diverse audience films have, yet.

> VR isnt as good as people want it to be in order for your prediction to come true.

My god, I didn’t say it was.

I’m just gonna say here that you either aren’t playing enough games or you’re giving movies way too much credit. I think there are infinitely better stories in video games in the last 5 years than there have been in films and I’m huge buff of both.

Kojima is what a stupid person thinks good writing looks like. He is the Zach Snyder of video games.

I play like 4 games a year. Even games which are well received are pretty poorly done compared to films. There is a reason games like god of war or the last of us stand out and it's because the vast majority of games are trash.

I know you can say the same about movies but there are many more movies released than games.

I don’t agree with your last statement because it is just factually incorrect. For example, in 2020 there were 9,512 video games released versus 403 movies. That’s a huge discrepancy.

Have you ever been on steam, the Nintendo store, the PlayStation store, or the Xbox store? There are literally thousands of shovelware games released every year that you never ever hear of because they’re absolutely garbage.

I play 15-20 games per year and watch at least an equal number of movies. In my honest but not critically relevant opinion, for the most part the good video games have more intriguing, better fleshed out stories than the good movies. This is the benefit of having 20-40 hours to tell your story versus 90-180 minutes.

Not yet.

Art is art though. .I’ve heard Scorsese and Tarantino discussed alongside Dali and Picasso.

Yeah, it’s weird to Kojima gets held up by his fans as this brilliant auteur. His writing (especially his character writing and attempts at political commentary) isn’t really that good. Though I wouldn’t say gaming is completely bereft of actual good writing. It’s there if you go looking for it. Various BioWare / Obsidian RPGs have pretty excellent writing at times. Not all the time to be sure, but any game with dozens of hours of dialogue is bound to have its ups and down.

Ok man but I mean you're counting like all games I presume and not counting all movies and things. If you count every game available on phones and things then you should count every movie and short film or series or whatever.

Taking 2018 as a sample, there were far more impactful game stories than movies. You said yourself that you only play a couple games a year, anyone who dives into both regularly will tell you.

There are fewer games released compared to movies because they take much more effort, that’s why there is usually more good movies. If the ratios weren’t so heavily offset then you would have a point

Absolutely, even though there's overlap. The same could be said about authors and screenwriters with similar but very different jobs.

Kojima is a visionary although 50% of the time his visionary ideas are awful. I wouldn’t even consider myself a massive fan of his but he was the best example I could think of for the post.

Someone just said there were more games released.

Film has a long history of good story telling where as games probably didn't mature until very recently.i stand by my comment that most games are trash and its only a handful of games in recent years that tell a good story.

Those are indie games, not the kinda games I’m talking about. They’re the equivalent to fan made short films and half of them are porn games tbh. We aren’t including those so we don’t have to include porno films and shorts.

You can’t say that most games are trash since you haven’t played them, I can give you recommendations if you’d like but don’t use others ill informed opinions to justify your own.

You can't say that most games aren't trash as you haven't played them...

Most of anything is trash mate. In just giving my experience that a lot of games I've played are mediocre stories. They're fun to play but they aren't great stories.

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