What is the reason for this project? It’s about…
Continuing in the tradition of much of my previous work, I’m still interested in what happens when you try to tell/create one idea/story/experience in a different medium/mechanic. In this case, I’m especially interested in the idea of the “bad fit” that Combat represents as a material for reproducing film (and ideally “great film”). It’s in keeping with ideas I’ve wanted to make in the past in which the central violence of a core mechanic is at odds with what the story needs to say. Adapting films gives the grist for that mill.
In a sense it’s in “bad faith” because I don’t expect Combat to be able to do a good job with all these moments, but what I think I’m more interested in is putting the tank (violence) in that position of failure as a kind of vulnerability (maybe it’s a bit like The Artist Is Present 2 in a way even). The tank is asked to step into a role in a work of art with complexity and subtlety and meaning, and it can’t live up to the job. That can definitely be funny, of course, but it also asks questions of the tank in terms of “why aren’t you better at this?” “why are you so limited?” “why such a one track mind?” etc.
In keeping with the above, I’m definitely interested in making work that interrogates the assumption of violence as a mechanic. Something I like about all the instances in this series of movies (though I need to work on the line-up) is that the violence is ultimately useless or even absent or means something else. In 2001 it’s futile, or even explained as primal savagery. In Taxi Driver it’s toxic masculinity. In The Godfather you’re the target and impotent. In Blade Runner it’s all about the dying one. And so on.
In all the games I think it’s (probably?) important that you can also just make these scenes recognizable without prompting? Or not? Actually as I write that I’m not sure how realistic that is. It may be the case that they all need a title before they actually work and to help the idea land faster rather than spending time feeling confused.
Well I’ve been working on this for a little while now, what do I think it’s for?
It definitely feels like there’s an interesting symbiosis and tension between the film and the game that continues to seem generative in terms of thinking. I think the majority of the thinking I’ve done has been around the nature of Combat (the game) and combat (the approach to game design, the mechanic), which is presumably fitting to the extent this is probably meant to be an interrogation of game design more than anything else.
So I suppose we have “contradictions” (ala Activity Theory) where there are poor fits between the mechanics/nature of Combat and the nature of the scene, but mostly I think there are more poignant elements where light is thrown onto the game mechanics. I suspect what’s happening in all the films thus far is either that
So I think in a lot of ways the drawing of the films into the world of Combat is about the potential to portray more sophsiticated understandings on this fundamental building block of videogame play. Combat is especially good for this because it is so pure in its portrayal of mindless violence.
It’s also notable how absent skill is in all these games, though - for better or worse? In none of the games do you need to be good at anything, you just need to be present. It may mean that the “play” of each game is really much more intellectual than anything to do with input. Many of the games involve navigation at best, for instance.
So perhaps “poignant failure” isn’t quite right - it’s something to do with the introduction of more sophisticated models of violence or simple representations of slices of life that aren’t violent and how the game model can react to that.
Writing this while trying to jump back into the project in the context of wanting to write about it for an article and to make it the basis of a grant application.
So.
This is a project about adapting films into the language/aesthetics of a specific videogame.
More specifically, it’s a game about adapting films into the formal qualities of Atari’s Combat, a extremely simple videogame and arguably one of the Ur games, especially since it represents a very distilled form of videogame violence in the form of two tanks shooting each other in a world.
More specifically, the films in question are generally highly recognizable works of cinema that feature on the BFI’s top 100 films of all time list. Art films, in other words. Films likely to contain unusual or interesting approaches to cinema and storytelling and action and more.
More specifically, rather than adapting entire films and their narratives and aesthetics, the project involves either adapting specific, iconic scenes (to make them most recognizable) or the “spirit” of the film (for similar reasons).
This project is important and worthwhile in at least two ways.
One, the films provide unusual prompts for videogame design which might lead to novel effects, perhaps particularly affectively, in the resulting game scenes. To the extent that videogames remain largely on a very conventional track of experiences, great cinema might be a way to productively derail them.
Two, Combat provides a rigid framework of rules, aesthetics, and mechanics that simultaneously hinders the ability to represent the films and aids in restricting the level of decision-making that must be made. The tension between film and Combat can be a productive one, in that it demands unusual lateral thinking about how to solve design problems - the materials (Combat’s rules etc.) are highly specific, the conversation is interesting.
We can see benefits to at least two and perhaps three fields.
Game design benefits through provocation - integrating classic/great cinematic ideas into videogame contexts is a way to general novel experiences, something the industry at large is interested in but perhaps struggles to act on due to fear. One possible outcome of the project is the generation of design activities or exercises or pedagogy that use this basis of adaptation to generate novel designs (not necessarily taking a form of adaptations themselves).
Game design studies benefits through new and specific objects of study - game design processes and outcomes based on adaptation have a specificity and coherence that may allow those researchers interested in the design activity itself to zero in on aspects of interest.
Cinema itself could conceivably benefit from realizations about cinematic approaches when they are incorporated into a videogame context as these new and unusual juxtapositions could equally inspire different filmic approaches as videogame design approaches.
Convinced yet?