Shadows on the Screen: Play First, or What We Should Mean By “Auteur” In Games Critique

Theory says that directorial auteurs own the films they make. Each frame is the synthesis of visual, aural, and narrative ideas. If there are game auteurs, what is it that they own?

Brian Ashcraft’s “The Search for the Video Game Auteur” is an interesting introduction to auteur theory. He presents a survey of the theory, talks to a few self proclaimed game-auteurs, and hits at a core conflict among critics discussing auteur theory: how can one person be given credit for the creative work of many? But he makes little effort to differentiate a game auteur from a traditional film auteur.

Not to tread over worn ground, but before talking in depth about game auteurism, it might be wise to re-introduce the film auteur in a frame more specific to our discussion. I was first made aware of the auteur by Sidney Lumet’s excellent book Making Movies, I finally saw the theory in practice through the making-of-Blade-Runner documentary Dangerous Days. While Lumet’s writing about mis-en-scene, the importance of directorial control, and his own anecdotal evidence, it took seeing how those working with an auteur viewed the process for the idea to really click.

In one of the many interviews that film director Ridley Scott contributed to the documentary, he admits that he considers himself an auteur. In less than humble words he explains that while it takes dozens or hundreds to make a film, the buck stops with the director. Blade Runner, he says, was his vision. And throughout footage of others talking about the creation of the film, it would seem that he’s right. Building the man an altar with their words, they explain how his ideas – the splashes of light across the Tyrell office that have no discernible origin, for instance – were carried out because he said they’d look good, because it was the way he wanted it. The script was changed until the words on the page matched Scott’s vision for the film. From front to back, the decisions that were made were entirely subject to Scott’s intentions.

Intent. The film was Scott’s intent given material form. When we talk about auteurs intent is forefront. (And for some critics, like mainstream standard Roger Ebert, intent is necessary for art.) It is never easily boiled down. Even if you can get at some clean thematic ideas – Kurosawa clearly is trying to explore responsibility as a concept in Tengoku to Jigoku (High and Low) – it is decidedly harder to explain camera placement, color usage, and even the placement and length of cuts other than to say “it is what he wanted.” It builds some sort of tone, some sort of atmosphere that the audience is taken into.

What does intent mean for games? Roger Ebert complains that author intent can’t exist in gaming because of player control (and, he follows up by saying that’s why they can’t be high art.) If we accept this filmic definition of intent – that every action in the work is as the director intended it – then our game designer options are limited. Currently-in-the-spotlight David Cage fits the bill fine. I’m only a few hours into Heavy Rain, and loving it, but if there is one thing to note it is that the only possible actions are ones that have been accounted for. If this is what we mean then we should also look at adventure game designers like Roberta Williams, Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman, and others like them.

But we know that film auteurs don’t actually do it all. They might drive the actor into the ground into the ground until his performances match the auteur’s desire, but the actor does the work, it is his voice that builds the intent into something. With this in mind, we can broaden the definition of game auteurism to allow for unknowable variations to occur, so long as the main directorial intent is carried through.

The key, it seems, is that we need to minimize the player’s input. So long as the core narrative is controlled, then the intent of the designer stands. This would allow for designers like Jaffe, Kojima, Levine, and Spector – whose games are filled with action segments that need only be completed for their narratives to continue – to fit the auteur mold.

And if all of this makes your brain-stomach turn, then you’re not alone. If to be an auteur means to make games filled with the same sort of cinematic conventions that we’re used to (and without any meaningful interaction on the part of the player), then I’d hope that most designers would want to be counted out. So long as we’re reading no importance into the play of Metal Gear Solid, and only into the cutscenes, Kojima isn’t a game auteur, he’s just a film auteur.

But consider the tools and the product of the film director and compare them to what the project lead uses and produces. While cinematic heavy titles make it clear that games can do everything film does (even if they don’t succeed at that goal), they can actually do much more. Since it’s not the late 1990s, I would hope that I’m not stepping on any toes here: Neither the future nor the heart of video games is great looking, non-interactive sequences. It is and always has been compelling play and well designed game mechanics.The game auteur isn’t the one who writes the best scripts, or has the most jaw-dropping cinematics. It’s the one who makes the designs the best game.

We have to accept another definition of intent, then. We can’t boil it down to “this is exactly what I want on screen.” It has to be “this is what I want the game mechanics to allow.” Sid Meier has no clue how your Civilization is going to grow, nor does Will Wright have a clue about specific tax rates in your SimCity. But no matter what play you find in specific, it falls into a wide, but deep, layer of intent. It’s a layer that is unrepeatable outside of gaming (video-, card-, board-, or other.)

We can still include the Jaffes and the Molyneux’s and the Spector/Levine’s if we want, too. In fact, they gain substantially from this. Now when you’ve developed your JD Denton, protagonist of Deus Ex, to be a stealthy hacking crossbow master, and you manage to infiltrate a base undetected from front to back, with maybe a few precise moments that caused your hair to stand up on the back of your head – we can praise Spector’s design for allowing that moment. Rockstar doesn’t need to know what roads you’ll take to escape the police – in fact their point, their intent is that they don’t.

If we’re determined to keep up a gate for this thing called auteurship, then what are the standards? Can Kojima make it in the club, after all? Driving Off The Map: A Formal Analysis of Metal Gear Solid 2 (which I’ll link at least once a year so long as I’m writing) argues that Kojma’s work is filled with meaningful play. It is a game where the actual core activity – the gameplay – builds towards a thematic idea. For Wright’s Spore it could be about how evolution (or was it intelligent design) functions in creating social structures. For Spector’s Deus Ex it could be about how personal choice can (or can’t) effect things on a global scale. It’s about intent and meaning.

I’m not sure exactly what we mean when we say “meaning,” though. That’s a problem. Does Shigeru Miyamoto’s work on Super Mario Bros. 3 mean he makes it on the list? He worked tirelessly for hours making sure that Mario’s jump felt exactly so – exactly as he saw it in his mind. But without some liberal arts degree mokeying around, you’re not going to tell me that SMB3 is about anything other than fun and progress. Or what about the designers behind long term sports game standouts, games like Tecmo SuperBowl, NHL ’94, and NFL2k5? They aren’t getting at some deep point about conflict – at least not more than the designers of the sports they’re replicating. They’re just building projects inspired and informed by their real life counterparts. Doesn’t Madden NFL 06′s much reviled vision cone strike you as the action of an auteur? Wild and uninhibited, certain that what he’s making is art, that what he’s making is right?

I don’t have an answer here. But I think we’re in a better place than when we came on. In honesty, I hope you’re sick of auteur theory. I struggled for a year to write about it, but I could never wrap my head around my own opinions on the matter. Why would I want to praise a guy for removing the on-set play between actor and actress, or the flair of the great cameraman? Was it about art? Yes, sort of – these film auteurs were determined to make art despite film’s industrial process and corporate backing. We could go for some of that in gaming, couldn’t we? Was it about ownership? Absolutely – see, the word itself, auteur, it means author. It means that even though someone else is paying for this project, even though someone else is acting in it and lighting it and maybe even wrote the words down on paper, the director’s role is indispensable. The auteur says that he owns the final product – he owns it in the face of the critics, and he owns it to everyone who sees it, and yes, he owns it in the copyright office. And here I’m not entirely sure, but I do wonder: Couldn’t we use a little more of that in gaming?