Shaping Reality

Recently at the DICE summit Gabe Newell and JJ Abrams discussed the idea of storytelling through their respective mediums of videogames and movies. They hammered at one another for the lack of direction in games, and the lack of exploration in film. Abrams didn't believe that players could concentrate on the story at hand when the protagonist is just an empty shell and mindless observer, or when players could simply distract themselves by looking in the wrong places. While Newell criticized films for its absence of agency which allows the player to be immersed within the story itself. The audience has no input within a film.

Storytelling is a tricky business, and both of these major players agree that the most important part is having people care about the characters. That way they will feel like a part of that world, that the story feels in some sense real. This is an odd notion if you really think about it.

Both the world of games and film spend massive budgets trying to create alternate universes for people to submerge themselves into for hours at a time. The extensive details of certain worlds are so pervasive that they manage to extend well beyond the medium itself. The fictional universe starts to blend in with the real one. People create Portal Xmas trees, speak in Klingon, or identify with the Force within. Some would rather live as their fictional avatars than as their real self. It starts to reshape their reality.

Now at this point people would argue that being immersed within these alternate realities can be dangerous. With people having died from over commitment to their gaming I can see why that is, yet there is something protective about the ability to escape. In my personal opinion I feel very few people really see the real reality. Very few understand why we work, why the political and financial systems work the way they do, or how the human mind and body functions. Not many can see all the complexities and the exponentially expansive richness that the real world has over fictional worlds. But would they want to?

The real world can be so complex, so challenging, and so daunting that to understand the entire scope of the human world may bring people to their knees. Ignorance can be bliss. Many would rather stay within the Matrix than leave into this horribly complicated and often bleak reality. Those who were considered geniuses often were also crazy. It was probably the weight of the true reality that drove them mad.

Gabe and JJ both announced at the end of their discussion that there may be collaborative efforts between Bad Robot and Valve to make films based on games and games based on films. They will continue to build miniature worlds to keep the world sane. It is a brave and noble mission that buys time for those who see reality to sort things out and maybe make it a little more inviting.