Games capable of sophisticated expression - Harvey Smith

By Tom Bramwell Published 13 June, 2007

And they'll get there, he says.

Midway Austin's Harvey Smith believes videogames are capable of the sort of sophisticated expression that would put them on the same footing as Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel "Maus", which told stories of life in Poland before and during the Second World War.

Speaking in the context of the Church of England's declaration that it would demand an apology from Sony over the use of Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man, Smith told Eurogamer that the belief games are "trivialising [difficult] subject matter because inherently they are not capable of sophisticated expression" is comparable to what people "believed about comic books" prior to Maus' publication in the 1970s.

"I'm not saying that we're Maus," he clarified. "Film has done much more subversive stuff than what we're doing, for instance. But at the same time, I do think that videogames are going there."

"America's Army is the most political game anyone's ever made. It is a complete commercial for the right wing. So, if that's a super-political game, what's wrong with making a game that questions the role of the US military in the world and the role of the military-industrial complex? I don't think we're any more political than America's Army - we're just on the other side of the split."

Smith was referring to his current project Blacksite: Area 51 - due out later this year on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC - which deals with issues as complex as insurgencies on US soil, and US foreign policy and its impact on people from different backgrounds, despite riding in under the banner of what Smith admits is, at its heart, "a pure shooter".

And while the game is still yet to be completed, Smith is already looking ahead, speculating that the next game to bear the "Blacksite" name (although a sequel to Area 51, Blacksite aims to push away from that game's comedic action) could have a broader scope for world-exploration.

You can read the full interview with Harvey Smith, who is studio creative director at Midway Studios Austin, along with impressions of Blacksite: Area 51 on Eurogamer soon.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • oerhoert #1 5 years ago

    This truly is stating the obvious.

  • PearOfAnguish #2 5 years ago

    Isn't Harvey Smith the bloke who messed up Deus Ex Invisible War?

  • Genji #3 5 years ago

    America's Army? Political? I never knew the game even had a storyline.

  • skillian #4 5 years ago

    Devs are always making statements like this but they never deliver.

    In my opinion, and as much as I love the type of game, a "pure shooter" can never deal with foreign policy and politics in a sophisticated manner.

    As long as an aim of the game is to thrill as the ragdolls fly from a tossed grenade, any political commentary is fluff at best and hypocrisy at worst.
    Edited by 1 at 13/06/07 @ 10:45

  • mostly_harmless #5 5 years ago

    The problem is he's not describing 'depth'; he's describing GCSE politics. 'Here's a game that's pro the war in Iraq. Let's make a game that questions the war in Iraq', well yippe-kai-aye, what a strikingly original subversion that will be.

    squarejawhero makes an important point about specialists from other branches. Games developers still talk about 'art' and 'depth' as being about 'showing emotions' or some other outdated cliche. Their ideas are often essentialist in nature, and they seem uninterested in questioning the nature of the discourses they are trying to appropriate from the mainstream press. If they really want to play at being the big insightful artist, they need a primer on modern Cultural Criticism, which is in a different place entirely.

    There is work being done on this in relation to games, by people like Espen Aarseth at Bergen university, but they're still talking a different language to most actual games devs.

    Alternatively, they could just stick to the main gaming aesthetic of being 'fun'.

  • dadrester #6 5 years ago

    i'm looking forward to seeing how haze deals with this dichotomy.

    [edit] @ mostly_harmless. you are talking about a far more academic discourses, which for all their merits, very seldom ever actually have anything to do with the 'creation' of 'sophisticated expression' within different media. While i don't disagree with you that the games industry has a way to go before it starts to really produce anything like the output of, say independent cinema or some of the fine art disciplines, there has been a definite shift in attitudes.

    with the change in roles within development, like more game designers and game directors that don't necessarily come from a traditional games based background (as opposed to 10 or 15 years ago when specific game design roles didn't really exist), i think we are going to see more considered design that aims to tell a story or provoke thought, through the interactions of the videogame, rather the current game->cutscene->game->cutscene approach that we have now.
    Edited by 1 at 13/06/07 @ 11:08

  • zuljin #7 5 years ago

    @skillian
    "As long as an aim of the game is to thrill as the ragdolls fly from a tossed grenade, any political commentary is fluff at best and hypocrisy at worst."

    I'm fairly certain this was said about comic books/music/movies. In fact probably all forms of media, besides porn, have proven that it is possible to combine entertainment with an underlying message, be it political or otherwise.

  • skillian #8 5 years ago

    An underlying message is one thing, and I reckon many games have achieved that already, but to expect to make a sophisticated political point while encouraging the player to rack up the kills is wishful thinking I believe.

    Note that I'm talking about "pure shooters" as referenced in the article - I think that, with good enough writers/producers, other genres are more than capable of producing a serious message in a way that's as powerful and worthy as other types of entertainment media.

  • kangarootoo #9 5 years ago

    It seems that everyso often, someone says something along the lines of,

    "Over time, due to new X we will be able to create games that take the ability to do Y to whole new levels. We aren't there yet, but we are getting there."

    But the truth is we never bloody "get there", because its a never ending process. Back in the early days of the ZX Spectrum people were waxing lyrical in the same way, and then when the C64 came out some of their ambitions were realised in some small way.

    Predicting the future like this makes it seem like great new advances are going to occur, but they aren't really. Little advances are going to made, just as they have always been made.

    Whenever I hear someone coming out with some blurb like this, I just think "this person has something to sell and needs some media attention". No bad thing really, but lets call it what it is.
    Edited by 1 at 13/06/07 @ 11:19

  • mostly_harmless #10 5 years ago

    @ dadrester

    I admit that I'm taking a very academic stance, but quite a lot of modern media does draw upon academic discourse in its creation. Even quite mass media entertainment is built upon the same ideas expressed in academia; see for example Simon Pegg's (admitedly slightly tongue-in-cheek) comments about 'Hot Fuzz', and all his comedy, being founded on a bedrock of 'the postmodern condition'.

    Academia might use language that's not terribly apparent in the consumption of mass media, and therefore gives the impression that it exists of and for itself, but the ideas are still part of the background discourses going on within quite a broad range of the media. Look at the extent to which 'truth' is deferred constantly in modern narratives, from The Simpsons to Lost (and I don't mean 'truth' as in 'what's happening', I mean 'truth' in the philosophical/religious sense). It's Lyotard's thing about postmodernity being an 'increduality towards metanarratives', but it also forms the basis of the creation of those bits of mass media.

    At most, videogames developers think it's enough just to give the player a few choices, perhaps with basic moral overtones, and suddenly we're into subversive art or something. But even Black and White dictated the nature and consequences of those choices; a postmodern rendering would be called 'Grey'. Or something!

    My main concern though is that all of this would only ever detract from the fun of gaming. People think casual mini gaming is a threat to the 'hardcore'; wait until someone tries to make a gaming equivalent of Ulysses.... or a game called 'the screen goes on and off'....:-)

  • zuljin #11 5 years ago

    @skillian
    I'm trying to think up a run of the mill action film that "make (s) a sophisticated political point"...

    /Fails horribly

    Guess I proved your point :)

  • afghan_jones #12 5 years ago

    "@skillian
    I'm trying to think up a run of the mill action film that "make (s) a sophisticated political point"...

    /Fails horribly

    Guess I proved your point :)"



    Pretty much every 80's sci-fi actioner was to do with 80's consumerism & America's corporate greed.

    Total recall, robocop, etc.

    Plus commentary on social issues and the media in The Running Man.

    Starship Troopers had deeply political undercurrents.

    The original Rambo said a lot about attitudes towards the vietnam conflict in middle america. Rambo 2 was nonsense but has a certain resonance given the current situation in Afghanistan.

    The X-men films deal with themes of racism & segregation.

    Bruce Lee's Way of the Dragon tackles racism & immigration issues.

    I could go on, but there you go, action films can have political points. (whether they can be considered sophisticated political points is another thing but there it is.)

  • zuljin #13 5 years ago

    @afghan_jones
    All credible... Until you mentioned Robocop and Rambo.

    :)

  • dadrester #14 5 years ago

    ...a game called 'the screen goes on and off'... :D like the crazy bits at the end of MGS2 where the game over screen comes up but you're still playing.

    i agree with your points to a certain degree, especially with something like a 'pure shooter' where by it's very nature you have one main objective and a limited amount of freedom in terms of what/why you are doing things, or again with something like the mechanic in MGS2, where patience and skill permitting you are able to play the game without killing anyone. However these are purely the actual game mechanics. MGS2 still manages to deliver (an albeit contrived and convoluted) 'grey' area. Ok, the choices you can make within the game are limited but the ideas and philosophies it throws up can easily be as diverse and meaningful as those a film can. Again we're a little way off, but we're getting there.

    this will happen once designers manage to marry the actual in game actions and narrative with source material that is engaging enough to be seen by the mainstream as 'highbrow'.

    i find the problem with most cultural theory discourses is that they ultimately fail to conceptualise 'fun'. a game being fun shouldn't lie outside of its potential to be 'something more', that is, pleasure is in the same mutual ecology of 'meaning'.

    [edit] and as a side point, i don't think developers lack the imagination/intelligence/subtlety to create 'meaningful' and'fun' games. i would be more inclined to believe the current publisher>developer model is to blame.
    Edited by 1 at 13/06/07 @ 13:04

  • Mindstorm #15 5 years ago

    @ mostly_harmless
    could you please explain what an "essentialist idea" is please?

  • PearOfAnguish #16 5 years ago

    All credible... Until you mentioned Robocop and Rambo.

    Rubbish. Have you ever actually seen First Blood (Rambo 1)? It's an action movie that has a serious point to make about the war and treatment of Vietnam veterans. And Robocop's themes of consumerism, greed and media sensationalism are so blatant you'd have to be blind and deaf not to notice.
    It sounds like you just have problems seeing anything except what's presented on the surface.
    Edited by 1 at 13/06/07 @ 13:37

  • dirigiblebill #17 5 years ago

    Look at the extent to which 'truth' is deferred constantly in modern narratives, from The Simpsons to Lost (and I don't mean 'truth' as in 'what's happening', I mean 'truth' in the philosophical/religious sense).

    This isn't just a characteristic of 'modern' or 'postmodern' media- the deferral of truth could be regarded as the foundation stone of any narrative, from Gilgamesh to Apocalypse Now. But I take your point about the influence of academic thought on the so-called mainstream.

  • zuljin #18 5 years ago

    /Runs away from people who don't understand sarcasm

  • mostly_harmless #19 5 years ago

    @ dadrester

    "this will happen once designers manage to marry the actual in game actions and narrative with source material that is engaging enough to be seen by the mainstream as 'highbrow'.

    i find the problem with most cultural theory discourses is that they ultimately fail to conceptualise 'fun'. a game being fun shouldn't lie outside of its potential to be 'something more', that is, pleasure is in the same mutual ecology of 'meaning'."

    These are my points though. Firstly, that being 'engaging enough' is not, in modern theory, the same as being 'highbrow'. Secondly, the 'fun' of a game, and what Barthes called the 'pleasure of the text', operate as different modes of pleasure. It may be possible to combine both in a single piece of work/art/game, but it will require a very radical approach, far more radical than that currently being taken by games devs (an attempt at the 'seeming' of being highbrow), who seem to base their approach upon copying the outward shape of other media without really paying attention to what's going on underneath. That runs the risk of high ideas detracting from the game fun principle.

    BTW, I'm not trying to question the intelligence of developers; I was merely drawing upon squarejawhero's point about the advantages of bringing in people from other areas of cultural production. I think game design, irrespective of publisher's squashing originality, needs some new perspectives.

    @ Mindstorm

    An essentialist idea is one that is based upon the assumption that there are essential 'truths' behind a given system of meaning. So for example, I might say that violence is a male attribute. That would be a essentialist idea. But a non-essentialist would respond that such statements are based on a cultural contruction of masculinity that is held in binary opposition to an equally constructed sense of the feminine. As they are constructed, they are artificial, and so there is no underlying 'truth' of gender identity.

    Sorry if that's a really basic and reductive example.


    @ dirigiblebill

    Important point; Lyotard and others even prefer to define postmodernity as a dimension of culture, not a 'time', and you can read much older texts as being what we now call postmodern. My point, though, was that these ideas, which dadrester suggested were academic discourses and not part of the creative process, are at the heart of a lot of mass media.

    I'm not sure that contiunually deferring 'philosphical truth' is an inherent aspect of all narratives though; 'closed' texts eventually resolve such questions, whereas open texts do not, but open texts are indeed not limited to the modern world.

  • kangarootoo #20 5 years ago

    @PearOfAnguish

    You don't really do "smileys" do you.

  • Les #21 5 years ago

    "I mean 'truth' in the philosophical/religious sense"

    Does that still exist after Nietzsche?!

  • dirigiblebill #22 5 years ago

    But even Black and White dictated the nature and consequences of those choices; a postmodern rendering would be called 'Grey'. Or something!

    Nah, a postmodern rendering would be something like "Blue" written in red ink :)

    I'm not sure that contiunually deferring 'philosphical truth' is an inherent aspect of all narratives though; 'closed' texts eventually resolve such questions, whereas open texts do not

    From the perspective of the reader or the writer?

    /watches thread spiral off-topic

    Blah blah. I can't be arsed with postmodernity today :p
    Edited by 2 at 13/06/07 @ 20:43

  • newt #23 5 years ago

    I've said it before and I'll say it again: gaming needs its 'Watchmen'.

  • Genji #24 5 years ago

    /watches in horror as Ubisoft proposes "Watchmen: the game"

    It's going to happen.