Developing emotional attachment in a video game or film

Polanski: End credits: The Pianist: 2002


The ability to empathize with the characters portrayed in a narrative is vital to both film and game. The actions of a character are designed to enable an audience to develop empathy with a particular emotional experience in the expectation that this will allow the audience to understand why the characters feel the way they do. However in a game both the player and the developer have control over a character’s actions. In fact the association between a player and a particular character can become extremely intense. I can clearly remember my sister an obsessive MUD player, being totally obsessed with her character. She used her involvement in the game’s fantasy world to "shut off" her own life so that she could become part of another reality. The writer Sherry Turkle (1997) wrote extensively about this and in particular how participants might create more than one personality which would allow them to act out several types of roles. The interesting issue here is that these ‘personalities’ are partly a construct of the game designer and partly the player. The character is not a ‘tabula rasa’ or blank slate, it is designed to fit into a particular world and respond to the rules and principles laid out for it. (See previous post: 14 December 2011: “Therefore when designing stages one of the first issues is how to begin the narrative and then how to get the player to learn the rules.”) So what are the ways a designer can set out conditions for character development and how does a player develop these further?
The designer will usually start with a decision as to the type of world the game will exist within, (science fiction, war, fantasy, historical, etc. etc.) this world will already have associations with pre-existing stereotypes which the player will subconsciously take into the situation. (If a combatant in a war game, the player will expect to behave in certain ways probably using clichés developed by going to war movies/reading books or comics etc). The formal design of the game may be emotionally suggestive, (dark colour palette, high contrast, a section where everything goes purple, sharp angles to all the forms experienced, soft out of focus feel, lots of shadow, intense colour saturation etc etc) and background sound may be used to either sooth out tensions or build anxiety. However it is through the game-play that most emotional intensity will be experienced by the player. As each challenge is overcome or not as the case may be, the way this is achieved will add to the player’s understanding of their character. This understanding will then be laid upon a growing awareness of the ‘narrative’ of the game and its particular goal. Thus narrative consequence will have a direct influence on emotional engagement, in particular when the player’s character is involved with other characters within the game world, the player will be unconsciously comparing and contrasting his/her own player’s characteristics with others.
Emotional intensity is often associated with player accomplishment. The balance between player skill and game difficulty is central to this. “If the game is too easy the player quits because they are bored. If the game is too hard players quit because they are too frustrated.” Lazzaro (2008) The diagram below designed by Lazzaro sets out some of the issues.



N. B. Fiero is ‘the Italian word for “Personal triumph over adversity.” It is the emotion that accompanies the experience of mastery.


In film emotional intensity is partly developed by the building of empathy with particular characters and partly by creating a general emotional atmosphere as a formal quality. This can be through the use of sound (I will be putting up a post on this at some point), editing style, cinematography, actor’s ability to give depth and weight to a character, and of course directorial ability as co-ordinator of all these elements. What is sometimes being aimed for is ‘emotional catharsis’ Once again this is a very old term. Aristotle pointed out that in a play or drama what was important was the controlled release of pent-up emotion. He also outlined the fact that this was both on the part of the audience and the characters in a play. This has also been called, ‘emotional cleansing’ as a result of experiencing strong feelings. Through these emotional experiences the inner turmoil built up in an audience can be released.
For instance, in the Roman Polanski film ‘The Pianist’ (2002): the ending is a wonderful catharsis. The body of the film deals with death, persecution and destruction but at the end redemption occurs. Over the end titles, the central protagonist plays Chopin’s ‘Grande Polonaise for piano & orchestra’ with the Warsaw Philharmonic in a concert hall, a close-up on the sensitive concert pianist’s fingers setting the scene for a cathartic balance between emotional release and spiritual yearning. In order to achieve this there are no opening credits or titles, all the text, including the title, appear at the end of the film, thus allowing Polanski to direct the audience to focus on the cathartic moment. Again we experience ‘personal triumph over adversity’.

What is a MUD? Originally this term came from Multi-User Dungeon, (As in Dungeons and Dragons) with later variants Multi-User Dimension and Multi-User Domain. A MUD is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat.

If you wanted to explore these issues further the texts below would be a useful start.
Bellantoni, P. (2005) If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die: The Power of Colour in Visual Storytelling New York: Focal Press
Freeman, D. E. (2003) Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering London: New Riders Games
Lazzaro, N (2008) Why We Play Games. Baltimore: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Lazzaro, N (2008) Halo Vs. Facebook: Emotion and the Fun of Games. Etech Conference. http://en.oreilly.com/et2008/public/schedule/detail/1589
Lazzaro, N (2007) The 4 most Important Emotions of Game Design Available at: http://www.2007.loginconference.com/session.php?id=46
Turkle, S (1997) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet London: Simon & Schuster

More Thoughts on Communication Theory

Frame from the Piers Sanderson film: High on Hope

The interesting thing about communication is that it is a process by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt to create a shared understanding. It requires both intrapersonal and interpersonal skills and it is through communication that we can develop collaboration and cooperation. As an old fashioned Socialist I strongly believe in communication as being at the core of all political activity and a lack of communication is usually at the core of organisational dysfunctionality and poor politics. I therefore worry about individualism. What can happen when the deep underlying reasons for collective, communal communication are lost is the rise of cultural fragmentation and individualism, a state that the Rowntree Foundation (Lawson and Thake, 2008) has argued as being one that needs to be confronted and replaced. "This individualism was seen to have damaging consequences, fuelling selfishness and greed and leading to isolation and fear as people struggle to cope and live fulfilling lives."

As DFGA Students you specialise in moving image communication techniques. We presume that a visual message with movement and sound has a greater power to inform, educate or persuade a person than a static visual. I.e. it is a synchronistic concept, whereby two or more forms of communication come together in order to achieve a powerful effect. In The Mind in the Cave by Lewis Williams (I do believe this is essential reading and I know I have mentioned it several times before) it is pointed out that sound, vision, dance and touch were all used to convey shamanistic messages to the tribe. Perhaps the rave is the clearest modern format for this. The film/music documentary ‘High On Hope’ which commemorates the 20th anniversary of acid house, telling the story of the infamous ‘Hardcore Uproar’ warehouse parties in Blackburn in the late nineteen eighties is a good illustration of this. Over 10,000 people dancing in cavernous warehouses across the north-west every week was the nearest to a Shamanistic experience I think we could get. For a brief moment perhaps our individualism is shed and we operate as one with the group.

You could say that one implication of communication theory is that evaluation of a good visual design/communication can be done by measuring the comprehension by its audience, not by aesthetic or artistic preference. In this case the problem in terms of communication theory is that if the people evaluating the art, media product or design are themselves media professionals they are too 'attuned' to the business to be aware of how a non media specialist would receive the communication. I.e. the best critics are those experiencing the communication, in the above instance the ‘ravers’.

Rhetoric
However it is within the old history of rhetoric that I find a deeply fascinating series of narratives. It is strange and wonderful and as it covers memory training, body language, voice projection as well as the well known 'rhetoric tropes'. It is indeed a deep river to fish. (To use the rhetoric trope 'metaphor'.)


An image from Yates: The art of memory

A key book to look at is I would suggest, ‘The Art of Memory' by Yates. For DGFA students this book can be an entry into a way of thinking of writing a film script as a memory aid (cues can help with memory retrieval) or developing a navigation theory for game design (Developing a system within which players' decisions are limited but significant). In fact if you follow Cicero’s rules for mind walking as a memory aid, you realise that the whole construct feels like an interactive video game. He suggests leaving odd, memorable images in significant places as you walk around a building. You ‘collect’ these as you retrace your memory steps, in a similar way to the collection of weapons or tokens as you navigate through a game. Cicero was when at work, a teacher of rhetoric to the powers that were in control in Rome. His texts were written to explain how rhetoric worked. What is interesting is that modern day computer games often outline how their ‘worlds’ work and there are several analogies between how Cicero pictured a controlled political environment and how game designers such as Hideo Kojima and Sid Meier set up the control systems for game parameters.


An orator speaks to the Roman senate

As Galloway (2006, p. 90) states in relation to a discussion of Meier’s work, “The gamer is learning, internalising and becoming intimate with a massive, multipart, global algorithm. To play the game means to play the code of the game.” I.e. you need to learn a process or set of rules in order to be able to calculate how to solve problems. This is very similar to Edward Channing’s (1856) definition of rhetoric; he stated, “rhetoric undertakes to show man rules or principles which will help to make the expression of his thoughts effective”. If you want to progress in a game such as ‘Civilization’ you need to internalize the logic of the program, once you understand the rules and principles you can make your thoughts effective. It could therefore be argued that a good game designer like Meier is someone that clearly understands how to use a contemporary type of rhetoric. In both cases, Cicero and Meier, their work can also be used to understand things about the wider political culture within which they both operate. In the game ‘Civilization’ the “massive electronic network of command and control”, as Galloway (2006) puts it, reflects the reality of contemporary power structures, whilst Cicero’s principles of rhetoric reflect the organizing principles of the Roman senate.


Sid Meier’s Civilization

Galloway., H. R. (2006) Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture London: University of Minneapolis Press
Lawson, N and Thake, S (2008) Why individualism has created "social recession" York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Title Sequences for video games

Deus Ex: Human Revolution 2011

It was interesting to see how many level 4 students wanted to write an essay on title sequences. In the examples we looked at in the seminar we were concentrating on film, however Goldtooth Creative’s title sequence for the game ‘Deus Ex: Human Revolution’ really works well as an opening for the Eidos-Montreal designed video game; a game which revolves around the development of a cybernetic reality, where reality and fiction, the artificial and the real are all merging. The setting of an operating theatre for the film’s title sequence, within which shattered human organs are being replaced by artificial organs is somewhat reminiscent of the scene in X-Men Origins:‘Wolverine’ (2009) where the title character has his skeleton replaced by a fictional super metal; ‘adamantium’. A particularly interesting connection to Deus Ex: Human Revolution is that in both sequences we see fleeting images of a lost past, suggesting that a former life is being erased. Underlying both films are very old story lines that have mythic associations. One theme is the concept of the duality. For example, individual control over a new body versus the altered human as agency of dark controlling forces. This metaphor occurs within many story and plot lines. We are shaped by the Gods who give us life, however once we have life we have a tendency to want to exercise control over it and forget our debts to our creator. In Christopher Booker’s ‘The Seven Basic Plots’ this type of plot centres on what he calls, ‘the rebirth’. Darkness is presented as centred within the hero’s own personality (2010, p. 226) and in order to liberate himself he will need to go through some sort of psychic shift, usually by some sort of quest or adventure in order to come to terms with a deeper, ‘true’ self.
The concept of ‘rebirth’ is echoed in the fact that the operating table is very similar to the birthing table or bed.
The opening credits blend live-action with CGI to introduce an audience to a world at the dawn of a cybernetic renaissance. The operating table provides a platform for the birth of a new life-form that has yet to develop a soul. Lens flare type light streaming into the image from an unseen operating table light source, allows cuts to be made seamlessly, whilst a layering of x-ray images with white text that rotates with the camera becomes a ‘backbone’ grid that stabilises the images as the text moves through. An overall high tonal contrast but restricted colour palette of warm yellows, blacks and browns is tinged with blue, while graphic elements such as circles and heartbeat indicator lines underpin the invisible typographic grid. Vector drawn diagrams float in white over underlying images of bones, suggesting the integration of organic and manufactured materials. The totality produces a dream-like quality that suggests that these are images glimpsed by someone moving in and out of consciousness, flashes of memories and dreams, interspersed with a low level awareness of the operating procedures being enacted.


An illustration of what goes into the composition of each shot within the opening sequence

The suffering experienced by the lead character Adam Jensen could, I would argue, be related to another mythic series of stories that surround the North American Indian concept of the shaman. Often the shaman’s transformation into a being that can straddle both the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit is said to be accompanied by physical pain. The stories of shaman are often told as if all of the actions take place in a dream world, half way between reality and another world that exists on the other side of death. This is echoed in other stories and religious myths, the one we are of course most familiar with is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. After enduring his time of suffering on the cross, he will eventually rise and assume his true position as a God. Jesus again reminds us of the dualism that lies behind many religious stories. In his case the duality is centred on whether or not he is a man or God. In all of these cases the individual is elevated into a new consciousness because of their traumatic experiences. There are also several myths that focus on what is called ‘the dismembered God’ thesis. In prehistoric times leaders of tribes themselves played the part of a god and were at certain points in the year slain and dismembered then ‘planted’ to ensure that next year’s crops would grow. Again some form of death is necessary for a rebirth. The opening credits therefore operate as a type of mythic doorway into the game and set up the conditions for the first level of immersion. (See post on immersion Wednesday, 14 December 2011)

The background to the development of the images used is interesting too. A trace memory of James Whale’s original ‘Frankenstein’ images still runs through this title sequence as well as ghosts of Rembrandt’s ‘Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Tulp’.


Image from James Whale's Frankenstein


Rembrandt: ‘Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Tulp’

In order to start your own research into all this a good start would be an interview on the Blog http://www.artofthetitle.com/ with the film credit director Paul Furminger of Goldtooth Creative and ‘Human Revolutions’ game director Jean-François Dugas of Eidos-Montreal. They talk about concept development and how they combined the digital and live-action footage. A clip of the opening sequence is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIqJaT3cvf8

Immersion

One of the issues that has come up recently in conversation with level 5 students has been why and how do game players get hooked into a game. In particular I know some of you are interested in how to design for levels. Issues such as allowing for a player to become familiar with the game world and its mechanisms during low level gameplay have been discussed in seminars and how as levels get harder the player gets sucked in as adrenaline levels rise have been hinted at in my previous post. But there are lots of other issues to consider. One of which is game immersion.
One way of describing immersion in a game or a film or other media environment is when "media contents are perceived as ‘real' in the sense that media users experience a sensation of being spatially located in the mediated environment." (Wissmath, Weibel, & Groner, 2009).

The immersive experience is a kind of relocated spatial world that the user inhabits and starts to believe in. Once they believe in this world they can start to make decisions within it that make sense as to the ‘rules’ of this world. If the world is undersea, you can swim or dive even though you are of course in reality on dry land. If an audience or player is completely immersed in their experience they have what Coleridge termed, complete ‘suspension of disbelief’. However, if the plot or storyline has inconsistencies people can easily break out of their imagined world and therefore game designers have to be very careful as to how they integrate elements from outside that world. For instance a learning tutorial can be written into a video game as part of the overall plot.
Wirth, Hartmann, et al. (2007) in their article, ‘A Process Model for the Formation of Spatial Presence Experiences’ provide a diagram of their unified theory Here it is:


A Process Model for the Formation of Spatial Presence Experiences


Those of you that had to sit through my lecture on Communication theory might notice a similarity with some of the communication theory diagrams.
The stages in the process model show how first of all players form a representation in their mind of the world they have encountered within the game, then the next stage is to make the game world their primary point of reference or ego reference frame, which is where they suspend their disbelief.

As Jamie Madigan pointed out (2010) “Once that mental model of the game world is created, the player must decide, either consciously or unconsciously, whether she feels like she's in that imagined world or in the real one”.
There are two main factors that encourage total immersion, the first is a detailed and thorough world model (sound, images, spaces, types of movement, characters, strong plot etc) and the other is a consistency of how things operate within that model, (do you have to suddenly use an awkward device such as a button to activate that doesn’t seem consistant, heads up displays, tutorial messages, damage numbers appearing over enemies' heads? )
As Madigan points out (2010) “Cognitively demanding environments where players have to focus on what's going on and getting by in the game will tie up mental resources. This is good for immersion, because if brain power is allocated to understanding or navigating the world, it's not free to notice all its problems or shortcomings that would otherwise remind them that they're playing a game”. Above all though, I would suggest it is the strength of the narrative that will suck a player in, just as in a film or a book.
Therefore when designing stages one of the first issues is how to begin the narrative and then how to get the player to learn the rules. The total immersion point should be not too far into the game or the player will not get sucked in, but not too early or the player will not have time to acclimatise to the rules and nature of the game world.

Madigan, J (2010) Analysis: The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29910/Analysis_The_Psychology_of_Immersion_in_Video_Games.php Accessed on 14. 12. 11
Wissmath, B, Weibel, D., & Groner, R. (2009). Dubbing or Subtitling? Effects on Spatial Presence, Transportation, Flow, and Enjoyment. Journal of Media Psychology 21 (3), 114-125.

Wirth, W., hartmann, T., Bocking, S., Vorderer, P., Klimmt, C., Holger, S., Saari, T., Laarni, J., Ravaja, N., Gouveia, F., Biocca, F., Sacau, A. Jancke, L., Baumgartner, T., & Jancke, P. (2007) A Process Model for the Formation of Spatial Presence Experiences. Media Psychology, 9, 493-525
N.B. Jamie Madigan, Ph.D. is a psychologist and gamer who explores why players and developers do what they do by studying the overlap between psychology and video games at The Psychology of Games website. He is an excellent writer to look at for anything to do with video gaming and psychology.

Gaming, realism and hyper-reality

Image from World in Conflict


“I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.”
RONALD REAGAN, speech, Aug. 8, 1983

It’s interesting to reflect on Ronald Regan’s musings from the 1980s. As a former actor turned president he was probably more aware than anybody how reality can be a construction. Realistic war simulators are now the norm in combat training and for a while now the divide between realism and simulation has been blurred.
As Galloway (2006) notes, “The conventional wisdom on realism in gaming is that, because life today is so computer mediated, gamers actually benefit from hours of realistic gameplay. The time spent playing games trains the gamer to be close to the machine, to be quick and responsive, to understand interfaces, to be familiar with simulated worlds.”


David Wong (2007) was worrying about war sims when he wrote this, “I'm starting to think that even World in Conflict, a real time strategy game so "realistic" it takes a NASA-built Quantum supercomputer to run it, has left me woefully unprepared to fight an actual war.” He went on to describe what he would like to see in ‘reality’ war games, including:
“I want a war sim where native townsfolk stand shoulder-to-shoulder on every inch of the map and not a single bomb can be dropped without blowing 200 of them into chunks. Forget about the abandoned building wallpaper in games like the Red Alert series. I want to have to choose between sending marines door-to-door to be killed in the streets or levelling the block from afar, Nuns and all. I want to have to choose between 40 dead troops or 400 dead children, and be damned to hell by chubby pundits from the safety of their studios regardless of which way I go.”

But this type of ‘real’ reality isn’t what people want to see. Most gamers want an escape from reality, but paradoxically want more levels of realism when making that escape. So what’s this about? I posted a blog a while ago that included some thoughts on, the Sublime, the Liminal and Moments of Epiphany. (16th Dec 2010). I was reflecting on why certain images hold our attention in such a powerful way that they seem to take us beyond our everyday experience and provide an entry into higher states of consciousness. One aspect of the sublime I didn’t really unpick was the sublime as “an idea belonging to self-preservation” (Burke, 2009). In On the Sublime and Beautiful Burke goes through lots of different ways in which the sublime can be approached. At one point particular qualities of sound are picked out by Burke, such as the sound of far off cannon fire or a slow ominous beat, as being sublime in their effect. What runs through all his examples is a sense of thrill or excitement that is created by being able to observe something potentially fatal without having to actually experience death or near death. The rumble of far off cannon fire is very different to the experience of actually being fired upon, but there is still a thrill and adrenaline jump when you hear those cannons in the distance. The sublime could perhaps therefore be used as a concept within which to explain the need for an escape from reality, together with the need for higher levels of realism within the games that we use to affect our escape from reality.

Burke’s observations are similar to some descriptions of adrenaline addiction. As Lisa Fritcher (2009) has observed, “Some adrenaline junkies place themselves into dangerous situations. Others prefer to know that they are physically safe, but pit themselves against obstacles that make them feel unsafe”. What we do know is that a thrilling encounter creates a rush of endorphins that is simultaneously energizing and relaxing. However, this "feel good" hormone that was designed to alleviate stress on a short term basis or for emergency situations is something we can become addicted to, and as Hart (1995) suggests, adrenaline addiction can be the unfortunate outcome.

The physiological make-up of human beings lies at the core of how and why we behave. When an animal is confronted with a perceived threat it reacts. The animal will use as many resources as needed and as much energy as possible to deal with the threat. When faced with danger, the two main options are fighting, or getting away. In the face of danger, the body automatically induces high levels of physiological arousal which prepare the organism for emergency responses. (Hayes, 1994). As Atkinson (1996) explains, when the external balance is disrupted, our body changes its internal balance accordingly. These internal changes include; increased heart rate, blood pressure and respiration, which accompanies the pumping of more blood to the muscles, and the associated supplying of extra oxygen to the muscles and the increased work rate of the whole heart-lung system. This is linked to increased sugar rates in the blood, facilitating rapid energy use, and accelerating metabolism for emergency actions. Thickening of the blood then occurs to increase oxygen supply, enabling better defence from infections and to stop bleeding quickly.
What the individual experiences as these things take place is a sharpening of the senses. Your pupils dilate; hearing is sharper, muscle response faster and you think much more quickly with your body/brain. This is because you have increased blood supply to peripheral muscles and the heart, as well as to motor and basic-function regions in the brain but you also have decreased blood supply to your digestive system and irrelevant brain regions (such as speech areas). At the same time as all these events are occurring, endorphins; natural painkillers are secreted. (Atkinson, 1996; Hart, 1995, Hanson, 1986) This physiological explanation of what happens when we encounter a fight or flight situation mirrors what happens when we play a video game. If we let ourselves think there is danger to ourselves ‘self-preservation’ comes to the fore, and this lies at the core of both Burke’s idea of the sublime and the reason our chemicals kick in. Realism in gaming could therefore be read as the creating of more and more effective triggers for this response.

The recent development of procedural animation technologies, have allowed the development of games that rely heavily on the necessary suspension of disbelief to make your body think there is a real threat. The necessary levels of realism can now be facilitated by realistic whole-body muscle physics combined with ‘ragdoll physics’ as an integral part of the immersive gaming experience. Real-time simulation of biomechanics and a related motor control nervous system is now possible because of the developed link between software applications that simulate both evolutionary biology and robot control theories. As different areas of scientific understanding and technology are integrated and software developed that is compatible to 3D form generation and movement software, we will experience higher and higher levels of simulated realism. The lack of differentiation from the real world might of course become a problem, however ghost stories have always induced fear and excitement and the associated release of adrenaline and endorphins and we have never had any historical difficulty in sorting out the real from the imagined, I suspect therefore that we might still be able to sort out which is which. If we can’t differentiate fantasy from reality we will lose one of our essential survival mechanisms, but if we can fake it, we should also be able to spot the fake, as lying and truth detection have always been essential to the human condition.


Bibliography
Atkinson R. L. et al. (1999) Hilgard's introduction to psychology London: Wadsworth

Burke, E (2009). On the Sublime and Beautiful London: OUP

Galloway, A. R. (2006) Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture London: University of Minnesota Press

Hanson, P. (1986) The Joy of Stress London: Stoddart

Fritscher, L (2009) Adrenaline Junkie http://phobias.about.com/od/glossary/g/adrenalinejunkiedef.htm Accessed on 3. 12. 11

Hart, A. D. (1995) Adrenaline and Stress London: Thomas Nelson

Mirtich, B. V. (1996) Impulse-base Dynamic Simulation of Rigid Body Systems Berkeley: University of California http://www.merl.com/people/mirtich/papers/thesis/thesis.html Accessed on 4. 12. 11

Batman and Tintin

There is a new Batman Game 'Arkham City' being launched this week, as well as the new Tintin film coming out. This of course had me thinking about their roles as transmedia characters and why these comic book figures have survived for so long and still seem to have relevance.
I looked at the on-line promotional materials for the new Batman game and interestingly there was no gameplay, it was simply a series of images that were designed to reinforce what we already know of the character and the environment of Gotham city. The opening sound was of course the theme tune to the Batman movies, (not of course the "Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da BATMAN!" one), but the Danny Elfman written theme from the 1989 Tim Burton film. http://www.hark.com/clips/rttkwddvls-batman-theme-song. Burton established the dark gritty feel of Gotham using both Frank Miller’s reinvention of the character and a nod to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis for the setting. The game keeps this dark lighting and in the clip there were further references to the settings of early James Whale Frankenstein movies, in particular the lightning flashes and operating tables.
Rocksteady's David Hego has explained that Arkham City's use of light and shadow and warm and cool lighting are used to direct a player's attention within the environment. He has had much to say about the stylised realism used to design the characters. He called the exaggerated features and realistic textures of the character models, especially that of the Joker, a kind of hyperrealism. He feels that hyperrealism also circumvents the problematic issue of the uncanny valley. (See my post of Monday, 29 November 2010, as well as http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/oct/27/tintin-uncanny-valley-computer-graphics?INTCMP=SRCH a Guardian article on the problems with the new Tintin film, which I shall get back to). As Hego states, "One of the big advantages of the stylised realism was we were jumping across the uncanny valley… By making [the characters] so stylised, you can forget about uncanny valley because you accept that it's not real."
In some ways the game is a celebration of the Caped Crusader’s expansive mythology.
The main narrative of Arkham is a story based on the internal corruption of Gotham City which is portrayed as a type of disease, the Joker is slowly dying, internally corroded and we get the sense that everything is diseased and old. These are themes that Paul Dini (a long time Batman writer) has used several times before and of course Grant Morrison has been scripting Batman recently (Batman Incorporated) and has imported his unique take on conspiracy theories and double layering of realities. All of this seems perfectly suited to the current climate of economic depression and corruption within the global economy and banking systems.
It’s interesting to unpick why Batman (created in 1939) should still be relevant and Tintin, a character created in 1929 should be not quite so pertinent to life now. Both though have resilience as transmedia characters that has ensured that they are returned to over and over again.
The key to Batman’s cultural longevity is that perhaps the “devil has all the best tunes” and taps into deep archetypes, and holds together in one character several key concepts and archetypal psychological models that enable us to on the one hand have empathy with the roles he plays out and on the other accept his almost god like powers to overcome evil.
Perhaps it’s the 19th century where we need to look for the roots of these fictional beings. Both Batman and Tintin are detectives, they hark back to the classic model of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes who first appeared in 1887, but Tintin is more in the Alan Quatermain mould, a character developed by H. Rider Haggard in 1885, (Indiana Jones being a more recent reinvention of this) he is an adventurer inconceivable outside of a colonial or post-colonial setting.



Batman can be traced back to the 1886 novel by Stevenson, ‘Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ and Bram Stocker’s ‘Dracula’ of 1897.






These images are specters that haunt an evil society. The late 19th century was a time of heavy industrialization and it saw the rise of global capital, mass population transfer to city living, the evils of slums, downtrodden populations. In 1848 Marx had published the Communist manifesto, a manifesto that starts, “A spectre is haunting Europe” this spectre was a response to the evils of a capitalism that was then as now rampant and people’s fears were echoed in the shaping of new archetypes that could combat the dark forces they were confronted with. Science being on the one hand a potential savior, but on the other a means of destruction, this duality reflected in Mr Hyde’s horrific nature as the reverse of the scientifically minded Doctor Jekyll. The ability of scientific thinking to solve problems was a clear vindication of the Enlightenment project, (a project that was to be questioned by the Romantic movement) and paradoxically once again, just as science seemed to be the only real answer to the world’s problems a new dark territory opened out to us through the work of Freud and an awareness that our unconscious was shaping our supposedly ‘logical’ responses to life. This duality, the potential of science to solve problems, (the detective) and the awareness of the power of the unconscious (the vampire, the bat in the night, Mr Hyde) is what makes Batman so interesting. Perhaps there is not enough contradiction in Tintin’s make up to ensure his relevance to our lives under 21st century late Capitalism. Tintin is essentially only knowable as a comic book figure. His complexity lies in the relationship between Hergé's ‘ligne claire’ drawing style and the printed text. Batman on the other hand has had numerous writers and artists depict the character, Bob Kane as an artist and Bill Finger as a writer, never fixed his image beyond the initial concept which has morphed with the times. Tintin would not be Tintin without Hergé, hence the problems with the new Tintin film, but Batman is open to constant re-interpretation.
Both characters are tied to childhood, but in different ways. Batman will forever act out the night of witnessing the death of his parents, Tintin will never grow up. It’s only when we are happy supported children that we believe that we don’t need parents, because their support is such that they seem as natural as water is for fish to swim in, we can’t imagine the world without them. As we mature, there will be always a point of parental loss and we then have to make our own decisions about life and face the tragedy of our own drama. Perhaps this is why Batman’s early loss resonates with audiences as they get older and Tintin’s angst free life is more something for the child in us. Tintin’s fictional life is one that is essentially comedic, the action may be tense but it never descends into the dark, his soul is spotless, but Batman’s is dark and torn around the edges and is tragic.
Both characters have animal shamanistic elements. Tintin and Snowy come as a unit. An inseparable combination reminiscent of Philip Pullman’s dæmons. Batman is of course a ‘manbat’, he dresses as a shaman would, clothed in an animal costume designed to alter his persona and strike fear on his enemies. His bat animus (Jungian term) being a primary anthropomorphic archetype of the unconscious mind. In one comic thread Batman first learned of the powers of bats from ancient North American indian folklore, so it is not too far-fetched to assume that his writers have been very aware of the shamanistic links and play with them, Hergé of course never reflects on this relationship and Snowy is simply a very knowing dog.
Perhaps above all the fact that Batman is normal, (well as normal as an Olympic athlete is), means that we can see ourselves being able to do the things he does. This is often the flaw in Superman, who is very hard to relate to and therefore to defuse this films of Superman often have a comic element. Superman’s origins on a farm, don’t have the same relevance to us as an urban childhood. However I’m now drifting off the point so perhaps I better stop. It would be interesting to hear readers own views of these two releases.



The above image of a shaman is from Les Troyes Feres cave complex and is over 14,000 years old.

Those hats

The Fedora Hat

So why did I get interested in hats in my last blog post. At the core of this year’s contextual studies is transmedia theory and one aspect of this is the concept of migratory characters. Migratory characters need to be easily recognisable and in the game world of course scalable. Making a character identifiable when it’s only a half inch high is a tricky business and a good hat can do the job for you. Characters need to remain consistent over the course of their transmedia development, because narratives themselves change and will be less easy to recollect. Within prolonged engagement with a narrative, stories can begin to merge and become indistinguishable from each other, characters however are easier to identify and recall, especially if they have a good hat.
This indicates the importance of character in establishing audience engagement with a transmedia concept. It is the characters that remain a constant point of contact for the audience. Regardless of what is happening within story episodes on TV, plots in film or situations within games, the characters should be recognisable and familiar and therefore should help orient the audience within whatever aspect of the narrative they find themselves.
Perhaps each component of a transmedia story should be designed as canonical from the outset. Therefore a hat needs to signify this. Going back to the Indiana Jones model, his hat is a fedora and its wide brim means it’s not far off a cowboy hat. Early cowboy films established the hat as a way of distinguishing good from bad. White hats for the good guys, black for outlaws. Even the Lone Ranger had a white hat. These types of hats signified excitement, adventure, the outdoors etc. basically you wouldn’t wear a hat like that indoors. Most importantly though it made the protagonists easy to spot.
Jones’ hat belongs to a family of ‘hunter’ hats, such as Crocodile Dundee’s or the one Hugh Jackman wears to hunt vampires in Van Helsing. If you go on-line to buy a similar hat you end up having to go through stuff like the Bounty Hunter Outback collection, in fact you can even get Crocodile Dundee hats, this is text directly taken from the website:

“There’s something about a crocodile hunter hat that speaks of adventure and the great outdoors. The most famous wearer of this stylish yet practical form of headgear was of course Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee, and anyone choosing one now as their hat of choice risks comparison with the original croc hunter himself.”

It would appear that the hat can also signify a world. ‘A world’ that is a setting for any transmedia character is also important, is it big enough to be developed, would the audience want to spend time in it? These type of hats suggest big adventure worlds, so they work yet again. Besides being scalable, can these hat characters be watched as well as played? I suppose the issue here is can they be intellectualised for a passive audience (film/TV) and can they be actualized for an active audience? (Game player experience) Yet again yes to both things. Why does SuperMario wear a hat? (Sonic’s hair effectively becomes a hat).

So as you do I did a bit of research on Google, the Hero's Hat I now find out is a Vanity Item from the action-packed adventure game Terraria. It's part of the Hero Outfit, the other parts being the Hero's Shirt and Hero's Pants. You can even get an Archaeologist's Hat. To quote; “The Archaeologist's Hat is a Vanity Item that is dropped by Doctor Bones. It is the head slot component of the Archaeologist's Outfit. The outfit's appearance resembles the clothes of famous archeologist Indiana Jones. The Hat sometimes disappears when dropped by player; this is presumed to be a bug.”


The Archaeologist's Hat from Terraria

It’s all of course part of the hero’s journey and all heroes have their identifiable characteristics, Hercules had his Lion head, knights and Captain America have their helmets and Dick Tracy his yellow wide brim fedora, which takes me straight back to Indiana Jones. The fact is because of that hat we don’t need to explain where Indy came from, or show how he got embroiled in a conflict with the Nazis. It’s evident from the start that this is a man who goes on exciting adventures, that he has probably been on lots of similar adventures in the past, and is likely he will go on plenty more adventures in the future – perfect for Transmedia franchising.


Hercules


Dick Tracy