What kind of responsibility do you think game developers have to represent
various views or social ideas or things like that? And if they have such
responsibility, whose responsibility do you think it is? Like a director? Or is
it the whole team or what?
BG: I don't think it's up to creators to be even-handed. It'd be like saying,
"Hey, Michelangelo. As long as you're making David, can you make
Goliath?"
Creation does not understand responsibility, unlike the government-supported
media, whose job is supposedly to inform a democracy. The job of art is to
inspire, and you want people to go in deep on something. You don't want them to
try and present both sides. What you do want to do, honestly...
The Odyssey
is a good example of it. There's more violence in The Odyssey than there is in Grand Theft Auto, and it's considered
socially redeeming because there's some sense that Odysseus gets his
comeuppance.
And it might be a little bit of irony when he wraps the chain
around the necks of the town who put up with the enemy soldiers, but the reason
that it's is powerful is because you kind of identify with the character and his
plight, and you feel the emotion that he felt, and not because the artists
adhered to an even-handed history.
Right. I don't necessarily mean to
indicate that game developers should feel as though they have to represent all
views, but I guess it seems a shame that structures don't exist to support certain
types of things. It's amazing that a game like Flower or something like that exists, but there aren't many
vehicles for that within traditional games. There's more of that on the web or
whatever. I guess it feels like not enough people are pushing for it.
BG: In the world of movies, there is a place for art films. You can make them
for more money, you make them weird and unusual, and they have a following. I
don't think there's kind of...
You could have a value judgment that everybody
should watch them. You could have a value judgment that everybody should eat
foie gras, but it's kind of similar. It's a narrow taste and kind of expensive
to do.
I'm coming from the perspective of
perhaps games' perception outside of the industry.
BG: But there's a reason why Shakespeare that has Falstaff and sword fighting
and murder is more popular than his sonnets. So, he did multiple things, and
they stood the test of time. I think that's the same with all creations. You
can do something for a narrow specialty audience, or you can do something more
broadly that works on multiple levels.
Well, I think there's a different
obviously between broad and bland, and I think unfortunately a lot of games
tend toward the bland view of getting a wide audience versus trying to take
something and twist it, you know?
BG: That's been a critical complaint about creations forever.
[laughs] Okay.
BG: What architects say is that, to some degree, the caliber of their work
depends on the caliber of the planet. Here's what I think about it. There are
an awful lot of people in the world, where if they got asked, "If I gave
you 50 million dollars, would you give me 90 minutes of filmed
entertainment," who would say yes.
And it isn't if their fault if what
they turn out isn't always good. So, you know, the hard job there is funded. There
are more people who can make stuff than there are people who can get the 50 to
90 million bucks. So, shame on bad clients.