The Technoludic Film

The Technoludic Film

Hello again, mortals.

This is part two of three in my blog posts tonight, and covers the article "The Technoludic Film: Images of Video Games in Films (1973 - 2001)", written by Matteo Bittanti.

https://learn.ucs.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/content/contentWrapper.jsp?content_id=_215609_1&displayName=Matteo+Bittanti%2C+%282003%29+The+Technoludic+Cinema%3A+Images+of+Video+Games+in+Movies+%281973-2001%29&course_id=_9172_1&navItem=content&href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamecareerguide.com%2Feducation%2Ftheses%2F20020501%2Fbittanti_01.htm

This time, I definitely don't know if the link will work; even if you can get to the title page, the links to the rest of the article at the bottom are borked to all hell. By all means read the title page, but it's not very informative. I was mainly taking notes from that and a PowerPoint provided by the tutor (and thank the Nine he provided it, or I wouldn't have a clue about this).

Enough explanations, onwards unto learning!

Bittanti tells us that the rise of video games in 1970 coincides with a fall in the film industry starting in 1950. Bit of a gap there, but I see where he's getting at.

From this, he goes on to theorise that convergences between film and video games has led to a new film genre: the Technoludic genre; films which incorporate video games into their narrative or themes.

Before going into this more, Bittanti introduces some delicious jargon. Remediation is the representation of one medium in another (basically what he's talking about in one word). This is considered to be a defining characteristic of modern digital media.

Next, immediacy is used to describe media that try to make the reader forget that they are viewing media, and instead draw them into their own reality. Books and films have been doing this for years, attempting to make the viewer feel like they're part of the story.

Finally, hypermediacy describes artefacts that are aware of their constructed nature and try to display it to the viewer. This includes many video games in the form of Heads-Up-Displays (or HUDs); they player can't forget they're playing a video game because elements like the HUD are always reminding them that the game has a constructed nature.

Bittanti points out that immediacy and hypermediacy are not preserves of any one medium, but rather are shared between mediums; an example is the HUD from video games being used in television. If you look at a news show today, you'll see all kinds of information being displayed on the screen on a big, intrusive Heads-Up-Display, such as stocks, weather, and major headlines.

So, why does this remediation happen? Well, successful conventions are traded between media, such as HUDs, to see if they can work as well or better in other places. The other reason is because it can take time for a new medium to discover it's full potential of content, and to develop unique content. Video games are currently in the process of finding their unique content; there are experiences available as video games that can't be found in any other medium, but there are also still games which try to be like movies, rather than like video games.

So, let's finally get onto the matter of convergences between games and films. There are four nodes of intersection in the Technoludic genre, according to Bittanti:

• Commentary: film can be used to project the fears of society. Society fears that video games will reach the stage where we can't tell if we're in a game anymore. An example of this is the Matrix Trilogy.
• Quotation: video games are used in some movies for illustrative purposes rather than as the central theme. Bittanti's example of this is Inception, though I don't much understand this.
• Adaptation: converting a piece from one media into another has happened for hundreds of years. In the case of video game movies, it's usually done poorly. Examples include Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Silent Hill.
• Remediation: finally, remediation is the incorporation of certain aesthetics and narrative codes from one medium into another. Bittanti's examples include Groundhog Day and Toy Story.

Well, that's where my notes end. It could very well be an interesting article, if only I could read the full thing. Then again, I'm not all that inclined to long periods of reading anymore; it just gets boring after a while unless there's a particularly good narrative.

Overall, I think this article makes a good point about the convergence of video games and movies, and explains them fairly well most of the time. I don't understand some of the examples given, though, which means that either I haven't grasped the main point, or the examples are poorly chosen. This article was published in 2002, as well, so, in my opinion, it was too early to be able to draw any solid conclusions from the convergences at the time. Over the last ten years, we've seen some major interaction between movies and video games; a new study carried out today would probably yield far more interesting results.

Have a good evening, mortals. Praise the Emperor.