There are already countless serious studies on game theory and criticism available, including Mark S. Meadows'
Pause & Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative,
Nick Montfort's
Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction,
Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's
First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game,
and Mark J.P. Wolf's
The Medium of the Video Game,
to name a few.
I hold out hope that you will take the time to broaden your experience with games beyond the trashy, artless "adaptations" that pollute our movie theaters, and let you discover the true wonder of this emerging medium, just as you have so passionately helped me to appreciate the greatness of many wonderful films.
Andrew Davis
, St. Cloud, Minn.
A.
Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.
I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.
Q.
No movie stuck with me emotionally more than Werner Herzog's "
Grizzly Man
" did this year. Why did "
Grizzly Man
" not even qualify for the short list for best documentary?
John Brightling, Listowel, Ontario
A.
It was the best documentary of the year, after all, so maybe that counted against it.
Q.
The newly released home video of "
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
" bears a PG rating for "quirky situations" (among other things). Once again I am baffled by the MPAA's logic.
Having seen the movie, I do not deny that it contains situations which are indeed quirky; however, what degree of quirkiness is required to elevate a movie from the G-rated quirkiness of, say, "
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
" to the PG-rated quirkiness of "Charlie"?