The Press Box - Ep. 225: 'Achievement Oriented' on 'Assassin's Creed,' Video-Game Movies, and the Year of the FPS

Episode Date: December 23, 2016

The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh and Jason Concepcion discuss the newly released movie 'Assassin's Creed,' then bring on their colleagues Jon Lovett and Kam Collins for a wider discussion about why video-game adaptations historically haven't worked well as films. Lastly, they talk to Chris Plante of The Verge about how and why first-person shooters broke out of their slump and whether 2016 was the best FPS year ever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Today's episode of Channel 33 is brought to you by Seekkeek, the presenting sponsor for my podcast, as well as the only fan-friendly app for buying and selling tickets for sports and music. With just two taps on your phone, you can instantly buy Seekkeek tickets to an event and you can enter that event just using your phone. No paper tickets. Drop your old ticket app. Use one that's built for 2016. Download the free Seatgeek app or go to Seekgeek.com. Hello and welcome to Achievement-oriented Channel 33's gaming podcast. My name is Ben Lindberg. I'm a writer for the ringer.com. And on the other line, we're 100% synchronized.

It's Jason Concepcion. Hey, Jason. Nothing is true, Ben. Everything is permitted. Yeah, we're going to talk about Assassin's Creed. Later in this episode, we're going to talk to Chris Plant from The Verge about whether this was the year of first-person shooters and how we even got to the point that we could have that conversation.

And in just a little bit, we're going to welcome a couple of our colleagues to talk about movie video games in general. But first, we are going to focus on one specific movie video game that just hit theaters. And we have both seen this movie. You wrote about it for the ringer.com. I paid my $20.75, which is how much it costs to see a 3D movie in Manhattan. And I set aside my hour 55 and I saw Assassin's Creed. On the bright side, I didn't have to collect any flags or feathers.

A couple days ago, before the movie came out, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed brand director was talking a pretty big game. He said, I think it's going to be a milestone movie. He said there's going to be a before and after Assassin's Creed movie for sure. So here we are. We're in the after Assassin's Creed movie. How does it feel? I feel that the world has changed. The veil has dropped from my eyes and I'm seeing things in a way that I've,

not seeing them before. Mainly I'm seeing them as muddy and without enough contrast to make out the action scenes. I mean, listen, no one was expecting Citizen Kane here, okay? Except for Assassin's Creed's brand director. But, you know, this is a bad movie. It's not atrociously bad. No, it's just a bad movie. It's a bad movie.

It's a normal. There are movies this bad regularly released. All the time. You can see a movie. this man any day of the week. What makes it interesting is it's got a long line of IP behind it. Yeah. A extremely complex Dan Brown meets Scientology kind of lore.

Yes. That is translated to the screen. It's such a long line that you and I stopped doing that line very early on. I think we ejected from Assassin's Creed. I cut out after Assassin's Creed 2. You started and stopped 3. Yes. And that was it for us.

Well, I should say that I enjoyed, I thought one was bad because the best thing about the game is running across rooftops and assassinating people and you just didn't get to do it enough because you were constantly like back in the present slash feature or whatever doing stuff that you didn't want to do. The second game I thought was very good. It ends on the absolutely preposterous note of you fighting the Pope as the final boss. And it's not like it's a long it's a long fight. There's several stages to it. And you know, it ends up with you just throwing hands with the Pope in this. And it's not a young Pope. It's not a he's an older dude.

Rodrigo Borja. That's about how much sense these games make. So the material, there's a lot of material, but I don't know that it is the highest quality material to base a movie around. I mean, the elements. seem like they should be there. They're assassins and Templars and time travel and it all sounds like good movie fodder, but it never really made a whole lot of sense. Tom Hicks just signed on for this, for whatever it is. He doesn't even need to hear anymore. He's about to, he's about to make this movie, whatever you just pitched him. Right. So this movie is directed by Justin

Kurtzl. It stars Michael Fastbender and Marianne Cotill, and it's like a tour of 2016. There's Charlotte Rampling, reprising her creepy role from London Spy. And Michael K. Williams basically plays Freddie from the night of, who was also an assassin. And these guys just show up. And our dude, Desmond Miles, is nowhere to be found. None. He is not in this movie. He has been replaced by Cal Lynch.

And there's a quote early on in this movie, Marianne Cotillard's character says, if you listen to me, everything's going to make sense. And I heard that. And I thought, I have played Assassin's Creed. And this is not going to make sense. Yes. But it could have been salvaged regardless. if, as you have pointed out, the action was good or even comprehensible or visible, but that was not really the case.

Yeah, I mean, I think the main problem, I think we'd agree on this is the cinematography. You know, people criticize Marvel movies cinematography for not having blacks that are deep enough that pops. There's not enough contrast. But the thing with the Marvel movies is there's some bold colors there. So you can see what's the action that's going on. With this movie, it obviously makes a thematic sense that a 15th century city, would be kind of swathed in smoke from cook fires and things like that. Sure.

But the effect with the kind of very washed out color palette is you just can't see anything that's happening in this movie. And everybody's wearing, you know, like very dark cloaks with similar outlines and are running through shadow. And it's like you just cannot tell who's fighting, who's doing what, who's chasing who. It's impossible to understand what's happening. If your favorite parts of Assassin's Creed was wondering around the

ways of Abstergo, you're going to love this movie because there's a lot of that. And this movie just like never really synchronizes with itself all that well. Like as there are in the games, there are the two different timelines and everything. But they never really just let you live in the past, which is the fun part of Assassin's Creed. You know, like it's constantly cutting to Michael Fastbender because he's the star of the movie, I guess. So even when there's an action scene in the past, it will cut away to Michael Fastbender. who's like making the same motions in the present as if just to remind you that he's there too. So it never really just kind of lets you enjoy the good parts of Assassin's Creed games.

And it just focuses on the boring parts really and the incomprehensible parts. And as we were just discussing off air, it is very dark not only visually, especially in 3D, but tonally. Yoist. Fastbender whisper growls every line. No one smiles unless they are humoring someone. As you were saying, it starts on death row, and that basically sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Yeah, Kurtzl previously worked with Cotillard and Fastbender in an adaption of Macbeth. Yeah, and that gives you...

Get the team back together. Yeah, and it gives you the idea of the kind of the tone of this movie. Everything is just like this constant feeling of encroaching existential doom, like with this pulsating synth. ominous patch that's like going underneath it. It's just every, and every line of dialogue is delivered as if this is, this is the end. Listen to what I'm telling you, or we will all die. You know, it's like, and it's just so serious. And that's why, spoiler, for anyone that doesn't want to know what happens in Assassin's Creed. Yeah. Turn away now. Yeah. Fast forward. Fast forward. The McGuffin of Assassin's Creed, just like the Games is the, what apple of, what is it?

The Apple of Eden. The Apple of Eden, which is. Because you don't, it's just they need to find it, okay? Yes, right. So it turns out that the person that has the apple of Eden or that was in possession back in the late 1400s was Christopher Columbus. And when this is revealed, it is, it just drops with this intense seriousness. Like, if someone told me, oh, guess what? Guess who has this thing?

Christopher Columbus, you'd be like, oh, the, wait, the Christopher Columbus? But nobody reacts like that. It's just like, yes, where is he buried? We must find him. Yeah. And you mentioned that people laughed in your theater. There were not enough people in the theater with me to make much noise. But if there had been, I'm sure they would have also.

And the assassins give Christopher Columbus the apple and tell him to basically bury it with himself. So that it's not like, hey, Christopher, we know that you are traveling across the world. you are going to discover America or what you think is America. So just drop the apple in the ocean at some point. And that'll be that. It's bring it back to Spain and have it buried with you where people could find it. But I mean, yeah, that if the movie like poked any fun at itself or it was, you know, it just like even a little bit. So this does not change the reputation of video game movies.

There is an after Assassin's Creed movie, but it is a lot like the before. So not that much of a milestone, I wouldn't say. No. The world has not changed. Well, based on how the movie ended, it seemed like they had high hopes for a sequel, which after seeing it, I'm not sure I share. All right. So to figure out why this seems to be a constant problem and why there really hasn't been a good video game movie, we're going to welcome in a couple of our ringer friends who haven't seen Assassin's Creed yet, but have seen Assassin's Creed review scores, which is why they haven't seen. Scene Assassin's Creed.

So the first is the ringer's main movie writer, Cam Collins. Hey, Cam. How are you? Hey, Cam. How's it going? Good. And we're also joined by a former presidential speech writer and a TV writer producer. He's also one of the hosts of the Keepin' at 1600 podcast.

And on this podcast, he'll be playing the role of seasoned Hollywood insider. John Lovett. Hey, John. Hey, guys. I got to, what's that? Let's do lunch. Hey. I got to go.

I'm driving through the valley. Let's circle back around to that. We'll have our people call yours. Whatever happened to the Bruce Willis of it all. All right, sorry. I'm done now. I always do one too many. So I wanted to have you on because I heard you a couple of weeks ago on a former guest of ours, Chris Sullentrop's podcast.

Shall we play a game? And you brought up the fact that when you're out there in L.A. having your ear to the ground of the entertainment industry and all you have heard people talk about video games as sort of an untapped market for movies. So do people look at it that way? Like, do they think, wow, there's a gold mine here? Or do they look at the titles that have been tapped and how they've turned out and say, no, we'll never get into this? Well, look, no one in L.A. is afraid of making the same mistake twice. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. But, But I think there's like two groups of people.

I think there are people who love video games and would like to see their favorite video games become movies. And there's challenges to that process and lots of like, I think, great movies, great games that have become passion projects either don't happen or they don't always turn out well. Like I know that there's been, you know, a portal movie in development forever.

And there's been a Bioshock movie in development forever. And then there's the, I think, more common version, which is L.A. searching for new content like a kind of a Borg-like entity, desperate to add new insights to its collective and be absorbed. And I think that's a lot of people like, I don't know, I heard people are playing this thing called The Assassin's Creed. The kids love it.

It hits at all the demos. Let's get, let's get, you know, let's get the guy from Prometheus and see what happens. Yeah. So Jason thinks that this is maybe the best video game movie. It's currently at 22% on Rotten Tomatoes. Sorry, 20%. It's bad. It's bad.

22 for top critics. So the people with more refined taste enjoyed this two percentage points more. So before we start bashing video game movies, does either of you want to make a case for any video game movie? Is there? Have you ever seen a good one? I don't know that I would make this case, but I would just like to say that Resident Evil. Which one? Retribution, I think, has some pretty serious defenders.

I've seen it. I actually kind of enjoy it. But I don't know. Is that too far down that, like, it is a video game movie, but I don't know if that entry in that franchise specifically has any strict ties to the games. But I think that one's actually pretty interesting, weirdly meta. It's kind of like the West Craven video game movie, I guess. Which is, I think, what I like about it.

I like Milo Jolovich. I think she's one of our greatest action stars. I also think that it's not a really tough crowd. I saw Warcraft. I saw Hardcore Henry. Mortal Kombat movies are technically, I guess, video game movies too. I have to go pretty far back. I was going to say the first Mortal Kombat movie is horrible,

but maybe just horrible enough to be kind of excellent. Yeah, you know, as, look, I don't prepare for the podcast. I hope so I'm certainly not going to prepare to be a guest. So I quietly Googled as we were talking video game movies. It is a graveyard. Wow. It really is. I mean, you're talking about a genre that's dominated by Ui Bull and the other Paul Anderson.

Not the good one. Well, it's weird because when you Google, it's funny how many of the, I think, standout entries in the genre video game movies are from the 90s. I would have expected, I mean, it's like between like Street Fighter, Super Mario Brothers, Mortal Kombat, Laura Croft, I guess, was 2001, but still closer to the 90s than to now. It's, it's odd to me that the good ones haven't resurfaced. Like, why aren't there new good ones? They're better games. You know, you know what?

I'm sorry, I just want to say one thing because you reminded me of it. The Super Mario Brothers movie is pretty. Come on. It's great. Guys, it's great. No, no, no. You're wrong. It's great.

I have funness for that movie. have to say. Can I proffer a theory and then have you guys comment on, on, this is my theory on why video game movies suck and why they're structurally hard to do. It's not the directors because Dungay Jones is a fine director. Mike Newell has some legitimate bangers in his IMD B catalog. And then, you know, he would go on to do Prince of Persia, which decided that Jake Gyllenhaal is a good Persian. And it's not, it's not, it's. And it's not the writing or the underlying game because some of these games are, you know, like Hitman is a great iconic game. Warcraft is an incredible game experience.

You don't think they're picking the wrong games. I don't think they're picking the wrong games. I don't think it's the talent. I think it's two things. I think the interactivity of games makes the adaption of story difficult. That's one. And two, because games, especially at the level where, you know, the business people would want to adapt a game of like, You're talking about AAA games when you're going to adapt a game.

And games at that level are basically IP for IP's sake. You know, they're not, they're not auteur-driven things. And so they're owned by corporate entities that do not want to see them diluted in any way. So it's, they give you very little latitude to adapt, to truly adapt, you know, no matter who the director is. So your theory of why video game movies are bad is capitalism. Yes, essentially. Sure. I mean, I agree with that.

I mean, I almost wonder if the best kind of video game movie is just not going to be, it's going to take the premise of what a video game can do, but not be based on a video game. So if you take something like Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, something I remember about that movie was that the CGI of the kind of kaiju fighting robots that people were occupying in that movie felt very video gamey to me. And the premise of kind of this monster roleplay felt interesting in that way. Like more interesting than just being a monster movie.

It was a movie about role play in a way that I think seems relevant to video game movies, but that movie's not based on a video game. It doesn't have the problems of IP. It doesn't have the problems of a corporate overlord, you know, needing the movie to look or feel a certain way. It can be a movie that takes some of the same questions and does something that maybe these video game movies should be doing. But I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, one other thing, Westworld also, by the way, to your point, is a video game in a lot of ways. But one other thing I was thinking about, too, is a lot of great games. The main character is in a lot of ways to cipher because you're playing the main character. And also, a lot of times you don't know where you are as the main character, whether it's, you know, Bioshock is a good example of that, too. And part of that is because you're the protagonist and you're figuring it out as you go.

And so you get to have these revelations. But it's a bit different when the protagonist is represented on screen and all of a sudden, they have to have your experience of either not knowing something or coming to understand something or being a full-fledged character without you seeing through their eyes. And I think that does make a translation problem. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Kim, do you see visual hallmarks more and more in movies that you watch and you think, oh, that's video gamey? I guess the go-to example would be Edge of Tomorrow,

but do you think that if it hasn't worked out so well in actual adaptations, people are maybe appropriating the look or the aesthetics of video games in movie-making? Yeah, I mean, I do actually. I mean, I would actually, I would love to see more of that. You know, I would love to see on the whole. I think that CJA spectacles could be more interesting and more freeform. And I think that's something that video games seem to be better at I would love to, I'm thinking a lot about the movie Hardcore Henry, which is not a

CGI spectacle in the same way as like Warcraft or whatever. It does try to embody role play in a very surrealistic and weird way. I, I'd rather see more of that. I'd rather see more movies that, I don't know, emphasize the real a bit less. That's what video game movies are really, video games rather really good for. It's like you, you don't have to be tied to reality. You can do anything, you can be anything. Seems like movies aren't quite there. Yeah, there is, there's a meta thing that happens in the Assassin's Creed games, which are games that I, some of them I like and some of them I hate. But you know, there's this, you play a character who is time traveling through his own DNA back in time to who is controlling another character.

So there's this whole meta control commentary. And it's, you can't really do that in games, in movies, you know, so it's hard to create that. And like hardcore Henry, I think came to close. Come on, they can barely do that in the game. I mean, it's just the stupidest thing. I hate that. It actually, it's like the worst aspect of those games. Like, like, why do I got to be in some kind of future office?

I don't understand. This is stupid. I'll just say it. Sorry, I interrupt. That's also something I do. Keep going. Well, I mean, part of the bit is, Jason might be right that it's not mainly, bad choices about which games to adapt, but there have been some odd choices about which games

to adapt, whether it's the Angry Birds movie that came out this year or... Oh, I forgot about that. The forthcoming Tetris trilogy, which doesn't see it. I mean, I get that there is name recognition there, and maybe that's all you need, but there is not a lot of lore to the... You try telling that story in two movies. I mean, why are those blocks falling out of the sky? Yeah.

We don't know. Maybe there are three movies there. But it is weird. I mean, I guess that's just a larger trend. It's just anything recognizable. You snap up and make something out of it because people have heard of it. And so that helps it break through all the noise of all the many competing properties. Did any of you see Warcraft this year?

Yes. What did you think? I thought there were certain parts that were kind of interesting, but it was just overbaked. And, you know, that's one of those games where, the player's experience is so much about what makes that property exciting and emotional. It's like this shared experience between people raiding a dungeon, killing some mystical beast, you know. And the lore of Warcraft is kind of, I don't know, I think, like, you know, a lot of times

people ignore the video game lore to an extent. They take what they want from it and they leave the rest. And you can't do that in a movie. and I, you know, it just was not a good movie. Yeah, it's like, it feels like a world-building problem. The kind of thing that you can do in a game like Warcraft is just in a movie, you're going to have a narrative. You're going to wind up with the movie that's going to feel like it's in the tradition

of like Lord of the Rings. When in the game, it's like getting to explore being active, these things, you just really can't imitate that. And I don't think we've come up with like a movie form or structure that has that same sense of play. It's literally just a sense of playfulness that's just missing. It's, it's weird. I don't know. Yeah, it's also a little bit too that some of the, some of the games that they adapt, like what makes them great games is the fun of playing them and the and the mechanics, but not necessarily like the story. And I don't know. There have been lately, I think,

more cinematic games. I think of like the Last of Us is a good example of that where actually lends itself to being a movie in a way that's more obvious to me because it plays a bit more like a movie. And it is a narrative story that lays out and you kind of move your way through it. And the gameplay is really fun, but the story is essential to that. The last of us is a good example of kind of the roadblocks in this particular space because it's currently in development hell after some buzz after its announcement. And like you said, it's a very cinematic game. I think that particular game brings up another issue. which is like a pacing issue.

You know, if you play a game, you have to be continually doing things. You know, if I, you may not notice over the course of The Last of Us that you killed 450 people, but you probably did because that's what was necessary to keep you engaged in the game. Obviously, you cannot create a movie about a 14-year-old girl who kills like 300 human beings and a thousand zombies. Well, not with that attitude. You got to figure out a way. You got to figure out a way to pace that differently,

and I think that's one of the issues. I don't know how you solved that problem, but what do you guys think about that? I think it's smart. I think you're right. I think it's actually more, honestly, it's more of a problem with video games. I mean, there's a, it is,

there is that, constantly that tension between the quality of the story and then the murderous rampaging main character who you embody. And I think that's really, it's actually less a knock on the adaptation problem than it is on the kind of expectations we have. Even I think about like some of my favorite games

and the body counts are extraordinary, and they exceed anything and even the most ridiculous Arnold Schwarzenegger running man 80s action movie. The other thing is that I don't know how hard I really should be rooting for a video game movie to succeed. I mean, I'd like it to happen just so there wouldn't be such a stigma, I think, just because it probably reflects poorly on video games

as a pastime or, you know, people dismiss video games, I think just because when they get ported to, a different audience at the movies, they're always terrible. And so it's easy to assume that video games are also terrible or that they don't have good stories to tell. So that's one reason to root for them, I suppose. But the individual movies, like, I don't really get excited if I hear that a game I like is maybe going to be a movie. And not only because of the poor track record, but because it's just not that exciting a prospect to me. Like we're doing a group post for The Ringer right now on things we're looking forward to in 2007.

And one of the things I picked was the Dark Tower movie because I've been reading the Dark Tower books for years and imagining it in my head. But I want to see it on a big screen with Idriselba and Matthew McConaughey. That would be significantly different from the experience I've had with it thus far. Whereas if something like The Last of Us or Firewatch becomes a movie, then it seems like the best case scenario is that it's just the game without the interactivity, more or less. I don't know that there's anything a good video game movie could do that the good video game didn't already do, but maybe I'm missing something. Well, what you're saying is reminding me that there are those final fantasy movies. Right. Yes.

Yes. I mean, I just wondered what people were getting out of them. Besides, I always hear about the music. But besides that, like, these are movies that also go out of their way to look exactly like the video game. What are people getting out of it if they can't play? If they're not a part of the narrative, if they're, you know, what is it doing for people? I guess maybe you're getting some backstory or extra story. If they're not straight adaptations of the games,

you would be finding out more about the universe, that sort of thing, which if you're a Final Fantasy person, is exciting. But if it's just a direct adaptation... But if you're cool, you don't care. Yeah. If you're... I'm scrolling through a list of upcoming game movies,

and there are a lot of really good games that might be movies, but I just don't know. know that a movie version could offer something that, like, are you guys excited by the idea of seeing a game that you like become a good movie? Or is it just sort of extraneous if you've already played it? I would love, I would love to see a great version of some of the games I love. But I have to say, like, I don't think we should be as insecure. Like, it might just be part of the problem. You know, look, there are, there are always the people who say, like, oh, the book was better when a great book becomes a great movie. But, of course, then things also do go the other way.

You guys hear my dog barking? Yes. Hold on one second. Are you killing the dog? You don't have to kill. Guys, I'm back. I'm going to jump right at. I'm going to just make that.

All I was going to say is, what did I miss? Did I miss anything great? I was wondering, I was wondering if you were killing the dog. Don't do that. Listen, I take being a podcast guest so seriously. And honestly, like, this is a dog that should have known better and RIP. Very sweet. I'll miss her.

Honestly, she's a great comfort. She's a great comfort in my life, so it was hard. But anyway, like, look, there are great books to become great movies. No one ever says, like, wow, the novelization of that movie was really awesome. And part of this may just be that these are not, it makes sense, you know, a book can be a lot like a script and can become a blueprint for a great movie. But maybe a video game and a movie are not equal forms in the sense that to go from a video game to a movie isn't about adding something. It's about taking something away. And that may hurt the process.

And the fact that I think video games have a certain stigma in terms of the quality of the storytelling and the writing is, I think, sometimes earned. But more and more it is not earned. It leads me to not care that much. That's what I have to say about that. I think they should make papers please into a movie. I've been thinking a lot about that, actually. I'm glad you said that. I'm glad you said that. Especially now. I think that we could really use a Papers Please movie. Yes. Papers Please. For those who don't know, you play a border guard working at like a passport crossing point in a fictional totalitarian state where people come up to you and you have to check their papers against certain rules and decide whether they are allowed to enter or not enter the state. There's that, do you play that VR game, keep talking, or you'll explode, or I may have said that wrong, but that also... I have not.

We're trying to get someone to send us a VR rig, because... You just got to keep talking about how excited you are and how much you talk. We can't wait to... We can't, you know, I think it's the medium of the future. You guys think the witness to be a good movie? I don't think so. No, the witness? No.

A video game about how you wander around a landscape and feel dumb because you can't solve a puzzle. Yeah, I think that would be. Well, yeah, Papers Please would be cool. That sounds like more of a Keeping It 1600 podcast topic. Sure. All right, well, there's always the Angry Birds 2 movie, which is coming in 2018, so we can hold out hope for that. Oh, I thought you were joking. So you can find John on Keeping at 1600 on Twitter at John Lovett.

You can find Kim at The Ringer and at Melville Natick. Always good to talk to a couple fellow northeasterners who pronounced Mario the way I pronounce Mario. Thanks, guys. Thank you. All right, so we will be back in just a minute to talk about the first person shooter renaissance with Chris Plant from the verge. Today's episode of Achievement-oriented is brought to you by the Ringer podcast network. If you enjoy basketball, you need to check out the Ringer NBA show, where every week

the Ringer's Chris Vernon hosts an all-star cast of Ringer staffers, sometimes including Jason, NBA players, front office personnel, and more to discuss all things happening in the association. You can subscribe to this show on iTunes by going to iTunes.com slash the Ringer or finding it wherever you get podcasts. All right, so we are joined now by Chris Plant. He is a culture editor at The Verge. He was the co-founder of Polygon. Hey, Chris. Hey, how you doing? All right. So we started this podcast not even two months ago, and yet we have already done episodes about Battlefield 1, Titanfall 2, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Dishonored 2, if that counts as a shooter. And there are many more great games in that genre this year that we started too late to touch on. And so you and Sam Biford at The Verge did a dialogue just yesterday about how 2016 revived the first person shooter genre and you got into whether it was the best year ever for shooters.

So our first episode was shooter related. So we'll end our year on a shooter-centric episode also. So why do you think it was? Because shooters seemed to have been in a slump and seemed to be kind of copycat. And people were wondering if the genre had any innovation left. and then there was this sudden flowering. So how did it happen all at once? So I'm going to ask both of you to kind of like help me process my thoughts.

Sure. I'm still like working my way through this. Yeah. But here's like my like kind of wild theory is that at some point in a last, I don't know, like five or six years, people who made video games like, oh, it's called a shooter. So that's all you have to do. Just make a game where you shoot people in the face. And like, it's pretty good at that. And they did that.

And a lot of people were like, hey, did you play that game where you shot the people in the face? That one was a pretty good one. I think I'll keep buying it. And they did. And eventually people got kind of keen to this strategy. And they were like, you know what? All these games are kind of the same. And then this year, the studios were like, hey, we have to figure out something else here.

It turns out that it's not just fun shooting people in the face. So they added things to the games. So Doom, right? Like, Doom seems like on its surface, hey, that's a game about shooting people in the face. But really, it's like kind of like a rhythm game. It's a game about balancing... Meilaying them in the face. Yeah, meleeing them, getting health by going in close and then getting away and then shooting people in the face.

There's like, there's a hook there that isn't, oh, I'm just going to hide here until they get exhausted and then I'm going to shoot them in the face. You look at Battlefield 1 and they finally had this idea where they're like, hey, you know all that fun stuff? you can do a multiplayer? What if you did that in single player instead of just shooting people in the face? And then they were like, you know what, dogg on it? You got a promotion. And we're going to make that game. Same with Titanfall 2. Like Titanfall 2 is like probably the perfect example of this because each level they were like, okay, so we got the shooting in the face down really well. But what else can you do? Well, you can wall run. Okay, cool. That's a good start. Well, you can manipulate time. Okay. Which, which, spoiler, like, you can manipulate.

time in Titan Fall 2. That's like the hook of the year, right? Yes. You're playing a game and it pauses and they're like, oh, by the way, press X and time becomes a false thing. Like, oh, yeah, cool, that makes sense. Dishonor did the same thing. Yeah, for real.

And I think that that is what stands out to me about this year. And the games that didn't work are the games that, like, didn't get the memo. Like, I, Mafia 3, man, I really wanted to like this. game that had some real ambitions. But the core of the game was just another shooter. These levels were like essentially closets where you followed a straight line and then the tactical advantage you have is that like, I don't know, some weapons shoot faster than others and you have like a really awful knife that like guts people like poor salmon. It just that that type of stuff just doesn't really click and play for me anymore. It's kind of why I think Call of Duty

Infinite Warfare didn't really find its audience this year is because yet again, it's mostly just shooting people. And the stuff that isn't like there's all these fantastic zipping around space levels that you kind of don't even control. You hold a trigger and it pulls you to where you need to be. And it looks beautiful, but you're not really doing anything. And I think that is the rule for shooters moving forward is like, yeah, shooting the people is assumed, now what? Although Titanfall didn't sell that well either, right? And it was maybe the most inventive. I don't know whether that was just a larger trend that wasn't shooter-specific.

It seemed like dishonored in watchdogs maybe fell into that category too. Yeah, I would say Titanfall had this crazy competitor that happened to be released by the same company. And yeah, if I had to point to one disadvantage, you would probably be that. You know, it's funny. Doom for me, there's two games that I think are. are almost like a developer-centric game. These are the games where you're like, oh, man, look at how clever these developers are. And it was Dysartan 2 and Doom.

But for some reason, those games didn't, I like them fine, but I just didn't, I couldn't connect with them in a way where I just kept coming back to them. I really enjoyed the, like, the retro simplicity of Doom and also like the kind of the ruthlessness of the design. Similarly, Dishonored, I think is just extremely clever. But for some reason that it just didn't, I don't end up playing them that much. I think it's funny that you say like their developer games. Yeah.

Because I, I mean, I've been looking through different sites like interview developers and get their top 10 list. And to me, weirdly, a developer game, especially from like the perspective of people who work at AAA Studios, is uncharted 4. Whoa. And this is a less good game. Last year, The Order. Do you remember that game? Yeah. where you like, you walked around and shooting werewolves.

A developer game in my head is like a technical achievement more than like anything else. Because I feel like people who make games are so caught up in the actual process of it that when they see something that is a technical marvel, it means something to them that it doesn't to the rest of the audience. And I've never, I guess, yeah, I don't know who I guess these intricate design games like Dishonored or. because I weirdly haven't seen that game on like list from kind of the year-end people. The Order was one of those games. I remember going through all these like NeoGaf different forms and stuff. And that was one of those games where like dev people just couldn't stop talking about the load screens and stuff like that.

Oh man. These are the best load screens I've ever seen in my life. And like, that's like, sure. Okay. Yeah. That's the kind of thing you care about. I guess if you are deep inside the industry, then you have to figure out how to make those things interesting yourself.

So one of the things that we touched on last week when we were talking to a couple of guys from Lucasfilm in EA about upcoming Star Wars games, and we were asking them about what genres they were focusing on or which genres work best for Star Wars games. And they sort of said that genre is more of a nebulous construct than it used to be, maybe, that, you know, even if it is a space shooter or it's a third-person action adventure or something, there can be a whole bunch of different elements that come into that. And that's sort of what we saw, I think, with shooters this year. Maybe there were lots of vehicle segments. There were flying segments in games that you would consider shooters.

And I don't know if that stems maybe from just indie developers being out there, doing creative things and kind of putting some pressure. on the bigger developers to get more creative, you know, sort of similar to what we've seen in TV, maybe when there are a million networks that make scripted TV. And so there are shows that can go to autors and creative people who can just do unconventional things. And so it sort of trickles down and it rubs off on kind of the big budget games or the big budget shows. And maybe that is part of the sudden creativity we're seeing here. There's just more options, more diversity in the people making games.

Yeah, I wonder if that's it. I think I'm a little more cynical about it, especially when, like, developers or especially publishers, say like, oh, we're post-genre, or the thing I see a lot more is post-story. You know, it's just a sandbox, and you'll tell the story, and then you'll share it with your friends, and then they'll all buy our game. And I think about that with these games, and I... I think part of it is like, yeah, it does come from a place of creativity.

I can't be like that negative in my outlook. But I do think a lot of this comes from, we need to create giant open spaces with many complex systems that all react to one another because that's what works well on YouTube. And that's what streams well. And very narrow and linear experiences, like the traditional first-person shooter that really became popular in the wake of call duty, just doesn't. doesn't play to that audience as much. And there's like, of course, Call of Duty has the advantage of streaming for competitive multiplayer,

but there really is this audience that just devours weird things you do in open spaces. And I think there is a realization that every game essentially needs to have some form of that within it. So I think in some way, that's why everything has become closer to an open world game, not necessarily because Open World makes more money like Grand Theft Auto, but Open World allows for an abundance of player creativity that developers believe will create however many dollars of marketing that they don't actually have to pay for because they show up in fan-made projects. Two of the most interesting FPS kind of strategies, I think, of the last year have been Destiny's kind of RPG episodic, very World of War.

craft kind of style looter shooter game that wants to keep you engaged in the world by constant questing and things of that nature. And then Overwatch, which kind of like issued all of like the military style aesthetic that's been so popular over the last 10 years and just went with a really strong team-based dynamic. Do you see either of those two things becoming the dominant kind of style going forward um no i almost i feel like there we're talking about almost kind of like three entirely different spaces which is always the trick of like video games right right they're a sport but they're also narrative art and they're also this like experimental place to test out ideas in a safe space and i think of overwatch is like yeah that that's a hyper refined version of moba design

mixed with like team-based shooters. And do I think like people rip that off? Yeah, definitely. Do I think that there are good odds that everyone who rips that off will be kind of like everyone who ripped off World of Warcraft and that there will be like small player bases but none of them make money? Almost certainly. That's the trouble with those games is like large, hyper-popular team-based games

like a sport become dominant. And people remember football, but people don't remember insert like knockoff random football that I'm sure somebody tried oh Vince McMahon made one right Oh the XFL Yeah nobody nobody remembers the XFL So I feel like I I think there will be a lot of people who try to make more

Overwatch one came out like what like a week before after battleboard Yeah yeah That timing truly the XFL of first person shooters Is not going to be something they put on a box And yeah I think that'll be kind of its own thing And in the same way, I think Destiny is its own thing of, like, it's really cornered this MMO side of the shooter market.

So, yeah, I think there'll be lots of rip-offs. Do I think, like, we'll see major successful versions of those things? No, I think, like, those things will probably be the kind of pillars of that form. So we've been talking a lot about sort of these things that surround the actual games themselves, whether it's the setting or the design or maybe putting a priority on single player as opposed to multiplayer. But the actual act of shooting in an FPS you kind of discuss in your dialogue is largely the same. And you're sort of puzzling over why it continues to be so appealing to point a cursor at something on a screen and press a trigger on your controller and have that thing you're pointing at on the screen, react to that in some way.

It seems very simple and like we should have gotten tired of this by now. So have you come to any conclusions about why we haven't? And do you think there has been any innovation in how that kind of core mechanic works, maybe with something like super hot, which we haven't talked about on the podcast, but was one of Jason's favorite games of the year, for instance? Yeah. I mean, I think we're just all sick and we like to watch people's heads pop like little balloons full of water. That's like my big read on it.

And I guess I'm part of that because I love these. games but yeah there there is some there's something in inside of us that the shooter unlocks by hitting someone in the head i think also it is it's so gross to talk about this so like just like whoever's listening promised that you'll never cut these words out and piece them together is like some type of like murder note um but there's like a perfect strategy level to shooting the head in that like it's small and it requires some skill and there's nothing to the right left or above it so like there's a risk reward to shooting at that versus shooting at the chest this is really fucked up um but like but that i think like literally as a risk reward it's it's made for games in some weird way of okay well do i put four shots in the part i know i can hit or do i go for one shot in the top spot so i think that's part of it I also think it just communicates like a blinking red dot, you know, what do you go for, right? Do you remember the excom first person shooter that got turned into like a weird third person game like five years ago?

Yes. So when they were originally making that, there was a trailer that came out and you were like in 1950s Southern California, like Newport Beach or something. And it's like quaint house gets attacked by black goop. essentially that just morphs. And from what I've heard about the development of that game was that there was no real way for people to know if they were doing a good job shooting it. Because when you get away from something that has a head, it starts to be a little less clear what the goal is or what the target is. And I think that is another reason that people default to humanoid, or at least like creatures with a nagging on them. I do think we're like starting.

to maybe see people push the, I won't say the envelope, but like, yeah, now you can like stab people. Like that seems to be like a big move forward for the genre and or you can like suppress them in terms of games like dishonored. They're founding other ways for you to engage with a human body other than shooting them. I think something like SuperHod is interesting for like people who don't know about it. It's a shooter where time only moves when you. you move. So if you're not moving, bullets just kind of like barely push through the air and you shoot these like ruby red glass statues who are coming at you like the bad dudes and the matrix. But like does that really change anything? Not really. Like technically one hit kills them no matter

where you shoot them, but I found myself shooting for the head every single time anyway. So yeah, I mean, I don't know. How about you guys? Like what do you think? Why do you keep playing games? where you get to shoot human beings in the face. I think clearly there's some part of the human spirit that lusts to destroy other people. And enjoys it, you know, like, at least wants to practice it. And so I think games give people that outlet. Certainly when I play, like I play a lot of Overwatch.

And it's incredibly frustrating, but when it's good, it's like a really fun. experience that makes you feel like you're part of a team and it's like of course there's the whole power thing and then there's you know uh overwatch is a great example of what you were talking about where you don't just have to shoot people like i can be a tank with a huge hammer and and smash people in the face with a hammer which is incredibly viscerally satisfying when you actually put them down uh so yeah i think it's obviously like it's just it's a power dynamic it's something that human beings it's a dark side of of our nature that we enjoy

doing that thank God we have this outlet for it. That's my take on it. There must be some of that, but I would say, and maybe this is more because I'm single player oriented and I'm less often playing other humans and getting competitive about it, but I don't feel like I'm satisfying some sort of bloodlust while I'm playing a shooter most of the time. I guess I could be subconsciously, but I think it's just sort of, I think it was Tom Bissell at Grantland maybe wrote about how shooters are kind of puzzles in a sense in that you know you're you're interacting with this environment and you are doing it by pressing a button that manipulates other things in the environment and it happens to be bullets and blood but you could look at it as something else as just obstacles to get past and you're doing that with a virtual gun but i find that it's easy to pick up and play right like it's not usually you don't usually get stuck in a shooter you could have some bad rounds or something, but you're not usually lost, you're not frustrated really. And so, especially these days when I don't always have a whole day to devote to gaming and I have to

pick up and play in little chunks here and there, shooters are very convenient for that because it tends to be short levels or little episodes or checkpoints pretty frequently scattered throughout a level. So it's a pretty good pick up and play in short playtimes, and you can always count on some sort of satisfaction at the end of it. Yeah, I'll push back on the Tom thing just a little because I think like calling anything in video games like a puzzle is like, yes, that's a video game. Like you could literally say that for all of video games or in most things. And like, come on, Tom, we all read your book.

We know how much you like shooting things. Like it's not a secret from us. But yeah, I do agree. I think there is a pick up and playness to it. And I don't know if that is just, I don't know if it's just this weird thing of the games that are made to be blockbusters and that are designed to be easy enough that they are pick up and play also just happen to be the games where we shoot people. Like, is there an alternate reality where a different genre became popular and all of the money was going into that and it was also designed to be more user friendly? Like, is it because of the genre or is it because that's just where it's, publishers are putting their money.

One thing I find interesting about this discussion is that the pickup and plainness of shooters is something that's kind of been established through like a shared control scheme language over the last 20 or so years. Like if you played a shooter in 1998 once,

I'll bet you could pick up a PlayStation 4 controller right now and put in the shooter of your choice and pretty much know what to do within a minute and a half of beginning to play the game. I think that's much like the headshots thing. It's kind of like this natural shared cultural memory.

You know, like the headshots thing makes sense. If you, like, children should not play extremely violent video games, but like if you put someone who had never played a shooter game before at a shooter, I think they'd understand that if you shoot someone in the head with a sniper rifle, they should die. You know, like. Yeah. And I've heard developers talk about this too as a,

as a kind of thing that those are the frustration points that gamers will encounter. Like there's a shared set of expectations within the genre that need to happen. You shoot somebody in the head with a sniper before they've got to die. You know, if you pull the right trigger, that's to fire. And I think that's kind of comforting in a way because it's like really is this shared cultural memory. It's a way to participate in this thing that many other people participate in the same way that they are doing it. Man, now I'm just thinking of, did you ever see that game Soldier of Fortune back in the day? Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry. And just having flashbacks to that game where people's like, you shot somebody in their head and it just kind of broke apart into like jiblets. Yeah, that's like the sniper, the sniper series is very much. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you hit that headshot, it's like this almost pornographic slow mo that's just like too much for me. And it goes into like X-ray mode, right?

Yeah. You're going to see, like, their skull kind of fracture into their brain? Yes, it's way too much. Oh, man. Just talking about this. Yeah, that's good. So maybe we can close or come to a close the way that you did in your article, which is the premise, was this the best year ever for the genre, the built-in debate that that generates.

So what did you guys conclude? Have you had any additional thoughts on weather 2016 was the highlight in the long? in storied history of first-person shooters. Yeah, I'm trying to remember our exact years. I believe one of them was 2007, which was the year that Orange Box came out, which contained Team Fortress, Half-Life 2 in its episodes in the original portal.

That's a great year. That's a great year in one box, basically. Godfair, I think, came out that year, either that year, right around that. Yeah, I mean, that's a great year. Bioshuck. Yeah. And Halo 3.

Yeah, that's a pretty darn good year. And the difference between that year and this year is, in the case of, Stalker came out that year also, which is really incredible. I mean, talk about a game that, like, completely inspired all of these open-world shooters that have become so popular. I think the inclusion of, like, Bioshock and Call of Duty and Stalker, all those games, looking back, seem to have created different paths for the genre that I don't necessarily know if I feel about this year. Like this year feels like a really polished version of a lot of different ideas that were happening. But I don't know if it necessarily feels like we'll look back on this year and be like, oh, the same way that we do with a game like Far Cry 2 and say, oh, well, clearly this game inspired all these other things. I think we'll look back and say, well, that was a really good year of good games. Can we convince Ben to play Star Doe Valley for a second?

Oh, yeah, sure. I am convinced. I don't need to be convinced. You need to play. Chris, I'd like you to comment on Stardue Valley being secretly one of the most trenchant commentaries on late capitalism and the economy in media right now. Sure. Would you agree with that statement? No. I would say it is, I would say, you know, like when you watch one of those documentaries by like Morgan Spurlock,

And you're like, yeah, yeah, that guy has a point. It's kind of like that. You're like, hey, look at that guy. You like, kind of has a point. But do I think it is a very good game? Yeah, you know I do. Do I think it has a very disturbing presentation of how relationships work? Like all video games?

Yes, yes, I do. It turns out looking for a fact on how to give Leah the best gifts is not the best way to teach the youth of our nation about love, but, but hey, that's, that's okay. It is progressive in that you can, I believe, marry pretty much anyone in the game who's single, which is, that's nice. That's, that does seem like a thing that you do not get to see in, well, shooters, for one, marriage. There's no time for marriage when you have so many people to kill. Yeah, the thing that, that blows me about Star do is it's, on the one hand, it is a farming simulator. There are these, like, secret relationships. There's a, there's a secretly deep lore to it. And then there's like this whole

roguelike dungeon crawler thing that happens that's like, it literally can go on forever. Yeah. Can I tell you the one thing that would make this a better political commentary? Yeah. Would be if you only grew corn in raised cattle. And then like every month you got a subsidy check in the mail. I think that would be. You also can't, you can't, you can't like, sloth. your animals. Oh, sure. I mean, that would be a very different

and closer to realistic video game. Ben, you got to play this game. I will, I promise. As soon as I'm finished mowing people down, I will do some farming sim. I'm looking forward to it. I'll make time over the break. All right, so I think we will wrap it up there.

You can find Chris at The Verge. You can find him on Twitter at Plant. There is a silent E on the end there. Make sure you include it. Oh my dog barking at the idea of my French last name, but sure. All right, good to talk to you and also to hear from your dog. Thanks, Chris. Thanks.

Bye. All right. So that will do it for this episode. That will do it for this year. This is our last show of 2016. And my takeaway from 2016, this is the year that Doom actually came out. The last Guardian actually came out. Final Fantasy 15 actually came out, and they were all good.

Not only do they exist, but they were all pretty good and worth the wait. And VR is a pretty real thing all of a sudden. So anything is possible in 2017 if all of these things could happen in 2016. Let's hope the world is just like video games. All right. Are you ready to desynchronize? I am. Okay. Happy holidays, everyone.

We hope you get all the games you want, and we will talk to you. in 2017. Right.