HEAVY RAIN, ART AND CINEMA
Heavy Rain
“To me, art is imagination in motion. Taking something from the brain and transforming it into something tangible; something that can be questioned, loved, hated, moving, and easily remembered or forgotten. Without art there is no point in life and without life art could not flourish.” said Broadway Actor Brad Bass.
Many definitions have been made for art from artists to writers. From music to sculpture, many areas can be considered as art. But, can we say that for games? Are games a kind of art? The film critic Roger Ebert wrote on his blog for announce that ‘games can never be art.’[1]. He explains the reason for thinking that way with “One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome.”. But unlike it, there are many articles explaining that games are art like Aaron Smuts’[2] Even a different genre has been formed as “art games”. Well, can we accept that every game is art?
The “Heavy Rain” game is a good example to study in this area. Heavy Rain is a video game developed by Quantic Dream. “The game, the brainchild of its director David Cage, was described in promotional materials as an interactive drama.” [3] This game is about the story of a father with his children and allows us to manage four characters. It is a story based and cinematic game that doesn’t give us too much control. In this context, at first we can look at the place of the narrative in art. Narrative is what gives people experience meaning. Narrative is what triggers emotions. It can change something. If storytelling is including an art value, games that make it are including art value, too.
Writer Thomas Crampton published “For France, Video Games Are as Artful as Cinema” in 2006 in The New York Times. “Video games are not a mere commercial product,” he insisted. “They are a form of artistic expression involving creation from script writers, designers and directors.”. The connection between the games and the movies has been going on for years. But nowadays, with the development of game graphics and the use of the techniques used in cinema in games, this connection is intertwined. Although it is confusing whether a work is a game or a movie, we are in a position to produce an idea by defining them.
Heavy Rain’s graphic director Christophe Brusseaux talked about how art was used to unique experience for Heavy Rain in GDC 2011 talk. The subject of the presentation was how the game was made, who was working on and what processes were going on. He says that they used motion capture in the production and that they worked with nearly 80 actors. In other words, we can understand that it is a game that requires people to act like cinema or theater. In addition, it is known that motion capture technology is frequently used in science fiction films such as Avatar, Lord of the Rings. This technology giving us some of the most realistic and relatable video game characters ever put the screen. So we can say that game’s characters Scott Shelby, Norman Jayden, Madison Paige, Ethan Mars and more are played by actors like movies. Besides, they should to dub every character in games like animated cartoon movies.
And another issue is the camera angles within the game. There are so many camera angles used by the film industry. These angles tell us what is meant at that moment. If there is a character on the stage, it shows us about this character’s feelings. We can see this in Heavy Rain, too. When one of the main characters feels uncomfortable, close-up shooting is used and low angle is used to show the strength of one of the characters. In the same way, we often encounter “Dolly Shots” when there is a shocking moment. We can handle the first scenes of the game. While we control Norman, who trying to find his child, the crowd around him as well as the camera angle is trying to transfer to the player how difficult the situation.
Micheal Nixon and Jim Bizzocchi did a research about how interaction and cinematics effects player in Heavy Rain.[4] According to their research, they claim that story-based interactive games are the next generation movies. “David Bordwell refers to this alternative aesthetic as “art cinema”, a form that privileges the internal psychology of character and an associated ambiguity of plot over the determined and deterministic narrative of the classical Hollywood cinema.” they wrote.
As a result of all these articles and thoughts, we can easily see that games like “Heavy Rain” are intertwined with cinema. In addition, we can say that there are many artistic values in this game and their directors and actors pay attention to this. This video game can be counted as “art form” because it fits many art definitions. Considering its story, effects, scripts, music, lighting, camera angles, background, city arrangement, actors and directors; we can easily see how similar form it is to cinema.
[1] https://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-never-be-art
[2] Smuts, Aaron. “Are Video Games Art?.” Contemporary Aesthetics 3.1 (2005): 6.
[3] Davidson, D.. Well Played 3.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning. 1, figshare, 5 July 2011, doi:10.1184/R1/6687050.v1.
[4] Nixon, Michael, and Jim Bizzocchi. “Press X for Meaning: Interaction Leads to Identification in Heavy Rain.” DiGRA Conference. 2013.
