Auteur Theory and Video Games
Sometimes a video game is like a novel, freely conceived and planned by a single author, a door to his personal and imaginary home
If a book writer can have his personality found in a maze of words, a creative director of a video game doesn’t even have a place to hide it in his work.
The term ‘auteur’ (fr., “author”) gained a stricter meaning in the late 1950s, initially in the field of film criticism, later also in other media, such as video games.
Within this concept, we say that a director is an auteur in relation to his work if and only if he has “signature”, leadership, and autonomy in his creation; that is:
- he has his own recognizable style and/or a recurring theme in his career;
- he has a high degree of control over the parties involved in the development of the work; and
- he has autonomy in the general creative process of his work.
Andrew Sarris (2012) synthesized these three definitional elements into one sentence:
“A Filmmaker who’s individual style and complete control over all elements of production give a film its personal and unique stamp.”
These three premises of the Auteur Theory or Auteurism date back to the 1940s and 1950s. The first premise designates the signature of an auteur, which reflects, for example, the statement by André Bazin, in Cahiers du cinema (1943), that wrote:
“[…] Directors are the authors of the film and should create their own signature style and not be totally influenced by the script given.”
The second and third premises reflect the comparison of direction in audiovisual works with that of the writer in prose or poetry, a comparison initially made by Alexandre Astruc.
In this sense, a cinema or video game auteur has central control over the elements of his work and can express himself through it as a writer does only with words.
Due to this triple finding, the official name of the theory emerged in an article by François Truffaut, in 1955, observing styles and recurring themes in the works of directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks.
It is also worth noting that two of the main theorists of Auteur Theory — François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard — later became great directors of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague).
In this article, I’ll cover two subjects about Auteur Theory and video games. First, I’ll explain the extent to which auteurism applies to some video game directors. Finally, I’ll discuss some frequent criticisms of auteurism in video games.
Auteur Theory in Video Games
According to some criticisms that will be commented on in the last topic of this essay, the application of auteurism in cinema is not as simple as it may seem. But in video games some additional difficulties arise from the fact that it is not only an audiovisual medium, but also a highly interactive medium.
The auteur theory, which was derived largely from Astruc’s elucidation of the concept of caméra-stylo (“camera-pen”), holds that the director, who oversees all audio and visual elements of the motion picture, is more to be considered the “author” of the movie than is the writer of the screenplay.
However, since the difference of video games is not the cameras, but the controls, we also need to consider them in the three aspects of Auteur’s theory. A video game auteur necessarily needs control and freedom in gameplay design, and his signature style may or may not be present in gameplay.
The first two aspects are trivially supported by creators of indie games of different genres developed practically by one person, as is the case of Cave Story (by Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya), Braid (by Jonathan Blow), Undertale (by Robert F . Fox or “Toby Fox”), among others.
These two aspects are also found in some video game directors of bigger budget games, especially when they are developers who preside over or are highly respected within a company, This is the case with Shigeru Miyamoto, at Nintendo, Hideki Kamiya, at Platinum Games, and Hidetaka Miyazaki at From Software.
As for the third premise for an Auteur (i.e. being easily recognizable in style or thematic approach), this can occur in different fields of game design simultaneously.
As Nicolas Turcev shows us in his book The Strange Works of Taro Yoko (2018), this is the case, for example, of Yoko Taro. His Drakengard/NieR games have peculiar aesthetic traits (due to the audiovisual contrast between brutality and melancholy, and the alternation between free and fixed camera in different angles). They also feature a well-known plot that exposes and criticizes violence and human fragility in a narrative design of complementary routes, as well as gameplay that invests, in a unique way, both in text experience and in shooter (in different modes) and action-RPG in his style.
On the other hand, Tim Schafer (Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, The Secret of Monkey Island, etc.), for example, is especially recognizable for a peculiar comic style of narrative design. Éric Chahi (Another World and Heart of Darkness) makes his mark mainly in the visual design of his games. And Keita Takahashi (Katamari and other games) is most recognizable for his inventive gameplay.
However, all these authors are equally auteurs of video games, because it does not matter in what field of game design their brand of style or thematic approach is. What matters is that there is such a brand and that they enjoy high freedom and management power.
But how exactly can we define a video game auteur’s “mark”? Is this really that clear? This is an important point that I believe is worth pausing for a while to talk about two difficulties in characterizing an “auteur style or theme”:
- difficulty in describing complex design constructions where the experience of its totality is not limited to the mere sum of its parts; and
- difficulty in recognizing the style or theme identity of a work after a strong influence and dissemination of its elements in the industry.
The first difficulty arises when we are faced with a director whose games do not have a specific aspect that is unique, but his identity is in the set of them. This is the case of Fumito Ueda (ICO, Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian), as his style is recognizable not, separately, by the minimalism of the interface, by the color saturation, by realistic animation, by subtle plots that are open to interpretation, etc.
All these elements (and others), taken in isolation, exist and existed in other games. But Ueda brings consistency to these and other game design elements in his games. His subtraction design philosophy creates a unique identity in its games not for its individual elements, but for the whole.
But from this arises the second difficulty. Before Metal Gear (1987) there were already video games that today we could call “stealth”. Many consider Castle Wolfenstein (1981) the first video game of its kind.
And before Metal Gear Solid (1998) there were also video games with cinematic inspirations, such as Ninja Gaiden (1988), Prince of Persia (1989), and the aforementioned Another World (1991). But it is inseparable from Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid the popularization and development of the Stealth genre, as well as several Hollywood cinematic choices.
But Kojima’s cinematic direction style and Metal Gear Solid’s stealth mechanics inspired many other franchises. Something like this can also be said of the various games that have applied Fumito Ueda’s subtraction design philosophy, such as Journey, RiMe, and many others.
And that kind of long-term influence is even more notable in the case of Another World, which was a major influence on Ueda’s design and, in turn, later, several artistic-focused platform games.
However, I believe that in some parts the resolution of this problem is already in the formulation of the question. If we are able to see that several games have “copied” one another, this is already a sign that we are able to clearly recognize traces of style and/or theme there and trace its origin, proving that a style and/or theme is an author’s own (although others try to partially copy his approach).
The other part of the answer lies in applying the approach invented by these authors. While there are other cinematic-focused games as well as subtractionist games, Kojima and Ueda’s games, for example, still have the authors’ unique styles and thematic obsessions that clearly differentiate their works from others inspired by them.
Thus, once video game directors can have control and creative freedom in both audiovisual and interaction aspects, and once the two difficulties listed can be overcome, I believe that there is no reason to suppose that the Auteur’s theory cannot also be applied to video game directors such as Kojima, Ueda, Suda51 among others.
But the question that remains is: is it desirable for a director to be an auteur? What is the advantage of video game development by an auteur?
Critiques of Auteur Theory
Since the theory of the Auteur was proposed, the disadvantages and advantages of productions directed by an auteur have been discussed. Here I will discuss three common criticisms of auteurism:
- The concept is incompatible with big-budget productions;
- Unlike literature, it is not honest to attribute the authorship of a cinematographic or video game work to a single person;
- Collective creative work tends to be more fruitful than that of a single individual.
The first of these criticisms, I believe, is the easiest to circumvent, as it does not necessarily consist of an argument to invalidate the possibility of auteurs. Rather it draws attention to the fact that the context of the current culture industry — at least in large productions — is not favorable to the proliferation of auteurs.
In fact, when we think of major video game studios such as Xbox Game Studios, PlayStation Studios, and Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development (EPD), we can hardly find any director who is a good candidate for auteur.
One might remember that directors like Kazunori Yamauchi (Gran Turismo) and Neil Druckman (Uncharted and The Last of Us) at Sony, as well as Eiji Aonuma (The Legend of Zelda) and Masahiro Sakurai (Kirby and Super Smash Bros.) at Nintendo, are highly respected names and have great leadership in the projects they coordinate. That’s true, but do they have freedom comparable to a writer who can write just about anything he wants in his book? Clearly not.
The greater the investment (especially shareholder investment), the greater the risks in publishing a work, and this has a catastrophic effect on encouraging auteurs in AAA games. It’s no wonder that many directors with a more unique style work in smaller productions, and they often founded their own studios, like Ragnar Tørnquist (The Longest Journey and others) founded Red Thread Games for his remarkable adventure games.
But it doesn’t mean that the existence of auteurs in AAA games is completely unfeasible. Of course, the “ideal” comparison with a writer can still only be approximated, but given his fame with Metal Gear Solid series, as well as his artistic style that captivates the general public, Hideo Kojima manages to sustain AAA projects with his own style.
Another good example is Hidetaka Miyazaki, who created his own formula that, despite being challenging, also engages a large audience to buy his games. Fumito Ueda, due to his great importance in the industry, also managed to get good funding support from Epic Games, with creative freedom; and Yoko Taro is a rare example of a director with unquestionably personal works within a large company, Square Enix.
Before Taro, also Yasumi Matsuno (Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story) was a good example of an auteur at Square Enix, but for health reasons he left in 2005 (Gamespot).
As for the second criticism, it seems to ignore the fact that there may be authors who are more central to the realization of a work.
As for the third criticism, it refer to the advantages of a collective creation rather than centered on an individual creative direction. In fact, minds thinking together often imply more ideas for a game, and also a more present perception to anticipate possible problems before its release.
However, there are also advantages. A centralized creative direction tends to guarantee greater coherence and personality to a work, giving it not only an author’s mark but also making game design elements orbit around this axis. In this sense, in his book The Works of Fumito Ueda (2019), Damien Mecheri compares The Last Guardian and Final Fantasy XV. Both had a development of about 10 years.
Ueda’s The Last Guardian has incredible consistency and personality, even if you can see some flaws, especially in its gameplay. On the other hand, Final Fantasy XV, even having its merits, went through several directors and writers and ended up with a fragmented narrative, with a broken rhythm and with much more questionable choices for the harmony between level design, plot, scenario, and battle system.
The Auteur theory was not made to describe the video game industry as a whole, and it will never serve that purpose, but it is appropriate to characterize some productions (such as some mentioned in this text), both AAA or AA and indie games with notable marks of its creators.
There are advantages and disadvantages to auteur productions, but personally, I tend to be more receptive to auteur works. Even if some of these works, like Drakengard, have problematic executions at various points, it’s easy to see that there’s something unique about them. A soul behind pixels and controls, a soul that cannot be manufactured in industrial logic.
Header Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
