Finding a gap for the auteur

Gaming journalists love talking about the auteur theory. Seeing as gaming is still leaving its unfamiliarity stage, where the transition from a prior medium — in this case, the cinema — necessitates the use of cinema's tactics, genres, celebrities, concepts, to make some initial semblance of sense about gaming. Some basic attempts have been done in list format; strange Japanese examples were used as evidence for its resurgence by VICE; and hey, even this year we still had two equally pale, equally bored dudes making the bare sketches of a slight disagreement about it in the ever-heated "Face Off" section of PC Gamer. Reddit discussions all but announce the origins of the debate:

I'm a cinephile (film lover) and I also love video games. I wanted to make a video essay on my Youtube channel discussing the subject of autuerism (authorship) and it's relationship to video game visionaries. What do you think? Can video games have auteurs? Or is auteurism strictly for film and tv?

It's an appealing comparison, given that the two mediums share some common production hierarchies: both operate in studios, and these studios have a tendency to become well-known for a certain worldview, specialisation, generic interest, and charismatic talent.

So why do we question the thought of the author? Why is it journalistic fodder and not common comparison?

There is a certain criteria to auteurship that Andrew Sarris stated way back in 1960 when he ported it over from France:

• Recurring characteristics of style
• The "outer circle of technique" — technical mastery
• The "middle circle of their personal style"
• Their "inner circle of meaning"

These must be perceivable so as to become a signature upon the work. I've written former papers about how you can find these same characteristics in someone so underrated as a film's sound designer, so perhaps I'm the wrong person to take up the claim of appropriation. After all, as a matter of personal belief, the auteur strikes me as more a tool for viewer classification; a kind of cousin of the genre, that gives us expectations of what it is we're in for when we experience a film. Much as a computer sees a file type — mp3 — and then knows that this is a music file, decoded in this way, and has the right software to make it into something understandable, genres and auteurs really only function for our understanding of the material, to guide us through the experience with a touch of familiarity as we can glean it.

We project upon the text, and deep within the text, the ghost of a man who has nothing to do with the literal auteur — a kind of ghostly David Lynch, for example, who has a distinct set of ideals and stylistic considerations, and the disalignment between the two sometimes comes into conflict depending on what is appearing to be communicated. After all, when Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 about his fears of television, it became a seminal work against censorship.

The issue is that in the context of gaming, I have more faith in medium specificity than that.

Film and television operate as a receptive medium. You sit and receive a message. You identify with a spectator, with the act of looking, but it is only used to communicate a message to you. Various theorists, including Walter Benjamin, based their ideas about the potential of the cinema to do good on the foundation that viewers are active, yet they merely function as passive, receptive agents.

It is only in gaming where we are truly active.

So the possible questions become:

• What is the viewer's relation to the identification with the act of looking? That is to say, who is the active spectator in the game world that we become? What is our relationship to them?
• What is the active spectator's (or, say, "lead protagonist's") relationship to the game world?
• What is the possible and prioritised spectrum of action available to this active spectator? That is, what can we do in the game world? If conversation is possible, is it merely secondary to the action of killing another person? Is it easier to speak to or to hurt others? Do we even have a choice?
• What are the constraints of genre in the game world, and do they challenge their generic expectations in a way consistent with a political or ideological message?
  • How does this operate with the prioritisation of player action?

These are the possible dimensions of player receptivity. Beyond that, we are meant to control, to take part, to challenge, an interactive game world. Is this enough dimension for an auteur to even operate, to become perceivable, within the studio system?

Current considerations of auteurship focus upon Japanese auteurs that operate in a different production environment and leave their mark upon the game world in an incredibly, perceivably idiosyncratic way; that is to say, we perceive a signature, and yet beyond these very few — who, might I add, are incredibly influenced by and pay homage to film, and so distinctly operate their games in a way that might emulate a medium that allows for auteurship to exist — the signature is a little less apparent.

How might we describe Miyamoto, for example? He has a focus on emphasising the artificiality of the game, as he did when he suggested that at the end of Goldeneye, you shake the hands of your foes, as if at the end of a play, bowing at the curtain. Beyond that, his specific markers, only really evident in contrast to Mario games produced by Nintendo subteams, only belong to the academic few who highlight differences in player progression, worldbuilding, self-consciousness of themselves as games...above and beyond these considerations, Miyamoto's idiosyncrasies have become folded into what we just call "Nintendo," much as we label other game series by their studio units, who themselves may or may not have generic or ideological concerns.

In games that become far more conversational — invariably, games that are outside the AAA studio system — the one-on-one approach lends itself to more of an auteurist comparison. When a game is literally made by one person, there is literally nobody else to be the auteur anyway; and when a game is really made by a designer and a selection of "studio programmers" making the conversion from idea to gaming artifice, then the marketing and production of the game privileges and encourages the very idea of an auteur.

Yet beyond these considerations, can they still be there in the same way, or are we just trapped in the considerations of a different medium entirely? Why do we struggle nevertheless to find something human in a literalised experience? Can that "conversation" still happen — the same "conversation" that made people find auteurs in books, the sublimation of the narrator in film still allowing for that perceivable person, carrying forth in an active world that, by and large, belongs to a "studio"?

Can a "conversational" game only be saved by the one-man teams churning out microgames, Twine builds and modest, yet, multi-year efforts? Will we know these people as auteurs, or are we unable to think of what they must be in this new medium?

Have you played any games from Yoko Taro? Even more so than Kojima, I think he leaves a very clear signature in his games. Whether he falls under your point of being influenced by movies, I don't feel qualified to speak on.

I'm personally fairly fond of the auteur theory, and whether it's placebo or filling the blanks myself (Beginners Guide, play it). The signature of the auteur director has left a constant impression in many of my favorite games. People like Hideki Kamiya, Atsushi Inaba, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Jenova Chen, Hiroshi Iuchi and the previously mentioned Hideo Kojima and Yoko Taro, have left such a great impression on me over the years that is very hard to deny at this point. Illusory or not, the impression of an auteur creating a thoroughline through all these interesting games is something I personally value and wouldn't mind seeing more of.

While I must confess my ignorance regarding your examples, I want to clarify that I do not seek to be prohibitive. I'm not saying "auteurs don't real," or that the theory is pointless. The thing about all theories is that they are useful, albeit flawed tools. What I want to imagine is how difficult it might be to read from the same criteria we used in film to a medium that is so, so far beyond it. I think that to a degree it lies toward games that have what I called "conversational" aspects, or more accurately, a communicativeness that lends its idiosyncrasies to become projected into the ghost of an auteur within the text. The exception to this is, of course, games that themselves emulate or pay homage to film itself, which themselves are predisposed toward telling a story in a way that allows the auteur to be read in a similar way that we would a film or a movie.

But, say, Skyrim? It's a bit harder to see one person in that.

I personally think that with a smaller team that has a larger input, a greater predisposition toward seeing that same auteur might develop, because all auteurs in film have come about from similar means -- a collaboration of likeminded people whose individual signatures upon a work get read, by a viewer, as a single, unified, "auteur".

Personally, I believe that autuership has the capacity to thrive in both Japan and Western settings, though the way in which many Western studios operate can often limit the final 'signature' a creative lead can leave on his or her work. Even with the vision of someone like Ken Levine, it is difficult to argue that Bioshock Infinite did not come about as a result of creative decisions that were then filtered and altered by many committees and teams (it's why Ken deciding to go with a way smaller team may be way more conductive to him producing games with his unique touch). I still stick to this theory, mainly due to the many conflicting design decisions and superfluous features present in the final product of Bioshock Infinite. Why this is, I can only guess. AAA development is stupid expensive, and many auteurs are often associated with unnecessary creative risk-taking.

The fact that at least two major Western game franchises (Halo and Gears of War) were able to swap out almost the entire development team without skipping a single beat speaks to just how 'design by committee' games can become when an auteur or a strong creative lead stumbles onto a winning formula. Then again, I have doubts that Miyamoto has had a heavy level of involvement in the newer Mario games, so it's not as though this only occurs in a Western environment.This makes for a kind of weird situation for autuers within gaming. Work for a major studio and create an excellent game, and chances are that you'll be given the major resources to create another product, with the expectation that you don't experiment too much in order to repeat success. Working for a smaller studio can actually open you up to being able to take more risks, with the major trade-off being the reduction of resources available to you. For movie-makers and authors, I don't think this occurs as much (though when the really big bucks start being mentioned, such as with Marvel, a similar pattern of playing it incredibly safe begins to develop). Just look at Innaritu, Birdman and The Revenant cannot possibly be more different from each other, but both films have a significant amount of money and star power behind them.

Anyway, one of my favourite autuers would have to be Goichi Suda, or Suda51, even if his recent works leave a bit to be desired. Killer is Dead may have looked stylish, but it really felt like he was just going through the motions. Let it Die (it's a PS4 MP brawler thing) really does not look all that much better, though he's only a producer on that, so who knows what his next major project will be.

@feignamnesia: Oh I didn't mean to come off on the defensive like that! I was just curious about your personal opinion on the subject, since the blog post felt a little bit more detached.

I don't think the auteur theory applies to every game or movie, I'd actually even say a product with a strong auteur signature is the exception rather than the rule. Games from Valve, Ubisoft, Naughty Dog and Bethesda are all (seemingly) very "design by committee" type games, and that's yielded some strong results. But at the same time, many other studios have tried the same to no success.

While I'm a fan of the concept of games that visualize the directors vision, i'ts not neccessarily the "right" way to do it. To me it largely seems to depend on the skillset of the team. Any product is only going to be as strong as it's development team, and bringing out the strengths of the team is what's more important. Some need very detailed direction to shine, and some shine better when left to their own devices. That's just how it is. Which is why I can call Yoko Taro an auteur, while in the same breath admitting that most of his games are garbage mechanically and look like dogshit. The signature is there, but the quality isn't. And whether the credit or blame lies with the director or the studio, there's no way to know.

EDIT: Basically what I wanted to say, is that in big team projects, an auteur is born from method of production. A game with a strong personal signature, is a game where the auteur funnels their vision through a production team to keep the core of it intact, while many other products are a collection of ideas from the production team funneled through the director (an editor) that keeps it from turning schizophrenic or disjointed. This is what I would consider the key distinction as far as games goes. Obviously this is a scale and not just two extremes, but how hard you lean in either direction can have a noticeable impact on the result.

I'm new to a discussion about a topic like this, so forgive me if I go off topic a bit, but I do think that authors leave a print on their work in a way that can become recognizable over time. The reason is because when there are more samples of work to study, patterns are then noticed that can be used to explain a person's style of doing something. In Mr. Miyamoto's case, I believe it's gameplay that he focuses on the most. Being a creator of franchises that have changed the gaming world forever puts him into a select group of people...a group of people that work differently on their projects, but still project themselves on their individual projects.

When it comes to film, the audience is more passive, that's true, but film has a way of explaining life through the very 'action of acting' on the screen. The cinema has been seen by those who view Hollywood's greatest actors as 'gods' when they perform on the screen. Directors have a vision, but many times, the actors deliver that vision that could not have been otherwise. The actors then are perceived by the audience in a non-passive way. For example, how many people cried during Titantic when it played in theaters? Or, how many screamed when Jason ripped people from limb to limb? The signature style of film is felt by the audience. The ancient Greeks new this well because of theater in their day.

It is a part of the human mind that we are wired for sound. The brain targets sounds in a very real way. Watching a hockey game or a soccer match is nowhere near as exciting when the mute button is active. Games and movies use sounds to help tell the story too. For the gamer, we have the action to move, and sometimes, we get sound clues to tell us if something is happening, or if there's an achievement made, like when Link gets a new item in a Zelda game.

I'm sorry if I don't understand the topic, but I do think creators leave their marks on games, much like actors leave their marks on the silver screen. In both cases, gamers and movie buffs get something out of it that makes each medium special and a part of our culture today.