#and its interesting because you cant exactly tell the emotion that it elicits

[cut-catches]

me after watching the imaginary friend mv for the sixth time today and i still cried lol

[300iqprower]

I found the Schindler’s List of video games. No I’m not joking.

Okay kinda, look i wrote a mini thesis when i found out TLOU2 deadass won GOTY, which is absolutely hilarious cause it’s beyond even my expectation, I didn’t expect them to give it the full RDR2 treatment, btw I picked a very good year to wizen up to the fact TGA is basically a circlejerk and the popular vote has no influience on the outcome [[So apparently its Golden Joystick which actually is people voted. “Gamers” really are just the definition of “Fuck you, Got Mine” and I hope everyone who voted for Naughty Dog under any circumstance has to work retail crunch until they learn empathy.]] BUT ANYWAYS I genuinely wrote the following out of interest, not anger. In fact I cant wait for all the people to explode because they still dont realize the game awards are a sham.  this is ALL off the cuff, be warned, cause I basically rambled to friend about having stumbled onto a thesis prompt, I cut out the first half of it for that reason so here goes:

So then.

this entire thing?

It proves that "critics" don't actually want video games to be video games. They don't want video games to be art either. They just want video games to be movies

Writing is not a universal constant, because every medium tells stories in different ways

Do you judge the writing of a book the way you judge the writing of a movie? Does the fact a book wont have voice actors or background music make it movies but worse? of course not

so why do people keep acting like that's how it works for video games?

A video game will never, NEVER be able to be as well written as a high tier film, not in terms of pure standalone writing. The same way a movie will never be as well written as a book in terms of pure standalone writing.

Undertale is probably the best written game ever made. the writing isn't remotely as good as a B grade movie

because in a movie writing and acting are how you tell the story. That's its strength

Video games have a different. fucking. strength: GAMEPLAY

When you think of "art" in video games, what comes to mind?

Maybe Shadow of the Colossus? Undertale? Braid? Journey? These all work.

And ya know what they have in common?

They are not "cinematic" and they are not "masterpieces of writing and acting”

in fact of those 4 games, 3 don't actually have dialogue unless you seriously count those messages from Dormin

You know what they all have in common though?

They don't use writing to convey their story, messages, themes, etc. They use gameplay

Movies treat videogame qualities to be detrimental in a film. people attribute this to contempt. It isn't those people who say a movie being like a video game is bad? they are absolutely right.

And in that Exact. Same. Vein. VIdeo games shouldn’t be actively trying to be like movies

not if they want to be anything more than a B movie

Let’s just start with several examples of different ways video games create “artistic” narrative and experiences:

Shadow of the Colossus tells its story by having you realize that your actions as the player have unleashed a terrible evil. Braid sets its time travel gameplay mechanic in reverse at the end for its big story reveal. Journey has zero dialogue and through the way you traverse environments alone tells a grand epic. Undertale applies the idea of metanarrative to video games in a way unlike any other, something plenty of movies have done but no movie has ever been able to do to an even remote degree that Undertale did, because unlike a film the audience has direct input. Does that make metanarrative films like Fight Club, Inception, or far more historically famous than, either, a “Citizen Kane” type film if you’re gonna bring that stupid notion out, Sunset Boulevard, does that make it bad metanarrative? NO. IT MEANS ITS A DIFFERENT VERSION OF THAT STYLE.

Bastion is dialogue heavy, with constant narration, so is stanley parable, but both games have that narration dictated by the player's action. In a movie narration can only dictate predetermined action, even if that means unreliable narration or outright lying in the narration, that won't change the fact what it describes is predetermined because it's a movie. In a game, it could be different every single time.

There are far more examples of artistic games that are art specifically because they arent trying to be art in the same sense as a movie

Papers Please for example

THAT could genuinely be equivalent to Schindler's List

Because you are deciding who lives and dies, you TECHNICALLY aren't, but you know what happens to the people you deny. You know exactly what will happen to them.(edited)

so do you let them in even if it's not legal, deducting your own pay and making it that much more likely you can't afford food or heat that night for your family? or do you send them knowingly to the gulag?

In a film that already is a powerful message and like I said it genuinely isnt that far off from schindler's list. As a movie done right, papers please could be a harrowing story about those kinds of things. But it wouldn't be any better, nor would it likely be told in a way remotely similar to how you experience games.

because again: they. are. different. mediums.

That's what it means to have different mediums, you can tell the same story in completely different ways to elicit different, equally meaningful responses

In schindler's list what makes it harrowing is that its a man who was on his way to wealth who is sacrificing that wealth and his own safety to save the lives of innocents being persecuted

the emotional response is from seeing how Oskar Schindler deals with the situation he's ended up in and whether he has the resolve to save those people or if he would sell them out to secure his own prospects

In Paper's Please it's not even close to the same

You have no idea how grand scale the things going on are, you only have bits of info to piece together with the only context given being you are a border patrol guard who will serve your authoritarian "country"

There's a game called Not Tonight that has the same gameplay but gets these details wrong

it makes the resistance obviously the good guys, there's little to no penalty to helping them over the state.

in that aspect its MORE like Schindler's list because obviously the nazis are the bad guys

so why isn't the comparison Not Tonight and Schindler's List?

because the idea of a straightforward story where you know sheltering them is good and its bad to sell them out is part of film storytelling, where you are an onlooker

In Papers Please the way you're torn between what to do and who is worth saving and who isn't, whether you should back resistance or serve the state? That struggle you as the player feel is the struggle Schindler's List puts on screen for you to OBSERVE, not to be a part of.

Not Tonight in terms of its story and writing is more similar to Schindler's list. And that's why it's explicitly less artistic than Paper's Please. *Because if you make a game more similar to a movie, you lose the strengths of the medium of games without actually gaining the strengths of the medium of film.*

[crowsent]

Can you explain the color switch technique for theater more clearly? I'm going to audition for our high school play and I want a reliable way to act without having to relive my worst memories.

dunno when exactly you sent this anon, but i hope i havent responded too late.

SO. the colour switch technique. dunno if its an official name or whatever BUT its essentially used in theatre or really in any other scenario where you have to lie or assume an emotion that you’re not currently feeling. essentially, you have to play a role. but since you said youre auditioning for a play, we focusin on the theatre aspect of it.

the most common thing i see or hear people do when they need to play an emotion that they just aren’t feeling at that moment, is to think of a personal event in their lives that elicits that specific emotion. it WILL work, or at the very least, elicit a strong emotion that pushes you to make your scene more believable and more alive. now thats great if the memory or event is a happy one. thinking of the first time you ever held your baby sibling, or that time you had your first kiss, or that day your parents surprised you with a new car. genuine happiness, or the memory of genuine happiness can work wonders to make a scene look and feel organic.

but if the emotion is negative, its going to absolutely DECIMATE your mental health.

no matter how much you think that ‘its just for a scene’ or that it wont actually affect you when youre off the stage, using the “relive memory to recreate emotion” method can and will fuck your mental health sideways with a chainsaw. its BAD for you to constantly think of painful or sad memories. there’s rehearsals, the actual performance, and worse, memories of the play itself. associating the memory of a tragic accident or a bad fight to a scene of a play youre participating in IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU.

i did theatre back in highschool. my depression at that stage was also. uh. particularly bad. so the whole “relive traumatic memories to experience pain so you can act better” is TERRIBLE advise. dont listen to anyone who tells you to do it. it WILL negatively impact your mental health AND your memories of the play, and may even discourage you from participating in future plays yourself.

but you still need to find a way to channel those emotions.

in comes colour switch theory. or technique. whatever its called. my theatre directors were GODDESSES. they recommended this technique to EVERYONE and it WORKS.

the trick is to associate a particular colour with a particular emotion, or even facial expression. when you need to keep a stoic face, you picture the colour in your mind and chant it in your head over and over to not break character. when you need to be sad, just repeat the colour you chose for sadness over and over to get yourself in the mindset WITHOUT hurting your mental health. for me, some of the colours i chose were:

blue- sadness/loneliness

red- anger

black- nothingness

grey- fear

there are more, but lets focus on these four. blue is my favourite colour. but thinking of the colour blue it doesnt automatically make me sad, so i can still enjoy it when im off stage. to channel the emotion of sadness or loneliness that i tied with the colour blue, i think of sadness from inside out and her blue motif. i think of the blue colour commonly depicted for tears. i think of cold and i think of a single person all alone, curled up in a blue room, crying.

just talking about this made my body curl up when i was writing that paragraph. i am shaking, and i feel sad, but when i stopped thinking about that imagery, it stopped. because its not a painful or traumatic memory for me, i can just yeet the blue emotion imagery away from me when i dont want it. you cant do that with personal memories and thats what makes the colour switching strategy so good. you can act better but you dont have to hurt yourself to do it.

think of it as constructing a bubble in your head, or a room you go to when you need to feel something. for anger, i think of a red room. i think of that red emoji with the brows scrunched up and the teeth gnashed together. i think of being so angry you lose words. i think of being red-faced because you just cant control it. conveniently, anger from inside out is also red, so i can think of him too. i think of fire in my veins, hot and ready to explode with nowhere to go but loud, violent screaming. and as im writing this, i can picture myself on a stage just shouting at whoeever has done my character wrong.

same goes for black and grey. black is just when i need to keep a straight face. when i need to be stoic or unimpressed. and its just a black room. nothingness. i sometimes picture that black room in real life when i have to not laugh at something funny if the timing is inappropriate, or when i have to keep a strong facade when i want to cry. i picture that room of nothingness and my mind goes blank. and i can keep a stoic face. the grey room is fog and shadows just in the corner of my eye. its something closing in that i cant see because of all the grey swirling around me. i dont know if im alone. i dont know if i am safe because i can only see a foggy room.

all in all, mentally travelling to a room in your mind created for the express purpose of eliciting a specific emotion is better than just retraumatising yourself. and its really simple to create these rooms. you dont even have to use the same colours i did.

maybe you have more trouble with expressing lovey dovery emotions. you can make red your love room. think of red flowers on valentines day, the red heart decals you see on store windows, the red box of chocolate youd give to a lover. red is passion, red is life, and you can associate things like that with your red room if you want. its like a venn diagram. things you associate with red on the left, things you associate with the emotion on the right, and the things they have in common can be used to construct the imagery of the emotion colour switch room.

then you can just chant red red red in your mind and you think of the blush on the fair maidens cheek as her knight comes to rescue her. you can think of a scarlet dress dazzling everyone in the room, but the wearer only has eyes for one man. you can think of lipstick stain against a collar.

you can associate any emotion with any colour. my process was:

pick a colour

pick an emotion/facial expression

picture a small room in your mind

fill that room with things or imagery that match your emotion or expression

be as specific or as generic as you want

you can have a green room dedicated to irritation or envy or just the loose feeling that youre not completely happy. the reasoning can be just bc you thought of the phrase “green with envy” and thought itd be neat. green can be a mother experiencing the joy of holding her child for the first time because green=nature=nurturing=mother.

establish a connection with that colour. fill out your room and create the keyword to get in. im very unoriginal so my keyword was just chanting the colour name over and over in my head. if i say blue enough times i get sad, even if i dont picture the room bc my mind has formed a link to that state of being. and i can break away without much trouble bc the connection is just on the surface.

colour switch is hair chalk. reliving memories is hair dye. at the end of the day, both of them colour hair. but you can wipe off the hair chalk w relative ease but a thorough hair dye that produces vibrant colours cant easily be removed, even when you want to switch to a different colour, or maybe even lose the dye completely.

i would recommend picking an emotion or expression that youre not good at portraying, but dont struggle with as much for your first room. i am not good at expressing sadness, but im worst at expressing upset or anger. so when i first started my colour switch mindset room, i started with sadness. it helps me express an emotion that im not particularly good at expressing, while still being relatively easy for me to get the hang of. maybe try for the second or third worst emotion you express, build a room to channel that emotion, and establish your connection.

make it a well-tread path, essentially. first few times are gon be difficult, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. all i need now to fake-cry is picturing the blue room, saying blue a bunch of times, and making a face. then i cry. completely fake and not damaging to my health.

i hope this makes sense for you. if it doesnt, feel free to send in an ask with more detailed questions abt the parts youre confused about or anything else. same goes for anyone who happens to read this that has an interest in theatre. id rather answer a dozen asks of the same question than have any of yall do something so harmful to your mental health. if anything was at all confusing, please feel free to tell me and ill gladly clarify some more. stay safe and take care of yourselves. and to the anon who asked, i hope your play goes well