A Jerk Amongst Tearjerkers: Critic Claims Games Won’t Make You Cry

Ever get teary-eyed when Yoshi ran away while you were riding him? Okay, maybe that’s a silly example, but, when I was a kid, I got pretty upset about it. Over the years my skin has become a little thicker, but games have also become a little deeper. And occasionally, I still feel a little choked up from time to time. Games have learned how to wrench a gut now better than before, but one naysayer thinks that the emotional extent of games never evolved past a Yoshi-escape.

Film critic Roger Moore did not like the new Max Payne movie. Well, he’s not alone. Although I haven’t seen it, guess what? The word on the street is that game movies generally aren’t the cat’s meow (duh) and this was no exception. Rarely has a director ever done a game justice. It’s like trying to pack an entire novel into a film and expecting to satisfy a hardcore fan of the novel (ahem, Choke, ahem…grrr): it just doesn’t happen very often.

Roger is justified in expressing his distaste for Max Payne, but he didn’t stop there. He went on to say that it “still suffers from the heartlessness that makes games emotionally inferior to movies. Nobody ever shed a tear over a video game character’s death.”

Oh, really? I daresay some of my readers would disagree, Mr. Moore.

See, what you fail to realize is that games have transgressed Pong. The more they grow, the more cinematic they become…reaching a point to where the cut scenes in games now pay homage to their big screen predecessors. And they do a damn good job. Oh, have you ever played BioShock, Roger? Nope, didn’t think so. If you had, perhaps you’d have realized how certain games have come so far that they’re nearly indistinguishable from their 35 mm friends. BioShock’s ability to terrify as much as a horror film and captivate as much as any compelling drama I’ve seen is unequivocal. Moreover, these are a sign of things to come, where the lines between media will further blur.

Roger fails to acknowledge that games and cinema have a lot in common. A lot. They both use the moving image to convey a story and engage the viewer. If anything, games take it a step further by allowing so much interactivity. Thus, when something bad happens to a character in a game, the player is almost more emotionally invested in the character, because the player has become immersed in the world in ways that films do not allow.

For those of you that think that games are still inferior because they are comprised of CG as opposed to real actors I have one word for you: Wall-E. That film moved me more than anything else I’ve seen this year without a single live actor in it—and I know I’m not alone in this sentiment.

I have spent the majority of my adult life studying, discussing, and writing about film. I have a B.A. in it, and consequently, like to think I know a thing or two about it. My passion for games stems from my love of the moving image and what it conveys to me. As an avid watcher/player of both, I feel confident in saying gamers have and will shed tears for game characters. Call me crazy, but I don’t think Roger has enough of a relationship with gaming to make such a broad statement.