Greg Kasavin Executive Editor

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I Am Jack's Upset Stomach

You can quickly infer a lot about someone based on what they like sooner than you can accurately assess how they are just by observing them or speaking to them. Take me, for instance: What I do is play games and work at GameSpot; the former, for about 22 years, and the latter, for more than seven. I can sheepishly admit to any of the following: My favorite color is red. My favorite television show is Seinfeld. My favorite novel is J.R. by William Gaddis. My favorite band is Joy Division. My favorite movies are Seven Samurai and Fight Club. I am a portrait of everyone I disliked when I was in high school. Now that you know all this about me, you will then understand the frustration I'm about to express and the motivation behind the following sentiment:

So, when one of them gets punched, do they both lose health, or what?

I dearly wish that all games based on movies would cease to exist. All of them.

What made me arrive at such an unreasonable and unlikely conclusion? The announcement of a fighting game based on Fight Club. After staring blankly at the words and screenshots on the screen, my thoughts then trailed over to another forthcoming game: Seven Samurai 20XX. A strange sort of logic then came together in my mind: This madness must end.

Earlier this year, Sammy Studios announced that it was working on a game based on Kurosawa's classic, Seven Samurai, in collaboration with the late filmmaker's son. I was genuinely excited to hear this. Though Seven Samurai is an epic, at heart, it really is an action movie, featuring a great cast of memorable characters, and I honestly think the plot of the film--seven samurai attempting to defend a village against a band of 40 or so raiders--is perfect material for a game. So, of course, I was surprised to learn later that year that the film's influence on the game would be very tenuous, at best. In all fairness, I played an early build of the sci-fi-themed, anime-inspired Seven Samurai 20XX at E3 this year, and I basically had fun with it. But one question kept bothering me: Did they really have to brand this as a spiritual successor to one of the greatest movies ever made? Exactly how much audacity do you have to have to decide to do something like this?

I'm betting the late Akira Kurosawa and his son didn't have a very good relationship.

But again, my realizations about Seven Samurai 20XX were galvanized only in the wake of the Fight Club game announcement. Look, I'm borderline defensive about my policy of never passing judgment on a game until I've played it. I don't judge books by their covers, and I don't judge games based on my assumptions about them; I try not to have assumptions at all. Yet in the case of Fight Club, I can't help it. The mere existence of this project is an affront to my sensibilities. My colleague Alex happens to share my appreciation for the movie Fight Club. You'd think people like us would be the intended market for the game. Why, then, are we both sooner offended rather than excited at the thought of playing something like this?

One of my favorite things about the world is that art and commercialism are reconcilable. Today's greatest artists aren't eating moldy bread, desperately trying to gain recognition for their oil paintings. They're working at advertising firms, special effects studios, game companies, automobile manufacturers, and other businesses whose products strive for innovation and widespread, aesthetic appeal. The starving artist is either lacking in skill or just needs a good agent. It's nice to know that, if you're truly talented and creative in today's society, you can use that talent to make a living. This seems to be a historical anomaly, and I appreciate it.

The occasional good game based on a movie doesn't do much to compensate for all the horrible ones that come out.

The downside is, there's a fine line between making commercial art and milking commercial art to make a fast buck. Unfortunately, the fact that the latter phenomenon is so much more common than the former--naturally, because it's easier to do--completely cheapens the notion that art can be a commodity, and it even goes as far as to cast doubt as to whether the notion is even true.

Therefore, I wish I'd never see another game based on a great movie ever again in my life. When I see a movie that I really like, at no point do I stop and think, "Man, wouldn't it be great if there was a game based on this movie?" That's because, frankly, movies are still in many ways a higher art than games are. It's not like a game based on a movie is going to capture the nuances of the acting or the true spectacle of the special effects. At best, a game based on a movie can evoke the experience of watching the movie. Better yet, I suppose, in the case of EA's The Lord of the Rings games, a good-enough game released in advance of a movie can serve as an effective marketing device--and a surprisingly profitable one. Yet, while there have been some games based on movies over the years that haven't been complete disappointments, there are precious few instances in which the game is of superior quality to its source material.

I read the novel Fight Club after I saw the movie it was based on. For a number of different reasons, I think the movie is much better. However, I am very, very dubious of whether the forthcoming game will be of comparable quality to either the book or the movie. Maybe it sounds stupid to even point that out, but even if so, you have to wonder what the motivation is to make such a game in the first place?

The priority of anyone who provides a product or service ought to be maintaining the high quality of that product or service. Yes, a business must profit to survive, but it's no coincidence that good businesses provide good, high-quality products or services. The reason I inherently dislike all games based on movies is because, fundamentally, I find the motivations behind the development of those games to be very suspicious. I think most game designers are ultimately just trying to make good games. But they shouldn't feel compelled to bastardize the classics in the process.