Francois Truffaut, in conversation with Richard Roud in 1977, asserted that auteur theory
stemmed from a phrase once used by the writer Jean Giraudoux – “there are no plays,
only authors.” Hi, I’m Hamish Black and this is Writing On Games. To those that don’t
know, auteur theory, in the way that Truffaut first imagined it, is the idea that no work
of art is greater than the person creating it – that one person’s vision, their worldview,
their sense of self is so heavily invested into what they create, that it inherently
shapes the artistic creation and the experience of the person consuming it. There are several
notable examples of this in the world of film (given that Truffaut coined the phrase as
a director and critic of film), and other artforms, but what of videogames? With the
medium still so relatively young, it is perhaps still fairly difficult to analyse and identify
the works of individual game developers and creators in these terms. Given that games
take so long to make in comparison to other media, the fact that they usually require
very large teams of different kinds of artists, and the fact that auteurism is easier to gauge
across an artist’s ouevre as opposed to a singular piece of work, in the thirty or so
years that gaming has been in the mainstream consciousness, there have been few developers
that have made this kind of individual mark on the games they create.
There are certainly still examples of this kind of individual artistic identity shining
through in videogames though, perhaps most notably the example of Hideo Kojima. The Metal
Gear series, since its inception, has been touted proudly as something that Kojima is
at the very centre of. He is credited as director, producer, writer and game designer for all
of the main Metal Gear Solid games. As such, every game, for better or worse, invariably
carries the unique stamp of Hideo Kojima’s mindset – he describes Metal Gear Solid
as a “child” and that “every time [he makes] a new game [he puts] all of [his] effort
completely into that game.” The Metal Gear Solid series in particular is hardly known
to be a source of great narrative delivery in games – Kojima’s dialogue often feels
like it is in desperate need of an editor, with frequent, unintentional tautologies and
long strings of nigh-incoherent musings on the nature of war and technology, often wrestling
control from the player for vast stretches of time (in later games sometimes for over
an hour). When the first Metal Gear Solid came out it was a revelation that games could
actually deliver Hollywood-esque narratives. With all of that said though, why is Metal
Gear Solid still so highly regarded as a series? One might argue that it is precisely because
of Hideo Kojima’s hand in the game’s development – there really is nothing quite like Metal
Gear Solid being made nowadays. The melodrama, the off-the-wall, surreal and often fourth-wall-smashing
humour, and the way in which this is mixed with dark subject matter in the form of nuclear
war, child soldiers, etc. – all of this is what keeps people coming back. Kojima’s
roles as writer, director, designer and producer of these games make these aspects of the series
tangibly his. Think about it – this is the series where at one point you fight the former
president of the United States as he rides in a harrier jet piloted by a bisexual vampire.
The fact that that sequence is part of one of the most successful videogames ever to
be released says a lot about people’s feelings towards Hideo Kojima’s handle on the series.
Here we have an artist that is not afraid to meddle with people’s expectations, regardless
of whether or not his decisions are successful. It is with this in mind that it is interesting
to consider the potential failings of an auteur. When Truffaut spoke of auteur theory, he spoke
of the idea that even the failures of a true auteur were more interesting than the successes
of someone who produced films anonymously, as even with the failures of the auteur, there
was a sense that it was all building this tapestry – that there was a reason behind
someone’s failure, and that story of the struggle that went into the production of
a film was inherently interesting, regardless of whether or not the film itself was actually
worthwhile. In his words, “there are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors.”
It is therefore interesting to consider that Hideo Kojima has at many points stumbled in
his creative endeavours, and admits that even he himself has mixed feelings towards every
game he has produced. For example, his most recent release, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground
Zeroes, was extremely divisive. The main concern many people had was with the length of the
game (taking most people around an hour to complete, yet with some playthroughs taking
as little as five minutes), but many people take issue with the game’s tone to this
day. In previous instalments the dark narrative beats regarding war, child soldiers, and the
like was always counteracted by, for example, Johnny Sasaki shiting himself. Either that,
or the fact that it was being delivered in such a ham-fisted, obtuse way by gravel-voiced
David Hayter created a melodramatic dissonance that made the heaviness of the narrative significantly
easier to swallow (or alienated the player enough that they were more concerned with
figuring out what the fuck was going on than focusing on all the talk of ‘love on the
battlefield’ and stuff). That said, the choice to bring Kiefer Sutherland
in as Hayter’s replacement (and the higher costs that presumably came with that) render
Snake’s character essentially a silent protagonist in this instalment. This instalment as a result
felt substantially less ‘weird’ or ‘out there’ than previous games in the series
– something which, if the realistic nature of the narrative was handled better, would
be palatable. Instead, the player is greeted with children having bolts put through their
ankles, audio tapes of rape, and graphic, almost fetishistic depictions of stitches
being pulled out and a medic rummaging through a woman’s guts (not to mention the whole
‘fanny bomb’ element of this), with Snake returning to Mother Base to find his comrades
massacred – only for Miller to respond with ‘THEY PLAYED US LIKE A DAMN FIDDLE!’ In
previous instalments in the series, not only would the heavier elements of the game’s
narrative be slightly toned down (the rape scene in particular stands out quite spectacularly),
but the melodrama and the humour would be woven into the main story in a way that, as
previously stated, made everything slightly more light-hearted and charming. There is
certainly that humour to be found in Ground Zeroes, but it is instead relegated almost
entirely to the side missions as opposed to the main game. I understand that this is the
point in the series where Big Boss is supposed to ‘go bad’, but it’s such a severe
tonal shift that it makes that whole aspect harder to swallow.
However, even with all of these criticisms in mind, I can’t help but enjoy Ground Zeroes,
and find myself more excited than ever for The Phantom Pain. It almost makes me ashamed
to say that given how grotesque some of the material presented in Ground Zeroes was (and
the fact that Hideo is consistently proving that he has problems representing women, such
as his decision to sexualise the character of Quiet in order to ‘encourage cosplay’).
I’m sorry, but I JUST CAN’T HELP IT, OKAY?! The gameplay in Ground Zeroes was better than
it ever has been in the series (and on a side-note – it’s odd to consider that the fact that
a Metal Gear Solid game finally controls like an actual fucking videogame is enough for
me to say that the gameplay is fucking amazing), and even though that humour and melodrama
that made me love the series is relegated to the sidelines in Ground Zeroes, there is
something so delightfully dumb and perhaps prescient about having to rescue Hideo Kojima
himself from a world that he developed. The idea that the helicopter you use for extraction
can play Flight Of The Valkyries even when you’re trying to make a quiet escape is
kind of hilarious. The fact that the main antagonist and the one who, in the trailers
for The Phantom Pain, conveys all of the pseudo-philosophical guff that I want from a Metal Gear Solid game
is called Skull Face because his face looks like a skull, gives me hope that Kojima’s
voice is still in there somewhere, and I’m willing to sit through however many hour-long,
bullshit filled cutscenes Kojima is willing to subject me to in order to find it.
It is things like this that exemplify why artistic vision and remaining steadfast in
that vision are so important – in any medium really, but especially important to games
as the medium is still developing. Without Kojima’s voice, Ground Zeroes, even with
its radically improved gameplay, would be considered (by me anyway) to be an astronomical
failure. This is something people rarely experience in the world of games, and it makes the concept
of Konami refusing to let go of the Metal Gear franchise even though they have already
let go of Kojima even harder to understand – Kojima is the heart of this series. Without
him, you may have the most competently designed game of the series, but it won’t matter
in the slightest because there is no one who has an artistic voice quite like the man that
originated it. We probably won’t find out the exact details of what transpired between
Kojima and Konami for quite some time. That said, one can probably make some reasonable
assumptions as to the relationship between a multi-million dollar company and a man that
focuses solely on artistic vision with little to no concern for the bottom line. This, arguably,
makes the case for Kojima’s auteurship that much more conceivable, as not only is Kojima
consistently battling with fans as to ‘what they want’ whilst also remaining true to
his artistic vision, he also has to battle with the business element of game development,
and in any artform (especially one as costly as game development), the struggle between
business and art is ongoing, and often bloody (side-note – for a better analysis of this
struggle than I could ever write, I implore you to read Alasdair Gray’s Lanark – it’ll
blow your fucking mind). As an artist myself, I believe that part of what makes great art
is the struggle that goes into creating it – as Truffaut argues, even if an auteur
create a comparably insignificant work of art, the struggle of an auteur to make it
is itself inherently interesting. This is why I believe that auteurism is incredibly
important to games, and as the medium develops, we will begin to see more and more creators
being described in this way. Recently, I played a game entitled The Magic
Circle, which plays upon a number of the things I have touched upon here. It is an interesting,
if not wholly successful exploration of meta-narrative, revolving entirely around the idea that the
player is exploring an incomplete world, changing the attributes of the creatures within it
in order to disrupt the vision of the person heading its creation (the reason the game
is taking so long to complete to begin with). The way many people have been speaking about
this game suggests that this is a chance for the player to finally wrestle some control
away from the whiny developers that treat the player with such disrespect and distrust.
I feel, however, that this is a reductive statement, as the ending of the game (and
there are potential spoilers here), after leading the player along a set path of objectives
that the player can tackle in whichever way they choose, the game closes by asking the
player an important question – if you think you could do better, why the hell don’t
you?! The auteur, fatigued, and almost relieved, hands control over to the players who believe
they are the ones who know where the game should go, only for the creator to smugly
watch as the disorganised crowd of inexperienced developers bring havoc and anarchy to the
world. If ever there were a more concise case to be made for auteur theory in video games,
this is it. Game development is (and I say this as an outsider) an absolutely gruelling
process, requiring a more complete understanding of how to merge technical knowledge with artistic
vision than perhaps any other artform. I for one am of the belief, for example, that
Bioware made the wrong choice by revising the ending to Mass Effect 3 and bowing to
public demand. Firstly, it was a move that proved largely unsuccessful given that most
discussion surrounding Mass Effect 3 was that its ending remains disappointing to fans.
Secondly, however, and perhaps more crucially, even if the original ending disappointed fans,
it was the ending that Bioware put into the game. They made a conscious decision that
that was going to be the case, no matter how much upset it caused. Ultimately this is slightly
different from the idea of a typical auteur, as the production team at Bioware is arguably
somewhat more anonymous than the likes of Kojima, for example (perhaps they are the
‘metteurs on scene’ that Truffaut mentions – not making poor games, but lacking real
personality), but the key to true artistry as has been discussed in other videos on this
channel is surprising people and taking them out of their comfort zones, even if it seems
disappointing to them. Kojima himself has stated that he always wants to ‘betray fans’
expectations’ – examine the language there, ‘betray’. This is a fairly combative word,
which seems to suggest that Kojima has little regard for his fans. This is, I would argue,
a great thing! I would say that this is precisely why people flock to Metal Gear Solid whenever
a new one is announced. Regardless of whether or not you like Raiden as a character, you
remember the feeling of having the rug pulled from under you when he is revealed to be the
player character in Sons of Liberty. No matter how Kojima might fail in any project he undertakes,
no matter how anachronistic some of his ideas regarding games and films seem, no matter
how problematic some of his narrative and design choices are, his unique voice always
shines through. I may not agree with everything Hideo Kojima says, but I can’t help but
love and even crave the conviction with which he says it. Keep on keeping on, ya beautiful
moron. I’m Hamish Black and this has been Writing On Games. I’ll see you next time.