Friday, May 16, 2008
Tolkien provided the blueprint for one generation of computer games after another. But have today's whizz-bang graphics brought us any closer to Middle Earth?
Dec 30, 2002 | Computer programmers have long been infatuated with "The Lord of the Rings," says Scott Bennie, the producer of an early '90s game based on the trilogy, because J.R.R. Tolkien's epic was "laced with the two factors that geeks admire most: sustained escapism and obsessive attention to detail."
Anyone who has spent hours pondering Tolkien's painstakingly constructed Numenorean genealogies or Elvish syntax rules can probably relate. How much different, really, are Tolkien's minutiae from those encountered banging one's head against assembler code or making every graphics pixel line up correctly? But Bennie goes even further. In his view, Tolkien midwifed the entire emergence of geek culture.
"Tolkien didn't invent geek culture," he says. "That honor probably belongs to the American SF novels of the 1930s-'50s. But 'Lord' probably turned on enough 'proto-geeks' that the geek audience built up to a critical mass, transforming it from a cult to a subculture. All subcultures have their seminal works, and 'The Lord of the Rings' was 'geek' culture's."
One need look no further than computer gaming to see the truth of Bennie's observation. It's been about 25 years since computer programmers started making games based, explicitly or implicitly, on "The Lord of the Rings" and its derivative nephew, Dungeons & Dragons. Tracking their progress -- from the bare-bones text simplicity of Will Crowther's Adventure to Electronic Arts' new, turbo-powered Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for the PlayStation 2 -- is a crash course in the history of computing and the evolution of computer gaming. It's also a lesson in what computers can do that is different from the experience offered by films or books, as well as a reminder that some quests may be never-ending.
Increases in processing power and improvements in graphics are two of the traditional methods for measuring computing progress. And if one could line up a string of screen captures from the hundreds of games that have been inspired by "The Lord of the Rings" over the last couple of decades, one would be hard put not to agree that there has been vast improvement. In Adventure, players were told via text messages that, for example, a dwarf had thrown a dagger at you. In The Two Towers, your game controller actually shivers as you are hacked at by three-dimensional technicolored Orcs while symphonic music blasts away.
All such technical achievements are but means to an end -- the end of better implementing a programmer's vision, or dream. Which leads to a third measurement. Call it the Middle Earth factor: Progress in computing can be judged by how well the state of the art enables the evocation of that Ur-territory of dwarves and goblins. From the mid-'70s onward, computer programmers have marched, if not directly toward the gates of Mordor, then toward that moment when anyone can log on, don a wizard's robe and start hurling thunderbolts. If Tolkien is the Lord of the Geeks, then computer programmers are his prophets, and the computer is the vehicle of digital Middle-Earthian transubstantiation.
Right now, as millions flock to theaters to see "The Two Towers," it may seem a bit odd to judge computing progress by how well it lives the dream of Middle Earth. Aren't we already there? Aren't the astonishing special effects in Peter Jackson's films evidence enough that the promise of computer technology has been delivered? Who needs a computer game when you've got Ian McKellen on the big screen?
But what if you want to be Ian McKellen? Interactivity is a much abused word, but when we're talking about computer games, we're talking about tools for "sustained escapism" that really do improve with each microprocessor generation. By allowing an interactive relationship with the "text," computer games offer the possibility of evoking a Tolkienesque experience in a way that other fantasy books or movies cannot match. And since the goal of reading or watching fantasy is essentially to escape from mundane, humdrum reality, then what better way to realize Tolkien's world than to allow participation? The mad vision of the computer programmer is to grant us entry into the realm of fantasy in such a way that our thoughts and actions, however mediated by mouse and keyboard and game controller, have a real effect.
"What interactivity brings to Tolkien's world is a chance for the fans to participate in a more visceral way," says Daniel Greenberg, creative director for Tolkien games at Vivendi/Universal. "Tolkien's stories, in particular 'The Hobbit,' were designed originally to be told. The storyteller who is weaving a story modifies it based on the reaction from the listeners. Interactivity, in an indirect way, returns an element that is lost in a simple linear film version. You can do things with interactivity in terms of bringing fans more deeply into the world. Even beyond 'The Lord of the Rings,' this is a reason that video games have caught up with movies in terms of dollars -- because we want participation. A film can be transporting, but it will never let the fan, the audience, have their own personal, private experience of it."
The sad truth is that, despite so many great advances in the technology, true masterpieces of gaming are few and far between. Graphical progress, particularly, has proved to be a double-edged sword. Computer-game production values are approaching the best that Hollywood has to offer. But what are the gaming companies doing with all that power? Hack. Slash. Hack. Slash. Hack. Slash. Truly interactive story lines that surprise and delight are rare.
There's a paradox here. The graphics really are qualitatively better with each and every year. In 2002 alone, in the fantasy realm, games such as Dungeon Siege and Morrowind and Warcraft 3 and Neverwinter Nights pushed the capabilities of new computers to new, dazzling heights. But these games don't quite reach the level of "masterpiece" -- even if they do better, in my opinion, at evoking the spirit of Tolkien than, for example, Electronic Arts' The Two Towers. At most, all these games still tantalize with possibility, without establishing truly imaginative creative benchmarks. If the tools are getting better, shouldn't the games be following their lead?
It may be, at least for the games that explicitly attempt to capture Middle Earth, that the goal is wrong. The goal should not be to duplicate Middle Earth. The real goal should be to give us an experience like Middle Earth. Help us in building our own Fellowships, rather than forcing us into the grooves already cut by Legolas, Gimli and friends. Frodo ultimately (with a little help from Gollum) dropped Sauron's ring into the Mountain of Doom, and his quest was over. But even after 25 years of great progress, computer gaming's quest still seems to have hardly begun.
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