Ugh, Polygon.

You know, it's not impossible for Polygon to write good-nay, clever-articles, so why do they release so much of...well this? An article released by Polygon and written by Phil Owen titled "WTF is wrong with videogames". A misleading title but here's the gist: Phil Owen feels that while there is a lot promising about videogames, he feels that they as a medium still have a ways to go to feel like they could be considered a legitimate artform, oh and he uses The Last of Us as his main example...so this'll be fun.

His first topic is about the comparison of films to videogames, talking about certain conventions and cinematic tricks that allow the audience to understand certain elements of the film. The example he uses is a sneeze, in real life, someone sneezing is rarely a cause to alarm, but in a film, a sneeze could mean everything, in the context of the film he used as an example Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a character sneezing was foreshadowing of them being exposed to a terminal illness. Now this is true that films use techniques like this fairly often and videogames don't usually do these, or in some cases, can't do this. Gee, it's almost as if the two are completely different mediums--oh wait! I've said multiple times how i hate comparisons between movies and videogames, the two are different mediums, yes, they have similarities, but every medium has similarities, and videogames and films are very different in a lot of ways too. Videogames don't have to suffer from an expected runtime for audiences, they can present themselves in multiple different forms, 2D, 3D, first person, third person, story, no story, cutscenes, no cutscenes, etc, etc, and oh yeah! The entire thing was made in a computer! Films have cinematic techniques and conventions to tell their story, and videogames have their own set of techniques and conventions to tell their stories. It's not a legitimate argument to say that videogames are different from film thus they must be inferior.

He then states "Films are calculated works from start to finish, and as my friend said, everything that happens in them matters to the work, or at least that's the goal." Which is another difference between film and videogames, apart from maybe subtext and a message for a film to be interpreted, films are permanently linear, you don't choose where the film should go and there is no exploration. Most videogames will give you an element of choice, not necessarily control over the whole narrative but you can explore your setting, you can choose when to fight, how to fight, when to move, it's what made videogames stand out in the first place, when people played Super Marios Bros they loved it because they controlled it, they decided when to move, when to jump, what to collect. You know what that is? A technique that videogames use that cinema can't. Does that make cinema lesser than videogames? Not neccessarily, but it's one of the many ways how the two are different mediums and it is not fair to compare one medium to the capabilites of the other!

Then let's get to the big piece, The Last of Us, one of my all time favourite games and one that I consider to be a masterpiece in gaming and in storytelling in general. Firstly the debate on The Last of Us being the "Citizen Kane of gaming" is a statement I disagree with and go into more detail here, so moving on.You would imagine I would disagree with everything in this piece about it right? Actually no, he does have some fair complaints. There are certain gameplay elements that break the verisimilitude of the environment, like taking 4 scissors to craft a shiv and then it breaks after one hit. Or whenever you need to get across water there will be a convinient pallet to cross on, or if you need to climb somewhere there's a ladder nearby. These mechanics do clash with the realistic and grounded setting of The Last of Us and it's not the only game out there, almost every videogame will have in someway a contradiction between gameplay and story, most of the time it's in very small ways like this so you can probably ignore it, but it's there nontheless. The reason why I think it's unfair to critisize this is because, well, every medium has cheats, has ways that they have to sacrifice part of the story for the purpose of the craft. Like in films, whenever a scene is shot at night yet is bright enough to see everyone's faces, that's not realistic, or characters having a conversation in one scene and then continuing it in a completely different location. They're flaws that come with the craft. Do we comment on it? Sometimes for fun, but to hold it as a legitimate complaint against a specific product or even the medium as a whole is incredibly nitpicky. He even says so in the article that they never feel like chores, so why complain about it? Because it's a problem that exists in all games and not just The Last of Us, problem with that logic is every medium has flaws like this that will cover the majority of the platform. If the cliches of videogames bug you so much then maybe you shouldn't be talking about videogames for a living.

He then goes on to talk more about The Last of Us and ties it into Gears of War and the best way to sum it up is this argument of function versus meaning. When a game sacrifices a portion of the story (No matter how small it is) for the sake of a gameplay mechanic, the player loses a bit of the world and the experience because of it. He sees this as a problem, i see it as a perfect medium. Not everyone plays videogames for the story and prefer the gameplay and vice-verse. Now if you're someone who prefers story over gameplay then that's perfectly fine but don't act like it's an actual problem as much as it is a subjective one. Like he says the shiv problem is there as a challenge for the player and it's not trying to be anything else. I've always felt that if you were to take out the story in The Last of Us it would still be a great game, it has a realistic and fluid cover system, the shooting and melee combat work great and the survival horror aspects of limited supplies ups the tension. There are people who play The Last of Us who had no interest in the story and they still would have gotten an enjoyable experience out of it because the gameplay was fun, even with a some mundane or repetative elements that you yourself said aren't that big of a problem. The Last of Us is that perfect medium between great mechanics and story, yes both do have to make compromises for the other to be great but if they didn't then what you're asking for is a literally flawless game, and that's just not possible. If the game went for one over the other then maybe it could have had a perfect narrative but the gameplay wouldn't have been as great, and we'd have another Beyond: Two Souls on our hands, great story but fails completely as a videogame due to lack of care given to the gameplay mechanics.

More than that i'd like to point out the hipocrasy about this entire article that argues function over meaning. By that I mean this entire article is a portion of a book available on Amazon written by the same man, making this whole thing pretty much one giant advert for it. The meaning and intention of this article is partially lost when the entire reason it exists (It's function mind you) is to sell you shit and stir up controversy with a clickbait title and then go on to insult one of the most popular videogames of all time with an argument that honestly could have been debated about any videogame that even attempts a story.

-Danny