• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, June 6, 2011

Video gaming can't even seem to buy its way into aesthetic respectability. Three decades after games like Tempest, Galaga and Red Baron first captivated me in the bars and arcades of '70s America, the industry has become one of the economic powerhouses of entertainment...and most critics continue to pay empty lip service to questions about "whether it is an art form?"

Who the hell cares whether gaming is art? Well, except for the handful of chronically underemployed grad students in need of dissertation topics. At its best gaming is a unique and thoroughly absorbing entertainment experience that taps zones of visceral response most novelists and filmmakers only dream of triggering in us. Whether a video game "can make you cry" in the same way a film or novel might seems a moot point. Even if I don't shed a tear during the ambitious Western adventure Red Dead Redemption or the stylish and story-driven platformer Braid, these games tap so many other qualities, I really don't' miss the crying so much. They engage tension, a sense of personal prowess, a rage against the machine, even personal ego at the same time their visual stylings craft a mood out of building virtual environments.

In my mind, video games have always exceled in crafting environments, and their attempts to seem film-like, usually in their trailers and cut scene, feel forced. Game-makers' insecure need to seem like "interactive storytellers" usually results in overreaching - too many film clichés or overwrought CGI set-ups.

And so as we gear up for the big E3 gaming convention tomorrow in L.A. it is good to see that some recent games finally start getting video right. In playing the superb police procedural L.A. Noir, I noted with pleasure that we actually have video cut scenes that enhance the gaming experience. Set in post-WWII LA, Noir's main character is LAPD detective and war veteran Cole Phelps, played by Mad Men actor Aaron Staton ("Ken Cosgrove"). As outlined in the trailer below, the game used breakthrough facial capture technology to render the characters with a new level of realism in the 3D scenes. Facial rendering in many recent feature length animation films has taken on a creepy quality that puts many of us off. In the game context it actually works a bit better, if only because we are looking more for game immersion than smooth dramatic rendering. In L.A. Noir the capture tech is actually used for gameplay. In some interrogation scenes you have to read the facial cues of characters to guess whether they are lying.

But perhaps more to the point, L.A. Noir's cut scenes actually establish character, not just story. In a series of flashbacks to the war, we get a sense of the character's need to excel and his personal morality. All of this information builds over time so that the decisions the player makes are informed by Phelp's history. The weight of personal history is brought to bear on the player. This is just a smarter way to use video in-game than we tend to see in the usual story-setting cut-scenes. Suddenly you are closer to the character because you have to make decisions about whether he lives through his early legacy or caves to the pressures of advancing through the ranks of a corrupt LAPD.

The lesson here may be that games will get closer to being "art" - whatever that is supposed to mean - when they stop trying to be movies and just focus on being better game experiences. Story and character ultimately enhance gameplay when the former guides the latter.