down with alice!

It's Friday afternoon, and so rather than more use cases and console stories, a wander off the range is in order. Today's wander starts with an article in yesterday's Guardian newspaper, titled Down with Alice.

The article is an extended interview with the auteur responsible for an online multimedia novel-cum-flash game called Inanimate Alice. The game/novel has been well-received critically, picking up awards and nominations at a range of digital and electronic art festivals across Europe, as a look at the site of the company funding the game demonstrates.

I'm sure the game is as good as its reviews and awards indicate - it certainly looks good, even though i haven't actually played it - but the quality or lack of the novel-cum-game isn't the point of this post. Rather, that can be found in the last two paragraphs of the article. Here, The Guardian tells us, the authors,

and other digital fiction pioneers like them, are keeping a close eye on the games industry, however. It has, they believe, a huge potential for storytelling

A potential that isn't currently being taken advantage of within the games industry. The problem being, apparently, that the games industry lacks an indie market:

Unlike Hollywood, however, the games industry lacks a vibrant independent sector, producing the kind of smaller budget, quirky, more challenging products that may not reach the multiplex but find enough of an audience to earn their makers an income from their work.

The article concludes with a quote from the co-author, reflecting upon this deficiency:

Spielberg has said that while video games are getting closer to a storytelling art form, the real indicator will be when somebody confesses they cried at level 17... but it's what, 25 years old?

And yet, there's an entire genre of gaming - the Visual Novel - that does precisely this. And so popular is the genre that there's a huge indie market for these games; there are companies that make money just by creating software to allow independent authors/ game creators create their own visual novels, and many fan creators/ indie authors go on to get their works picked up by large producers.

What's more, the main focus of visual novels is the emotional investment of the player* - anyone who has played Kanon or Kimi go Nozomu Eien and not cried is a dalek, and should not under any circumstances be mistaken as human. Oh, but wait: what was the name of that game? The second one? It wasn't English, was it? Eh? Oh. And there's the rub, and the reason for this post: as the (extremely excellent) Wikipedia entry on visual novels points out:

As of 2007, all major visual novels are produced in Japan.

Sure, there are some differences between Inanimate Alice and, say, Kanon. Alice uses flash to play the game via the web, Kanon is a PC game (ported to consoles) using cell-shaded animation; Alice is available in English, Kanon, like all visual novels, is in Japanese (although fan translations exist for this and many visual novels); Alice appears to be aimed at all ages; Kanon, like many visual novels, contains some adult content (although there are all ages variants as well).

Other than that, the main difference is time: Kanon was released 8 years ago, and looks like an eight year old game; Alice is currently in production. So in fact this story (the story of the visual novel) is not new. Interesting, sure, but not remotely new. So who do I blame for this? I could blame The Guardian: this was published in their books section, not their games or technology section, so of course they can be expected to lack game literacy. I could blame the company funding Alice: they're clearly looking for some press coverage, and there's not been a PR person created who lets the truth values of their output get in the way of getting good coverage.

But actually (and to bring this post back to some relevance to its readership), I would blame the woeful excuse that is games research here in the West. Sure, the Xbox (like the iPhone) is pitched at the North American market, and so they focus on the specificities of this market; other consoles might be focussed on other markets, so might be more interested in them. But generally, in terms of game design, development and use, the cutting edge is in Japan. All the innovative developments in this field - whether it's Kanon, or Katamari Damacy, or Lost Planet, or, yes, the Nintendo Wii, come out of Japan. Of the top 10 selling game franchises across the world, 7 are Japanese (including the top 3) (2 others are US-originated, the last is UK-based).

Game researchers neglect the Japanese game industry at their peril.


* i'm going to call them games and players from here on in this post, rather than game/novels; readers, player/readers or whatever. just because i re-invent the wheel and call it the Whagiggelator, doesn't mean anyone will give me a patent on it, y'know?