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Super Mario Goes to Hollywood: The Merge
by David M. Reynolds (March 2008)
The entertainment industry in the United States is changing in a drastic way most people don’t even
realize. The motion picture industry and the video game industry are growing closer and closer together.
Though there are obviously many clear differences, video games have become (and are still becoming)
more and more like movies. The similarities are very easy to illustrate to the socially-observant person.
One thing movies and video games have in common is a plot. Movies, video games, novels, and
plays all have plots. The difference is the clarity of the plot. In movies, the action or drama is based
around the plot. The plot of a movie is usually clear and easy to summarize, though it can be quite
complex. This is usually the case for video games, too, but only in recent years.
If it had a plot at all, the average video game’s plot used to be very loose. This was true until about
fifteen years ago, when video games became a major faction in the entertainment industry. Before then,
the plot of a video game was the opposite of a movie’s; the plot revolved around the action. If a person
wanted to know the “story” of the game, he or she had to look in the game’s instruction manual.
Nowadays, a normal video game has enough of a plot to stand on its own. The industry is changing
completely, rivaling movies in both popularity and financial success. In fact, many well-known movies,
such as Resident Evil and Tomb Raider, have been based on video games. A player can understand the
game’s plot by playing the game rather than reading the game’s literature. The plot is dynamic, but the
game’s action, levels, and characters all point toward the central plot rather than the other way around.
One very important aspect of both movies and video games is the choice and availability of actors. A
movie with big names like Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis is usually going to make more money than a
movie full of inexperienced actors. Star Wars is a good example of this. Although its three main stars
were new to the acting scene, the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi was masterfully portrayed by Sir Alec
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Guinness (who was nearing the end of a prestigious career) and was one of the most popular characters in
the film.
In the earlier days of video games, actors were not important to the quality of the game. If the
character had any dialogue, it usually appeared in a text box at the bottom of the screen. Some games,
like Pong or Asteroids, didn’t have characters at all. Most of the time, if a game had characters, they were
flat, uninteresting, and unimportant. The game’s main character was nothing more than the player’s
avatar in the digital world.
In today’s video games, developers frequently employ well-established actors to lend their voices (or
even their faces) to a game’s characters. Star Fox: Assault used the voice of Grant Goodeve, who starred
in the soap opera One Life to Live and the sit-com Eight is Enough. An even better example is the
popular James Bond franchise. Games in the Bond franchise have utilized the voices of Sean Connery
and Pierce Brosnan. Both of these men are well-known actors who have played the legendary spy in the
movies.
A key to the success of a movie is its artistic value. A movie’s artistic value entails a number of
different production aspects, such as quality of acting, music, costume and scenery, and writing. Critics
judge movies based on these and other criteria. As with acting, these fields have developed big names.
Composers like John Williams or James Horner, who each have won several Oscars, are going to be a
boost to the quality of a movie’s musical score.
Music was rarely a key feature of early video games. The melodies weren’t bad, but eight-bit MIDI
simply can’t accomplish what a sixty-piece orchestra can. If the aesthetic value of a video game was
poor, it was probably because of the lack of available technology. On the other hand, some games came
out of the earlier days and became popular, epic series which still exist today, such as The Legend of
Zelda or Final Fantasy.
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Video games today have become just as artistic as movies. When the “fourth generation” consoles,
such as the Nintendo GameCube and Sony PlayStation 2, were developed, they had higher graphic and
sound capacities. Video games with scores produced by live orchestras are very common now. Art,
animation style, and environment design are also very important to a game’s aesthetic quality.
The most drastic changes in both movies and video games can be found in technological
advancements. Special effects in movies have become incredibly sophisticated. In watching a modern
movie, it can be very difficult to tell the difference between what is “real” and what is computeranimated. This can be viewed as a downfall; many movie producers use computer animation as a crutch
rather than an enhancement. The best movies are those like The Lord of the Rings, where the computer
animation looks believable and is used in addition to (rather than in place of) traditional techniques.
When video games were first becoming popular, the graphics were not very important. There were
very few “video game critics” in that time period. Most people who took any interest in video games
were only interested in playability; as long as the game was fun, the graphics didn’t matter. The graphics
and game-play were delivered through very simple programming, usually in the BASIC language. The
programming of simple games like Pong is so easy to reproduce that it can be done on a modern graphing
calculator.
Although the essentials of the software haven’t really changed, the programming of video games has
become fantastically complex. Character movements are “recorded” into the game’s programming by
using a “motion capture” technique, requiring an actor to reproduce the actions of the game’s characters.
Anyone who has ever seen the credits of a modern game has probably noticed how “motion capture” is
given acknowledgement. This technique is also used for computer animation in movies.
Perhaps the most important part of the entertainment industry as a whole is the public view. The
public perception of movies changes as Hollywood changes. Many people say that movies are far too
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violent and graphic and should be monitored and censored more. Many envy the glitzy lifestyle of
today’s leading actors and actresses.
The earliest video games were not nearly as glamorous. There was no “Hollywood scene” for game
developers because they weren’t (and still aren’t) centralized in one place. Until the advent of
Microsoft’s Xbox, most video games were produced in Japan. This is because the leading names in the
industry, like Nintendo, Sony, and Sega, were all Japanese companies. Public perception of video games
was fragmented because they were little more than a novelty back then. Any negative view was mostly
due to the addiction some gamers developed.
The negative view of video games has changed over the years. Many still view video games
negatively, but not for the same reasons as they did when video games first became popular. Although
the addiction is still one argument used by critics, the criticism against modern video games is very
similar to that faced by the movies. Criticism of today’s video games stems mostly from their content,
which has become increasingly realistic and violent. Games are often overly criticized for this reason.
Not all video games are violent; public critics should use critical thinking and look at reviews and ratings.
How harmful can a game be with a title like Super Mario Sunshine?
As video games and movies continue to be produced, it will be interesting to watch how they grow
closer together. Many have seen the two industries in contest, but they actually benefit each other.
Technology shared between movies and video games gets better and better all the time. As the first
generation of gamers grows older, more people are enjoying video games than ever. They will most
likely continue to grow more popular as the years go by. Of course, Hollywood is here to stay.