C O N T E N T S P a r t O n eINTRO | 04.22.99Emotion EnginesAustin Bunn introduces our Video Game Special IssueESSAY
05.04.99Camera ReadyVillage Voice film critic Gary Dauphin looks at games' cinematic innovationsESSAY
05.04.99The Uses of Sim SidewalksWhat happens when three urban scholars sit down to play Sim City? Steven Johnson investigates.RE
05.04.99Shigeru MiyamotoWilliam O'Shea talks to the legendary designer of Donkey Kong, Mario, and Zelda about what video games have left to acheive.BOTTOMFEEDER
05.04.99Chain of CommandFEED looks at the the people behind 3DO's Requiem.DIALOG
05.04.99Next LevelThe Frontiers of Game DesignESSAY
IN JORGE LUIS BORGES' story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," a man discovers an essay about the wonders of Tlön, a place that does not appear on any map. Years later, he unearths an encyclopedia with detailed explanations of Tlön's culture. "Now I held in my hands a vast methodical fragment of an unknown planet's entire history," Borges writes, "with its architecture and its playing cards, with the dread of its mythologies and the murmur of its languages, with its emperors and its seas, with its minerals and its birds and its fish, with its algebra and its fire..." But soon enough, he finds that Tlön is a mirage. He has been fooled by the ravings of a brilliant cabal -- a "secret and benevolent society" of men, passing their genius down from 17th century unto today -- that sought to "invent a country." Evidently, Robyn Miller is next in line. Miller, along with his brother Rand, created the electronic equivalents of Tlön -- the exquisitely detailed and hugely successful computer games, Myst and Riven, released by their company Cyan. But in early 1998, Miller left gaming and created a film production company Land of Point, dedicated to producing entirely computer generated (CG) feature films. Though the company's projects are highly classified, Miller has begun to release clues about their development. The films, like Myst and Riven, promise to be highly environmental, taking place in a world populated by non-human creatures. And, much like Borges, he began building them with encyclopedias. The first film, provisionally titled "Project Green Tea," uses a "Green Tea Bible" to organize every detail in the film. "The Bible...serves as a complete reference for all the film's design," reads the pr�cis from the company's website. "Ancient myths recorded in this document are quoted by characters in the story. Court protocol is strictly adhered to throughout the script as specified in the Bible's pages." In the following interview, Miller talks about his fear of Hollywood, the lessons of computer games, and the why he left Cyan for the seduction of stories. -- William O'Shea FEED: Why did you decide to leave gaming for film?MILLER: While working on Riven I got a little frustrated with the medium of game making. Story has always been my real interest and I had always wanted to infuse as much story as possible into an interactive environment. But the limitations of that sort of environment began to become a bit obvious during the Riven project. Creating a believable setting wasn't the issue; setting and environment is probably what is most powerfully portrayed through interactivity. But creating believable characters, orchestrating the drama, creating a provocative pacing... these elements seemed so impossibly far out of reach. It was a bit maddening and a bit discouraging. In an interactive game, the audience are the ones who are in control -- they define the story -- the artist just sort of sets the stage. I guess I just started to find this a bit dissatisfying.I should point out that there are some things that computer games do extremely well -- much better than a linear story ever could. I think things like presenting an environment, making you feel like you're there.FEED: Most of your projects have a mythological quality to them. What sources have you drawn on for inspiration?MILLER: Most of those influences come from my very young years, when I read things like The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, or even the Bible... But when we started this project, we actually did a lot of research in this area. We took a real close look at mythologies, legends, and religions from all over the world, especially from Eastern societies. In fact, the world we're creating is probably culturally much closer to an ancient or medieval Eastern culture then anything else. In order to create a society we thought about how it would evolve, starting with this world's earliest myths and working our way through their history to their current time. Because of this, their society is complex. Like a real society, they have beliefs that are intertwined and connected in very complex ways.It makes the world that much more believable, even to us while we're working on it. This is the first time I've ever gone into a project feeling like I really knew the culture -- like I really know how the people react and what they believe and what they think.FEED: It seems that what attracts a lot of people to games is their environmental quality. It strikes me that programmers act as architects in a sense, they create spaces and lead people in certain, finite directions. Is that a metaphor that resonates with you? MILLER: I think that's a perfect way to say it. I've said before that Riven and Myst were a lot like Disneyland, because they were designed to entertain. And in that way I believe they succeeded, at least for a certain type of person. It was always our goal to put more into those games than only entertainment, we tried to infuse them with at least a bit of meaning. I think that in the end though, the Myst games ended up being just intriguing places to wander around in.You know I keep calling these thing games, but I should say that I have never at all thought of what we did as game making; I don't even really like games, but I do enjoy exploring and using my mind and seeing interesting new things. I certainly don't consider myself a game player and if anything I hoped Myst and Riven would appeal to people like myself, who just wanted a world to explore. And this was the most pleasing thing that came out of Myst; that so much of our audience were people who never had played any computer games.I think gaming has a long way to go, and that it's still in its infant stages. I even think we're still at the stage where a couple of people can create a game in their living room and it can become a best seller. One of the really attractive things about gaming is that [as opposed to making a film] it isn't intimidating. We just went out and made the games. It's a very different feeling when you're making a movie.FEED: It seem that one reason you're focusing on films now is games' lack of ability to provoke an emotional response in people. Do you have any sense that gaming is moving in a more emotive direction?MILLER: It could be. I think it's moving in a more cinematic direction. But the only emotion I've ever seen people have with games is, "Oh, Cool!" People don't break down crying over video games. You can't help but not take computer games seriously. That's not to say that they can't be cinematic, or take on a grander scope, with beautiful camera angles and [emotion-inducing] pacing. But story is about characters, and games aren't.FEED: I was struck last time I was playing Riven by its slowness, the game's Zen attention to detail. Is that how you envision your movie? Will it have the same kind of pacing?MILLER: You get away with a lot in computer games because the medium is so undefined. Myst and Riven were, to my mind, largely experiments. Attempts to do something that had never been done before. I think we took some steps forward with these games, but they were far from perfect. As to pacing, I'm never one for frenzied action, but I don't think I could ever pull off that kind of Myst slowness in a film, nor would I even want to.FEED: What do you think stories provide to people? Why are they so necessary?MILLER: Stories are one of the few things that can really change people, and sometimes in even dramatic ways. It can make them look at things in a new light or make them feel something they've never felt before. It can make them think about politics, philosophy, spirituality, look at the world from a different angle. And that is an incredible power. I've come away from movies or books, a changed person. That's a magical and powerful thing. Stories stay with us for eons; they're somehow eternal. They mold us and shape our understanding of who we are. We don't realize how myths and stories have shaped us and dictated so many of our beliefs. We're creatures that respond to story. Read on for Part II: The tribulations of Computer Generated filmmaking and the allure of Star Wars We've created a single Loop discussion about this game issue -- click here to join the conversation. Available in multiplayer only.
C O N T E N T S P a r t O n eINTRO | 04.22.99Emotion EnginesAustin Bunn introduces our Video Game Special IssueESSAY