Most of us already know that the “Citizen Kane of gaming” is a stupid concept, for a variety of reasons. We’ve made intense fun of it ourselves in the past. Nevertheless, it always gladdens the see someone in the industry echo our sentiments, and in such a harsh way, too.
“Self expression and the ability for players to feeling like they are making decisions are more important than the things that we, as writers, think are awesome,” says game writer Daniel Erickson. “We always talk about when’s there going to be the Citizen Kane of games. There’s never going to be a Citizen Kane for ballet either. It’s a dumb concept. It’s a totally different genre of storytelling. Our biggest advantages is player agency so it’s what we have to put first.”
100% agree with the guy. People who bring up Citizen Kane are intellectually lazy, unable to judge games on their own merits and relying on rather obvious entry-level movie choices in order to appear cultured and smart. It’s like somebody bringing up War & Peace in a book conversation to appear deep and intelligent — despite the fact that even a complete idiot has heard of War & Peace.
I hate the way some critics cloyingly suck up to movies and demand that games be more like them, as if they’re desperate for approval from Daddy. If you want to write about movies, go write about bloody movies and leave us gamers to actually talk about games. So long as we don’t have to listen to your pretentious, pompous shit anymore.
Discussing Interactive Drama And Dialogue As Gameplay [Gamasutra]
