What is adventure games "Citizen Kane" moment?

[Ali]

I'm afraid I don't think video games have had a Citizen Kane, certainly not adventure games.

Perhaps that's because the impact of Kane is to do with its impact on film critics and theorists. People for whom the 'is it art' question hadn't been relevant since cinema was a sideshow attraction. I don't think there's a parallel for video games yet, as popular and mainstream as they are. There are no influential groups of intellectuals taking mainstream video games seriously in that way.

I'm not saying that an adventure game isn't or couldn't be equally good. I love Grim Fandango and Myst (well, Riven). It's a question of cultural impact and status. People who haven't seen Citizen Kane still know it's a great film. People who haven't played Grim Fandango, haven't heard of Grim Fandango.

[Magic]

A 'Citizen Kane' would have to be very critically popular and serve as an example not to others of its ilk but the entire medium. It certainly hasn't happened and so it's hard to say if it ever will given the state of the genre (Bless it). Gaming is still 1/4th the age of movies (Or 1/3rd at least) and has a long way to go.

Also, genres seem to blend much more easily in gaming compared to movies; the web video series Extra Credits make a good example between Call of Duty (An FPS shooter, but its multiplayer has RPG elements) and Mass Effect (An RPG, but it has shooting-based gameplay), so I think that makes it harder to say that 'adventure games' have reached a certain level.

I'd say when gaming has reached is played by an even larger share of the public (moreso than now and more than the Farmville crowd) then we can consider it.

'What is the "Citizen Kane" of gaming?' - now that is also an interesting question...

[dactylopus]

I think there should be a better reference point, as Citizen Kane was a poor film.

That said, I'll agree that we haven't yet had a game of that cultural significance.

[elentgirl]

Personally I'd say Myst is the Star Wars of adventure games. It looks good, and creates a great world. But you get tired of it after a while, and the plot falls apart when you look at it closely.

I find it interesting that you link these two. They certainly have something in common - people who never went to see Sci-Fi films went to see Star Wars, and people who did not normally play computer games played Myst.  I don't think this was simply because they both looked good - what they offered were new and fascinating worlds in which you could become immersed.  Which was why Myst got me hooked on adventure games.  It may not be the Citizen Kane of adventure games, but it's certainly a classic, albeit one that broke most of the rules.

[Armageddon]

I think there should be a better reference point, as Citizen Kane was a poor film.

Your mouth is open again.

[dactylopus]

I think there should be a better reference point, as Citizen Kane was a poor film.

Your mouth is open again.

Indeed, and truth is coming out.

Seriously, it's a matter of taste.

How about you focus on the part of my post where I answered the initial question.  That'd be great.

[Eric]

Calling Citizen Kane a poor film as a matter of taste is like giving a 3 to a figure skater who's earned 10s from everyone else because you didn't like their choice of music.

[dactylopus]

Calling Citizen Kane a poor film as a matter of taste is like giving a 3 to a figure skater who's earned 10s from everyone else because you didn't like their choice of music.

I disagree with your statement, but I don't really want to argue about the subjective merits of art.

I didn't like Citizen Kane, can that be enough?  Maybe I shouldn't have said anything.

[Miguel R. Fervenza]

To be the Citizen Kane of something is to be the first widely recognized example of having fully used all the unique techniques of a particular medium to communicate something meaningful.

Like things about human condition and stuff.

Obviously, Citizen Kane is not Citizen Kane of films according to your statement. Citizen Kane, ¡1941!, that's too recent. What about Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), that used plenty movie techniques, even some new techniques like unchained camera? It was the film that change the way to do movies in Hollywood, William Fox gave to Murnau a blank check to do a movie like that for him. It was the seed of Golden Era in Hollywood, even Murnau filmed Sunrise in the States, another full modern master piece. Three lustrums before Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane was not an instant master piece, during a lot of years no one list about best films ever included Citizen Kane.

If I have to say two films that being fully modern films, changed the way of filming, I say Körkarlen -The Phantom Carriage- (Victor Sjöströn, 1921, "most important film in history" Ingmar Bergman said) and Der letzte Mann (F.W. Murnau, 1924). And I say no, there aren't yet adventure games like Körkarlen or Der letzte Mann. Adventure games reached 1910s movies in 1990s, we still wait for 1920s in 2010s.

[Eric]

I didn't like Citizen Kane, can that be enough?  Maybe I shouldn't have said anything.

I'd say there's a difference between "It didn't appeal to me," and "It was bad," and I think people far too often say the latter when they mean the former. You genuinely think it's a poor movie? The technical, cinematographic, narratological effects that Welles and especially Gregg Toland achieved in that film, were poor? I guess it's not worth arguing about, and off-topic, but you don't just barge into a (digital) room, yell, "Citizen Kane was shit," and then expect that to be the end of the conversation.

Sunrise in the States, another full modern master piece.

Sunrise is amazing. I can't help but feel we've regressed in terms of making film art every time I see it.

[Armageddon]

To be the Citizen Kane of something is to be the first widely recognized example of having fully used all the unique techniques of a particular medium to communicate something meaningful.

Like things about human condition and stuff.

Obviously, Citizen Kane is not Citizen Kane of films according to your statement. Citizen Kane, ¡1941!, that's too recent. What about Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), that used plenty movie techniques, even some new techniques like unchained camera? It was the film that change the way to do movies in Hollywood, William Fox gave to Murnau a blank check to do a movie like that for him. It was the seed of Golden Era in Hollywood, even Murnau filmed Sunrise in the States, another full modern master piece. Three lustrums before Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane was not an instant master piece, during a lot of years no one list about best films ever included Citizen Kane.

If I have to say two films that being fully modern films, changed the way of filming, I say Körkarlen -The Phantom Carriage- (Victor Sjöströn, 1921, "most important film in history" Ingmar Bergman said) and Der letzte Mann (F.W. Murnau, 1924). And I say no, there aren't yet adventure games like Körkarlen or Der letzte Mann. Adventure games reached 1910s movies in 1990s, we still wait for 1920s in 2010s.

Those movies may have pioneered a lot of filming techniques, but Kane actually used them to make a story better. 1941 isn't too late. Kane was also more widely known than the movies you mentioned which plays a large factor.

[Igor Hardy]

To be the Citizen Kane of something is to be the first widely recognized example of having fully used all the unique techniques of a particular medium to communicate something meaningful.

Like things about human condition and stuff.

Obviously, Citizen Kane is not Citizen Kane of films according to your statement. Citizen Kane, ¡1941!, that's too recent. What about Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), that used plenty movie techniques, even some new techniques like unchained camera? It was the film that change the way to do movies in Hollywood, William Fox gave to Murnau a blank check to do a movie like that for him. It was the seed of Golden Era in Hollywood, even Murnau filmed Sunrise in the States, another full modern master piece. Three lustrums before Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane was not an instant master piece, during a lot of years no one list about best films ever included Citizen Kane.

If I have to say two films that being fully modern films, changed the way of filming, I say Körkarlen -The Phantom Carriage- (Victor Sjöströn, 1921, "most important film in history" Ingmar Bergman said) and Der letzte Mann (F.W. Murnau, 1924). And I say no, there aren't yet adventure games like Körkarlen or Der letzte Mann.

I love Der letzte Mann and agree with you about its importance. My favorite movie ever happens to be Dreyer's La passion de Jeanne d'Arc from 1928 which - just like Murnau's work - is by many considered the greatest achievement of the silent movie era.

However, Citizen Kane is more widely recognized as one of the earliest films where everything (photography, editing, storytelling, acting, meaning) came into place to achieve a profound artistic result. It's not my private idea to use it as an example of that. It's the American critics that managed to give it such status probably (and only a few decades after its controversial release). Also, it's a great film - no doubt about it.

Adventure games reached 1910s movies in 1990s, we still wait for 1920s in 2010s.

Comparing apples and oranges. The 1920s will never come again - for games or any other medium. Even films themselves are rarely used to express meaning the way they were before.

[Miguel R. Fervenza]

Those movies may have pioneered a lot of filming techniques, but Kane actually used them to make a story better. 1941 isn't too late. Kane was also more widely known than the movies you mentioned which plays a large factor.

More widely known today, but not only for cinematographic reasons. Körkarlen or Der letzte Mann aren't so big because they were pioneers, actually, more of the techniques Sjöström and Murnau used, were used for years for other filmmakers. 

Adventure games reached 1910s movies in 1990s, we still wait for 1920s in 2010s.

Comparing apples and oranges. The 1920s will never come again - for games or any other medium. Even films themselves are rarely used to express meaning the way they were before. They are great because they got a deep understanding of storytelling through the moving image.

That is not the sense of the comparison, in the 1910s, movies are building the rudiments of the art, like adventure games in 1990s. In 1920s some movies were already very sophisticated, full master pieces (narrating through the moving image). Adventure games, today, don't reach that evolutionary stage (narrating through the puzzle).

[Problem]

Don't you think you're all expecting too much from adventure games? They don't tell stories like a movie. They can't, they never will and they don't have to. And if they did, they would have to lose most of their interactivity - they'd become a movie.
It's just a different medium. But there were several adventure games that grabbed me just as much as a good movie. Adventure games have evolved quite a lot from the first graphic/text adventures in the early 1980s, so I don't get why anyone would say they're still stuck in the beginning of their development.

[Miguel R. Fervenza]

I don't want adventure games be like movies, on the contrary, they are two different ways to tell stories. There are very good adventure games, of course, but they aren't yet as sophisticated as can be, they aren't as sophisticated as movies was in the 1920s, that's my point.

[Igor Hardy]

That is not the sense of the comparison, in the 1910s, movies are building the rudiments of the art, like adventure games in 1990s. In 1920s some movies were already very sophisticated, full master pieces (narrating through the moving image). Adventure games, today, don't reach that evolutionary stage (narrating through the puzzle).

But you see I find this comparison terribly unclear and subjective, as well as referring to events that have yet to come to pass (if they ever will).

For example, did film follow the same evolution as did painting or architecture? Did it start from scratch in terms of shaping a new art form?

Is it the goal of paintings to tell stories? How many of them do that compared to books of fiction or movies?

Can architecture tell stories?

Are later era productions in any media always more sophisticated than what was created before?

I can't assign any specific meaning to your movie history 1920's period in respect to games - that's my point. For all I know adventure games might not even evolve at all in any way any more. In my opinion right now games are limited in what they can be in part because of how much they try to be like movies and how much they are compared to them.

[Miguel R. Fervenza]

I'm lost, the topic is "What is adventure games "Citizen Kane" moment?", so I think the comparison movies-adventure games doesn't start in my message.

Movies and adventure games are ways of storytelling very young in human art, and as you tell, they don't start from scratch. Movies took some elements of theater, painting or photography, as well adventure games did. But, that's not the question. In movies, movie makers have to tell that story, to communicate that sensations, using the image in movement. So they had to experiment with several elements, and in a point (that I think, they reach in 1920s) they got an own cinematographic language. Adventure games have to tell the story, to communicate the sensations, using the puzzle. Late 1980s and 1990s, they experiment with puzzle, and indeed they got progress, but then, before adventure games got a full developing of its own language (puzzle), the experimentation with puzzle stopped. We almost didn't advance in that direction during the last decade, so we haven't finish that venture as the cinematographie did in 1920s. So, we need to come back to the exploration of the puzzle for reaching that, or if you prefer, for reaching Citizen Kane moment.

[xil]

If you are talking about adventure games not telling a story then I must put forward Heavy Rain. It's pretty damn close to blending the two mediums successfully.

That being said, my favorite film is Blade Runner, so my vote goes to the Blade Runner adventure game

[Armageddon]

We're not talking about how well adventure games can mirror movies, we're talking about the game that changed games from kids toys to real art.

[dactylopus]

We're not talking about how well adventure games can mirror movies, we're talking about the game that changed games from kids toys to real art.

Is that what Citizen Kane is supposed to have done?

In that case, there have been many, and it is difficult to pinpoint the actual game that was the turning point.