It had been a couple of years since I had seen Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, and even though I never doubted its greatness for a moment, I still wondered if revisiting it now would result in the same level of delight it had back in the early days of my film geekdom. Fortunately for every party concerned, those fears were quickly dismissed as I watched it earlier this week ; Scorsese's fifth feature, based on Paul Schrader's screenplay, remains an unquestionable lesson of cinematic storytelling, and a timeless exploration of contemporary dread in North America. Constructed from a gathering of acute details, Taxi Driver builds tension from subtle observations and associations, as well as from its main character's peculiar point of view on the action. In the most admirable way possible, it constitutes a thoroughly directed, finely authored experience ; in short, the complete opposite of what most forward-thinking video game designers have been attempting to conceive in recent years.
It might seem strange or uncalled for to bring up video games while discussing Taxi Driver, but let's not forget that as late as 2005, a game adaptation of the film was still being filed as "in the works". And even without taking the poor standard of video games inspired by cult films in consideration, suffice to say that the PS2 actioner that never was didn't look very promising: a third-person shooter in the mold of Max Payne, it was set to relate Travis Bickle's nightly ventures through the "scum" nests of New York City ; the nightclubs and other venues he never visited in 1976, of course. Players would have certainly taken control of Bickle's mighty yellow cab, generating the urban havoc that never took place in Scorsese's film, and provoking the authorities that the character had only gone so far as taunting strangely in his first appearance. Without much surprise nor fanfare, the game was ultimately cancelled, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched to envision a game that would have perversely tainted every distinctive quality of its source material, and made for just another poor display of electronic gaming's profound potential.
But let's project for a moment that such a disaster would have not happened. Let's imagine that a video game inspired by Taxi Driver would have transcended the portion of the plot regarding Travis Bickle going nuts, and explored the themes that Schrader and Scorsese's opus was really concerned about: urban alienation, repressed war traumas, underworld economy, and so on. How would such a game have succeeded in conveying those ideas without leaning too heavily on cinematic devices? How would have this affected the delivery of the original story, had it still been present? More to the point, how would've one programmed a feeling of estrangement, and allowed a user to explore such a state of mind? It is fair to assume the difficulty of those fundamental questions is probably what keeps most software developers from tipping their toe in such troubled waters, but they are worth asking nonetheless.
In his 2002 anthology The Medium of the Video Game, Mark J.P. Wolf summarizes the basic conditions of electronic storytelling: "Interactivity [...] does not have to work against narrative or even linearity ; it simply requires that multiple lines of narrative be present, or the potential for a variety of narrative possibilities." What strikes me about this phrasing is how fair it remains to the most established traditions of game design ; nowhere does Wolf suggest that failure by death consists of an invalid course, nor does he propose the concept of branching plots as the ideal solution. The notion of the mere presence of "narrative possibilities" is rather left to interpretation, and may be stretched as much as one likes. What this implies, in turn, is that the way in which a designer chooses to exploit this singular aspect of interactivity becomes very telling of the nature and extent of his or her creative vision ; feeling confined within a straightforward progress template, a development team may introduce varying degrees of reward and punishment, encourage the player to craft his own solutions, or reinforce certain elements of permanence. "Lines of narrative" can take any form, but the thing to remember is that their use consists of one of games' primary tools of expression.
Over the course of Taxi Driver, main character Travis Bickle engages in several narrative paths, reacts and takes decisions accordingly, generating a plausible chain of events. The things he witnesses and the outcomes he faces add up over time and shape his perception of the world ; being dumped by Betsy, a woman he approached with confidence but courted with the wrong moves, deepens his depression, while allowing young prostitute Iris to be dragged from his cab and back on the streets clearly has an impact on the way he will address her "rescue" later on. Without a doubt, Vietnam veteran Bickle has a mind and a will of his own, and it is the pleasure of film-watching to witness character psyches evolving independently of our own. But even so, it is not unreasonable to imagine the story taking completely different turns: browsing through the corner store at night, erratic Travis could have failed to gather his guts and to shoot the robber, thus maintaining his abilities untested ; reacting more aggressively to a violent customer's plan of murdering his wife could have led to interesting (and potentially dangerous) developments, and even to a new storyline. Properly set up to support them, a computer program could prove a fascinating way of exploring such narrative permutations. Permutations, however, that threaten the fundamental order of an authored narrative, thus prompting the question: "How to preserve internal consistency while granting the player some leeway?".
I lean once more on Mark J.P. Wolf to back up my thoughts: "Rather than creating an inherent message or metaphor within a single storyline or multiple lines lived by different characters, the author can imbed a worldview into the structure of the game itself, which is then 'lived out' by the player-character." Again, Wolf avoids denigrating the industry mainstays, denoting that a simple "kill or be killed" mentality already amounts to a thought-provoking standpoint. Several games, such as the Fable franchise or the much-debated Infamous, have also started to ingrain "good" and "evil" variables into the core of their structure, which may or may not indicate a more pronounced sense of right and wrong on the part of the developers. Things can go crazy from there, however: imagine a game presenting two choices of equal malevolence, but differing psychological impact on the protagonist ; a game about accepting that feeling bitter is part of life (oh wait, that's already been done). The key factor here is that of believability, of staying true to a character's outlook, as well as committing to surrounding the chosen actions with options of equal likelihood. But all of this doesn't resolve the previously-raised problem of consistency, which greatly exceeds the sole confines of the main protagonist.
Traditionally, the design method to implement consequences to one's actions has been to affect the avatar's material goods and physical attributes, but let's think of less tangible ways to achieve this. Imagine, for instance, this scenario: picking up random fares of differing personalities, Travis Bickle's level of immediate aggression could fluctuate according to their behaviour ; walking the streets later that night, the current disposition of the character could determine his range of possible reactions (repressed or otherwise) to the surrounding phenomena, such as the brawls and disputes he witnesses. Over the broader course of the game, those reactions, largely determined by elements of procedural selection, would influence a larger morale scale shaping the overall direction of the storyline, such as the way he ends up dealing with the female characters previously mentioned (characters the narrative may not even lead him to meet). Obviously, the stories generated by exploring this large network of possibilities would end up deviating very much from the template imagined by Paul Schrader (inspired by such tales of obsession as those of the great westerns The Searchers or The Wild Bunch) ; however, what it could retain, if done right, is the overarching and perhaps even more interesting subject of Taxi Driver, meaning the fauna of seedy New York City, its corrupting character, the fear and loneliness of its populace.
There is no doubt that elaborating a game of such volatility would involve uncommon feats of programming, as well as major skills in keeping mental track of an evolving database. One could even imagine the product consisting solely of text, or largely simplified graphic displays ; after all, one of the most phenomenally complex games ever created, Dwarf Fortress, has built a following out of simple text characters and loads of imagination power. There is an argument to be made, however, for the immediacy of elaborate graphics and the things only they can express ; the sad, pitiful sight of two elder men grappling on a street corner could hardly be put into words with the same impact, as is the strange beauty of a fire hydrant's burst arching over a city street at night. If only less resources were spent on scripted cinematics and fancy weapon physics, and more on looping, expressive animations and evocative atmospheric features, surely such an effort could see the light of day. One could even preserve the memorable, unsettling style of Robert De Niro's voice-over, coloring the sights with his unique sort of awareness, and even maintain the darkness of the film's final showdown by wielding fatality into the gameplay (for more on this, check out Nick Fortugno's brilliant analysis of the "futile" mechanics in Shadow of the Colossus). There is a balance to be struck, and it may not be so far off the corner.
In his defense of film adaptations of literary works, the great critic André Bazin once wrote that "in the same way that a child's education is done through imitation of the surrounding adults, the evolution of the cinema has been inflected by the example of recognized arts". In a similar spirit, my purpose here was not to encourage anyone to reclaim the reins of video game conversion of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, but to give a second look at one of American cinema's great achievements, and to see which facets of the work could apply to the design of narrative systems in the age of electronic domination. By all means, I believe that development studios should capitalize on original creative property, and elaborate fictions that are uniquely suited to the medium's forces. But what I have discovered is that the tale of Travis Bickle is but one of many stories ; one of terrifying power and self-contained meaning, but still one of a million awaiting to be "lived out" in the same environment, with the same determining conditions, open to a plethora of outcomes. To prepare the ground for digital yarns with a life of their own: that is the future of storytelling, and one that cinema can never hope to achieve without denying its own strengths as a narrative art form.
It might seem strange or uncalled for to bring up video games while discussing Taxi Driver, but let's not forget that as late as 2005, a game adaptation of the film was still being filed as "in the works". And even without taking the poor standard of video games inspired by cult films in consideration, suffice to say that the PS2 actioner that never was didn't look very promising: a third-person shooter in the mold of Max Payne, it was set to relate Travis Bickle's nightly ventures through the "scum" nests of New York City ; the nightclubs and other venues he never visited in 1976, of course. Players would have certainly taken control of Bickle's mighty yellow cab, generating the urban havoc that never took place in Scorsese's film, and provoking the authorities that the character had only gone so far as taunting strangely in his first appearance. Without much surprise nor fanfare, the game was ultimately cancelled, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched to envision a game that would have perversely tainted every distinctive quality of its source material, and made for just another poor display of electronic gaming's profound potential.
But let's project for a moment that such a disaster would have not happened. Let's imagine that a video game inspired by Taxi Driver would have transcended the portion of the plot regarding Travis Bickle going nuts, and explored the themes that Schrader and Scorsese's opus was really concerned about: urban alienation, repressed war traumas, underworld economy, and so on. How would such a game have succeeded in conveying those ideas without leaning too heavily on cinematic devices? How would have this affected the delivery of the original story, had it still been present? More to the point, how would've one programmed a feeling of estrangement, and allowed a user to explore such a state of mind? It is fair to assume the difficulty of those fundamental questions is probably what keeps most software developers from tipping their toe in such troubled waters, but they are worth asking nonetheless.
In his 2002 anthology The Medium of the Video Game, Mark J.P. Wolf summarizes the basic conditions of electronic storytelling: "Interactivity [...] does not have to work against narrative or even linearity ; it simply requires that multiple lines of narrative be present, or the potential for a variety of narrative possibilities." What strikes me about this phrasing is how fair it remains to the most established traditions of game design ; nowhere does Wolf suggest that failure by death consists of an invalid course, nor does he propose the concept of branching plots as the ideal solution. The notion of the mere presence of "narrative possibilities" is rather left to interpretation, and may be stretched as much as one likes. What this implies, in turn, is that the way in which a designer chooses to exploit this singular aspect of interactivity becomes very telling of the nature and extent of his or her creative vision ; feeling confined within a straightforward progress template, a development team may introduce varying degrees of reward and punishment, encourage the player to craft his own solutions, or reinforce certain elements of permanence. "Lines of narrative" can take any form, but the thing to remember is that their use consists of one of games' primary tools of expression.
Over the course of Taxi Driver, main character Travis Bickle engages in several narrative paths, reacts and takes decisions accordingly, generating a plausible chain of events. The things he witnesses and the outcomes he faces add up over time and shape his perception of the world ; being dumped by Betsy, a woman he approached with confidence but courted with the wrong moves, deepens his depression, while allowing young prostitute Iris to be dragged from his cab and back on the streets clearly has an impact on the way he will address her "rescue" later on. Without a doubt, Vietnam veteran Bickle has a mind and a will of his own, and it is the pleasure of film-watching to witness character psyches evolving independently of our own. But even so, it is not unreasonable to imagine the story taking completely different turns: browsing through the corner store at night, erratic Travis could have failed to gather his guts and to shoot the robber, thus maintaining his abilities untested ; reacting more aggressively to a violent customer's plan of murdering his wife could have led to interesting (and potentially dangerous) developments, and even to a new storyline. Properly set up to support them, a computer program could prove a fascinating way of exploring such narrative permutations. Permutations, however, that threaten the fundamental order of an authored narrative, thus prompting the question: "How to preserve internal consistency while granting the player some leeway?".
I lean once more on Mark J.P. Wolf to back up my thoughts: "Rather than creating an inherent message or metaphor within a single storyline or multiple lines lived by different characters, the author can imbed a worldview into the structure of the game itself, which is then 'lived out' by the player-character." Again, Wolf avoids denigrating the industry mainstays, denoting that a simple "kill or be killed" mentality already amounts to a thought-provoking standpoint. Several games, such as the Fable franchise or the much-debated Infamous, have also started to ingrain "good" and "evil" variables into the core of their structure, which may or may not indicate a more pronounced sense of right and wrong on the part of the developers. Things can go crazy from there, however: imagine a game presenting two choices of equal malevolence, but differing psychological impact on the protagonist ; a game about accepting that feeling bitter is part of life (oh wait, that's already been done). The key factor here is that of believability, of staying true to a character's outlook, as well as committing to surrounding the chosen actions with options of equal likelihood. But all of this doesn't resolve the previously-raised problem of consistency, which greatly exceeds the sole confines of the main protagonist.
Traditionally, the design method to implement consequences to one's actions has been to affect the avatar's material goods and physical attributes, but let's think of less tangible ways to achieve this. Imagine, for instance, this scenario: picking up random fares of differing personalities, Travis Bickle's level of immediate aggression could fluctuate according to their behaviour ; walking the streets later that night, the current disposition of the character could determine his range of possible reactions (repressed or otherwise) to the surrounding phenomena, such as the brawls and disputes he witnesses. Over the broader course of the game, those reactions, largely determined by elements of procedural selection, would influence a larger morale scale shaping the overall direction of the storyline, such as the way he ends up dealing with the female characters previously mentioned (characters the narrative may not even lead him to meet). Obviously, the stories generated by exploring this large network of possibilities would end up deviating very much from the template imagined by Paul Schrader (inspired by such tales of obsession as those of the great westerns The Searchers or The Wild Bunch) ; however, what it could retain, if done right, is the overarching and perhaps even more interesting subject of Taxi Driver, meaning the fauna of seedy New York City, its corrupting character, the fear and loneliness of its populace.
There is no doubt that elaborating a game of such volatility would involve uncommon feats of programming, as well as major skills in keeping mental track of an evolving database. One could even imagine the product consisting solely of text, or largely simplified graphic displays ; after all, one of the most phenomenally complex games ever created, Dwarf Fortress, has built a following out of simple text characters and loads of imagination power. There is an argument to be made, however, for the immediacy of elaborate graphics and the things only they can express ; the sad, pitiful sight of two elder men grappling on a street corner could hardly be put into words with the same impact, as is the strange beauty of a fire hydrant's burst arching over a city street at night. If only less resources were spent on scripted cinematics and fancy weapon physics, and more on looping, expressive animations and evocative atmospheric features, surely such an effort could see the light of day. One could even preserve the memorable, unsettling style of Robert De Niro's voice-over, coloring the sights with his unique sort of awareness, and even maintain the darkness of the film's final showdown by wielding fatality into the gameplay (for more on this, check out Nick Fortugno's brilliant analysis of the "futile" mechanics in Shadow of the Colossus). There is a balance to be struck, and it may not be so far off the corner.
In his defense of film adaptations of literary works, the great critic André Bazin once wrote that "in the same way that a child's education is done through imitation of the surrounding adults, the evolution of the cinema has been inflected by the example of recognized arts". In a similar spirit, my purpose here was not to encourage anyone to reclaim the reins of video game conversion of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, but to give a second look at one of American cinema's great achievements, and to see which facets of the work could apply to the design of narrative systems in the age of electronic domination. By all means, I believe that development studios should capitalize on original creative property, and elaborate fictions that are uniquely suited to the medium's forces. But what I have discovered is that the tale of Travis Bickle is but one of many stories ; one of terrifying power and self-contained meaning, but still one of a million awaiting to be "lived out" in the same environment, with the same determining conditions, open to a plethora of outcomes. To prepare the ground for digital yarns with a life of their own: that is the future of storytelling, and one that cinema can never hope to achieve without denying its own strengths as a narrative art form.
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