In an essay by Chris Crawford which I read some time ago, he referred to computer game designers as having "movie envy."  What he meant by this was that many computer game designers in some ways wish they were making movies instead of games, and hence try to get their computer games to emulate films.  One of his most salient examples was that of scrolling credits in computer games, where the names of the designers, programmers, artists, and so forth scroll by the player much as they would at the end of a movie.  His conclusion was that "movie envy" has resulted in particularly poor computer games, and that we'd all be better off if game designers concentrated on making games instead of making half-assed movies.   And  Crawford is by and large correct:  the computer gaming industry has a pretty bad case of movie envy going on, and it's really not doing any of us any good.  Magazines such as Next Generation almost never get through an issue without making some reference to how the development of computer games as an art form somehow parallels the artistic development of movies over the course of this century.  As designers, we see the fame, the wide-spread appeal, and the cultural validation that movies have received and, dammit, we want that for ourselves.  So we say: "Yeah, we're just like movies, right now is like 1910, and just in a couple of weeks society's gonna come knockin' at our door offering us fame beyond our wildest dreams and more money then we'll know what to do with."  But this is more wishful thinking than anything else; the similarities between computer games and movies are truly far fewer than the number of differences.  We need to realize that as of now we're still a fringe art-form with little mainstream appeal, and it's really too early to tell whether or not computer games will ever evolve to become the mass-media phenomena movies are. You Say There are Similarities?   That's not to say that computer games and movies aren't similar in some ways.  Using the definition of art that Scott McCloud presents in Understanding Comics (and which I happen to agree with) both movies and computer games are art-forms:  both games and films are something which helps humans to neither survive nor procreate, and which are both, in essence, useless.  Hence, by McCloud's definition, they're art.  Both are art-forms that communicate to the audience using a combination of constantly changing audio and visual information.  Both can, but by no means have to, tell stories;  just as there's really no story behind games like Pac-Man, Bumbler, or even Doom, movies don't have to tell stories, as can be witnessed in the work of many experimental film-makers, such as Bruce Connor.  Both computer games and film are largely collaborative mediums, where it's extremely difficult - though not impossible - to create a work in the form without the assistance of others.  And both are dependent on technology to communicate to their audience, though computer games to a much greater extent than films.   Most interesting to me is that both arise out of other art-forms, yet use a means of communication which is significantly different enough from their stylistic ancestor to cause them to be perceived as a discreet form.  Movies arose out of stage plays, and in fact many early films were merely filmed versions of plays, where the camera never moved, there was no editing, and the audience's experience was in many ways the same as going to the theater.  These early films are very far removed from what we think of as "movies" today, and one could argue that they weren't a separate art-form (from stage plays) at all.   Roots, Bloody Roots Computer games can trace their roots back to games played between multiple humans, whether these are in the form of board games such as Risk, Monopoly, or Diplomacy, role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, or games of "war" that children (and sometimes adults) play with each other.  There were also some "solitaire" games, such as the card game of the same name.  (One may also be able to trace the development of computer games back to the likes of pinball and other coin-operated "amusements."  But I think these by and large have little relationship to the games which are being created today, and comparisons with such early forms are more appropriate in the way in which games are sold to the public – through arcades – than to what actual content and form of computer games.)  Similar to movies, many early games, some of which are still very popular today, are little more than straight adaptations of established non-computer game forms.  For instance, often when I talk to a non-computer game player and mention that I design computer games for a living, they're bound to say:  "Oh, computer games!  Those are great!  I've got solitaire for my computer and I just play it for hours!"  I'm often tempted to answer "That's not really a computer game," conceding that though it is a game and one can play it on one's computer, it's not significantly different from the gaming experience one has if one uses a deck of cards and plops them down on the table in front of oneself.  In the same way that a filmed stage play isn't really a film - or at least isn't different enough to be considered a unique art form - strict adaptations of board or other "traditional" games to the computer can't be considered a district medium.  In order for a game to truly be considered a "computer game," for me it must present a gaming experience which would be impossible without the computer.  (Special aside:  can anyone tell me why people play computer solitaire?  Please?  Someone?  If you have a good explanation other than "can't afford the cards" or "don't have a big enough table" I'd love to hear it.)   It's important to note that computer games did not arise out of movies.  Sure, lots of people – many of them "new media" company executives bereft of a clue – have tried to substitute elements of films in place of well conceived game design ideas and have called the results "interactive movies."  But when one gets down to the core of the computer game, when one searches and locates it's archetypal form, one will find that it's based on a game, not a movie.  In the case of really bad "interactive movies" it may be based on a ludicrously simple, unfair, and unfun game, but it's a game nonetheless.  In the final analysis, computer games are as fun and stimulating as their base games are, regardless of what pyrotechnics may be layered on top.   Irreconcilable Differences So I've listed the similarities between computer games and films that spring to mind.  What's different about them, then, you may ask?  Everything else.  The biggest, of course, is interactivity.  In films one watches and experiences the art form.  In games one acts, watches, and experiences the art form.  For a film, everyone in the movie theater has the same experience of watching the film:  they may enjoy it more or less, some may understand some sections better than others, and some may react differently to different stimuli than others.  But they've all seen the same thing.  In computer games - or well designed ones, at least - nearly every player has a unique experience, which was generated as the result of the actions they chose.  In movies the film-maker only has to worry about one-way communication:  how is he going to deliver his message to the audience?  In computer games, designers must be concerned with both how information is communicated to the player, as well as how the player communicates back to them via their surrogate, the computer.  A computer game that cannot do both of these well is a failure.   The above observation that the core difference between movies and computer games is interactivity may seem like an obvious statement and, indeed, it is.  But enough so-called game designers have missed this obvious-as-the-nose-on-your-face difference in their attempts to design computer games that it bears repeating.  Though Chris Crawford's mention of scrolling credits as a good example of "movie envy" may have seemed like sarcastic nit-picking, it's actually a pretty good example of how game designers can lose sight of what medium they're working in, as a result of their secret or at least sub-conscious desire to be making movies.  In a film the audience is unable to interact with the projector, and so in order to communicate a long series of names, the film-maker is reduced to having them scroll slowly in front of the audience.  Sure, audience member Joe Bloggs only wants to know who the Best Boy Grip is, but he has to wait for all of the other credits to scroll by to get to his item of interest, due to the limitations of the medium.  He has no way of controlling the information presented to him.  But in a computer game, ah-hah!  In a properly designed computer game credits sequence, he should be able to scroll or flip through the credits at any speed he wants.  When Joe's done reading the first set of credits or if he's only looking for who the Quality Assurance Lead on the project was, he can just flip onto the next screen by pressing a key.  Making him sit through scrolling credits in a computer game is absurd, when the very nature of the medium allows him to go looking for exactly the credit he wants to see.   Who Cares About Scrolling Credits? Of course, scrolling credits can hardly be considered the ruination of a computer game, but what about when the designers put movie-copying elements into other points of the game, where instead of interacting the player spends most of his or her time just watching?  Then we end up with bad games, as we've seen time and time again as poorly made movies have been sold to us as hot new games.  Still more important is that we must realize that making broad-based comparisons between computer games and movies is hardly useful, and may in many ways be damaging to our understanding of where our art-form is and how it should develop. So when someone says that computer games right now are at the same technological level as films were in 1910, careful thought will reveal that this is a ludicrous, absurd statement.  How can one compare something so different as movies and computer games in such a manner?  It's just about as useful as comparing pulp fiction novels and pop songs:  sure there are some similarities, but the two forms are more different than they are similar, and broad-based analogies drawn between them are likely to be useless. Of course, that's not to say that computer games cannot learn valuable lessons from film, especially in terms of storytelling.  When I recently interviewed Jordan Mechner [look for the interview itself elsewhere in this issue IMG] and asked what he thought of the potential use of film techniques in computer games, he answered:  "Film has an incredibly rich vocabulary of tricks, conventions, and styles which have evolved over the last hundred years of film making.  Some of which have been used in computer games and really work well, others which are waiting for someone to figure out how to use them, and others which don't work very well, and which kill the games they get imported into."  Mechner isn't talking about merely slamming full motion video sequences into games that don't need them, but rather examining film techniques such as cross-cutting and changing perspective and determining how best these can function in a computer game, if they can function at all. A lot of game designers are big fans of movies (as is a very large portion of the U.S.A.'s population) and I must admit that I'm one of them.  Probably I'm a bit more of a fanatical movie buff than most.  And I'd be lying if I said that, if someone up and offered me the chance to write and/or direct a film, I wouldn't jump at the chance.  But right now I've decided to devote my creative energies to the creation of computer games, and I must not try to pursue my potential movie career through the games I design.  Because if I did I'd have neither a good computer game nor a good movie, and what good would that be to anyone?  Sure computer games and movies have similarities as art forms.  But we as game designers must realize what medium we're working in, and realize that designing a good game has very little to do with directing a good movie. This column was originally printed in Inside Mac Games.