To draw a cinematic parallel, I'm sure that, back in the day, there were those moviegoers who said "Hang on, that's just a mannequin getting tossed round by a bit of string, you can even see the bloke's hand guiding it, look?" But most were just awestruck by the unraveling magic of the spectacle. They didn't decry flaky trickery in the cinema just because it wasn't bespectacled fops hanging off a clock, and look what it brought us? Effect-obsessed, dross as well as inspired masterpieces. The same heady mix we get in videogames, no?. The crucial difference is, cinema was inspired to imbue something into its releases which was desperately needed to satisfy increasingly sophisticated tastes. They persevered with the endless fannying about, knowing that it was the future, and I don't see why game developers should think any different.

Are we content these days to watch speeded-up, kohl-eyed buffoons chasing each other silently with nothing to hide their embarrassment but a furiously jangling pianist? Well yes, in a nostalgic sense, we are. But we've largely moved on, the old movies serve to remind us of that evolution, whilst retaining their own vintage charm. Can we validate that feeling of olde-worlde warmth, without having to piss ourselves in a dark suit in the gaming environment? Sure, why not? And I bet most of us do, every day.

Of course it's a lot tougher for the today's Yoof to suspend that kind of disbelief in the miracle-a-day media Shub-niggurath of which we are all bloated sucklers. I personally try to pan beyond Fritz Lang's 50-foot papier-mache dragon in Die Nibelungen (1924) to Jurassic Park in 1993. I'd defy any FX-sated raconteur not to wheeze an involuntary "Wow!" when their jeep emerges into that lush tropical plateau, looking up to find that the paleozoic tree-trunk is, in fact, the leg of a grazing brachiosaur, and the angle widens to take in whizzing herds of smaller and larger dinosaurs, all thriving in a visionary ecology which should have been unconscionable. Did anyone who witnessed that think "They've sucked all the joy out of movies with these real-world effects" Well no, that would be ridiculous, but neither did they think "I'm glad I endured all those shite, shadow-puppetry homages because it's brought us to this utopian eye-feast." It needs no analysis whatsoever, and nor will the accurately modelled games of the future. The only difference is, in the meantime, there will be twenty shit ones for every masterpiece, and, if we're being honest, it was ever thus.

Similarly, for every twenty silent superstars cruelly smitten by the advent of sound there was one Laurel and Hardy, empowered by the breakthrough to greater heights of achievement, wielding the changes to their advantage, prepared to embrace rather than shun, and this is what will define the success of future game makers too. There are always the cruel percentages, but to suggest physics in games will precipitate the same kind of paradigm shift as sound in movies is unrealistic, at least in the short term. As mature gamers, we are much more able to embrace Horace and JC Denton as having distinctly separate appeal. Our kids, however, surely won't.

I am Fafnir. Hear me roar.

So it will take time, and the casualties will mount as surely as cadavers on a BF2 choke spot. As for : 'sucking the joy out of games' in the meantime? Well, if we take Deus Ex as an example that is certainly true. The original was a crafted piece of unrelenting brilliance, the sequel a physics-obsessed golem, in which one could never quite shake the conviction that we were deliberately trying to kick over watercoolers on a planet several gravities heavier than our own. If we are victims of anything, it is the sophisticated tenets of the 'want it now' philosophy because if it doesn't happen sooner rather than later, our restless eye for entertainment will go 'Look, a kitten!' and move on.

Where gaming has usurped cinema with its added dimension of interaction, it has lagged behind it in portraying realism, without the onscreen pull of script brilliance and magnetic personality, necessary for its appeal. Movies have always had to work harder than games, but their resources have, and continue to be, that much more plentiful in the aesthetic sense. If you can sashay past the gaming hype of 'next-gen' this and 'cutting-edge' that, you'll see precisely the same ambition; to entertain without patronising. In the gaming essence, today it isn't working. Tomorrow it might, but not if we laugh it out of court on a technicality.

Nobody watching Rod Steiger's Time Machine today sniggers at the workmanlike effects, the glorified wheelchair he pootles through the epochs in, looking for a raspberry spot on not too much of an incline. Equally, nobody snorts behind a hand at the vector-culled ricketiness of Elite. They are classics of their time, occupying their own niche in history. Sometimes, jaws just can't drop any lower without tasting gravel. And of course, Everything's Eventual.

I'm into cynicism as much (if not more) than the next man, but we would never have gotten to Ray Harryhausen without Baron Munchhausen (1943) And this is probably just about where we are with physics in videogames, still proving with pipe cleaners and silly putty, that the inverse crab is the easiest of contortions, even in full combat gear and a 20-pound bergen.

Morlocks to this, I'm off to pre-prohibition New Orleans to find me a whore.

The thing is, there's room for physics in games, like there's room for cartoons and movies. They compliment one another, like genres do in the cinema. Isn't there a world of possibility in one that you can completely get along without in the other? The only difference is the anachronistically bad acting and wobbly sets. That, and the same undying propensity for one successful incarnation to be followed by thirty-seven wannabes.

All I know is this : The first time I killed a terrorist in Counter-strike source by shooting the prop of a high-tethered net full of bowling balls, and watched them crash satisfyingly on his head was like discovering fire. I could almost hear the ticking of bloom-obsessed codies' brains going "hang on, if we stack A on B, using C as a fulcrum, then apply wind resistance, we could hear a tree falling in the forest, without having to be there. Or something.

I'm personally looking forward to twisting Laura Dern's legs into interesting shapes one day, in my holographic, zero-G orgasmatron, but until then I'll have to make do with Alyx and the cerebral palsy version on a 19" Iiyama. It's rough, but she's ready, and so am I.

October 2006

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