Ying-Yang Theory for Movies and Computer Games

The 20th century has been the movie century and it has been dominated by the american film industry. Computer games, mostly dominated by japanese firms, are now beginning to be the rivals of film and cinema and will be the future of film.

Here in the year 1997, it is time to start objectively speaking about this century in the past tense. Were there any big changes? Socially, yes. How about art in the 20th century? What was the most representative artistic expression of the century? Naturally it was the movie! The 20th century was the movie century. No other form of artistic expression could steal this claim from the movie, the age's most representative art form. TV was just a medium. Its cultural influence was tremendously big, but it didn't create art of its own. (Maybe some byproducts, like video art, which was created in a similar context. But, this was not mainstream.)

The movie is already over 100 years old. Its lifespan is a representation of this century, with all the events we experienced recorded mostly on film. Also, the movie has reigned as the king of entertainment in most places around the world. Hollywood has been active as the biggest image factory on the earth, not only in this century but in all of history. No past civilization has had the capability to mass-produce visual and musical images on the scale of Hollywood. This factor made the United States of America the most culturally influential country of this century. Hollywood's immense cultural influence may be thought of as the "footprints of the gods" in the future, if past civilizations left their "fingerprints of the gods" elsewhere throughout history.

Japan was not much of a movie nation compared with the US, despite a handful of great movie directors such as Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa. Recently "Japanimation", a general term for Japan-made cartoon movies, is popular around the world. This is a unique culture coming out of Japan. However, it is still culturally a shadow, Ying, of Hollywood. If Mickey Mouse is Yang, Akira is Ying.

We should now take note of a new ripple in this Ying-Yang situation, a small pebble stone thrown into the waters surrounding the movie. This pebble is the computer game. The movie is 100 years old, while the computer game is fairly young. It is still primitive and simple. However, we see that games are becoming more and more movie-like. The new generation of computer games is not simple like early games -- "Space Invaders", "Pac-man" and the such. The new games are capable of having everything a movie has: a story, visual and musical spectacles, and so on. In addition - and this is a very important point - a computer game has interactivity. The movie was a one-way communication, so to speak. The computer game makes two-way or multi-way communication possible. And games will be increasingly networked. Then they may finally go beyond the movie in influence.

Movies will presumably become more game-like, while computer games becomes more movie-like. Movie theaters are becoming smaller and closer to a personal space; they will finally disappear. The "audience" for an interactive feature won't be able to resist taking part in the plot, so producers will have to plan for changeable parameters allowing manipulation of characters and actors. Also, the "audience" will be able to take part in a movie as "avatars". Soon all the features of the computer game will be brought into the movie.

Somehow this scenario will affect the future of the entertainment business. Sony's movie business in the US is not in good shape. On the other hand, the company is expanding its business in the computer game industry. Its expansion surpasses other rival makers such as SEGA and Nintendo. Now SEGA is going to form a new company with BANDAI to work together against Sony.

We should not dismiss one more very important thing. Computer games and their production system are more independent than the film production system. Anyone who has a computer can start game production. The decade of the 1980s was the time of independent film producers, but most of them are gone. Computer game production is different, as a big Hollywood-like production system is not so suited to game production. The world is changing. After Yang has fully permeated the world, Ying is showing itself. Ying rises in the wake of Yang.