Editor's Letter: The Great Outdoors
Ken Burns told me games will always be abstractions. This issue is the argument back.
A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. You probably best know Burns for his work on groundbreaking PBS histories like Jazz and Baseball. (Or perhaps for iPhoto’s “Ken Burns” effect of moving the camera from one corner to another while zooming.)
Burns had just finished his National Parks series and I was asking him about the documentary filmmaking experience. Specifically, I wanted to know if games could ever portray the type of reality that directors like him created on-screen. From the days of Eadweard Muybridge, film has possessed the unique ability to capture life as it was. Thus, it should follow that games, as an heir to the legacy of film as a visual medium, also shared that potential. His answer thoroughly saddened me.
