“The Citizen Kane of Videogames”

I've included this video right off the bat to demonstrate how not to engage this subject. Saying that something is the Citizen Kane of something has fast become a cliche, and Thomsen seems to believe that for a game to be the Citizen Kane of gaming, it has to actually have similarities in the way that it was produced.

That's a load of horseshit.

What people are really saying when they say "the Citizen Kane of…" is that they're looking for a text (using text here to encompass any media form) where every element is integral to the experience in and of itself. Not only that, this text has to lay down the groundwork for the media-specific lexicon that will be used in nearly all future texts to come. You could just as easily say "the Revolver of gaming" or "the Crime and Punishment of gaming", but for some reason Citizen Kane has stuck, probably because film and videogaming are so often compared as visual media forms.

You know what? Games aren't there yet, and they won't be there for awhile. If we're to continue with the film references, videogaming would just be entering into its "talkie" phase, making the transition into more fully-fledged experiences. Don't get me wrong, there have been great games up to this point (I'm playing Majora's Mask pretty religiously right now, and it's certainly up there for me), but there hasn't been that one game that connects on every single level, making every element of its being count for something.

The big one in gaming is, again, its interactive elements. This is the area where the eventual Citizen Kane of gaming will perhaps be found. Because if you think of some really great movies, the reason that they are so brilliant is because they only offer a singular experience, and one that can be completely controlled by the director (provided s/he has the technical wherewithal to pull his/her vision off). This isn't the case with games – they have to consider why what you're playing is a game, rather than a movie. What is it about your interactivity that makes this game only possible the way it's been made? This is perhaps why Michael Thomsen thinks of Metroid Prime – as I've stated earlier, its interactivity does matter. That being said, the game isn't perfect. It's one of my favourite games, sure, but I could never think of Metroid Prime as as singular an experience as Citizen Kane, mostly because its story is pretty ludicrous and little is really known about the protagonist.

The other question that this argument brings up is whether we should even be trying to find this supposed paragon. It's not as if gaming won't survive without that one definitive statement of intent – there's still some really interesting things going on, mostly on an independent level, where "big statements" don't matter as much (and don't need to matter as much). Besides, the idolization of Citizen Kane's supposed "perfectness" is really a reflection of New Criticism and New Critical ideals, both of which have fallen by the wayside in nearly every other medium. What we should be looking for are games that create their own identity based on a critical theory specific to gaming. That's a long, long way off, but considerably more ideal than chasing after something as unattainable as what Thomsen proposes.