“Game Over, Man. Game Over”: Looking at the Alien in Film and Videogames

Brendan Keogh,Darshana Jayemanne

doi:10.3390/arts7030043

Abstract

In this article we discuss videogame adaptations of the Alien series of films, in particular Alien: Colonial Marines (2013) and Alien: Isolation (2014). In comparing critical responses and developer commentary across these texts, we read the very different affective, aesthetic and socio-political readings of the titular alien character in each case. The significant differences in what it means to ‘look’ at this figure can be analyzed in terms of wider storytelling techniques that stratify remediation between film and games. Differing accounts of how storytelling techniques create intensely ‘immersive’ experiences such as horror and identification—as well as how these experiences are valued—become legible across this set of critical contexts. The concept of the ‘look’ is developed as a comparative series that enables the analysis of the affective dynamics of film and game texts in terms of gender-normative ‘technicity’, moving from the ‘mother monster’ of the original film to the ‘short controlled burst’ of the colonial marines and finally to the ‘psychopathic serendipity’ of Alien: Isolation.

Highlights

Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens are foundational reference points for action videogames
Through Weise and Jenkins’ analysis, we examine how the alien reverses its valency in FPS games such as Colonial Marines: rather than looking away from the horrific mother monster, players instead focus their gaze in order to eliminate multiple aliens in ‘short controlled bursts’
We suggest a final type of ‘look’ to characterise the affective dynamics of Isolation

Summary

Introduction

Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens are foundational reference points for action videogames. Official adaptations or extensions of the film franchise include beat-em-ups, arcade shooters, and first-person titles These include Alien (Atari, 1982), Aliens versus Predator (Jorudan, 1993) and its many sequels, Alien 3: The Gun (Sega, 1993), Aliens Infestation (Sega, 2011), Aliens: Colonial Marines (Gearbox, 2013), and Alien: Isolation (Sega, 2014). Isolation explicitly rejects many of the typical design mechanisms that games draw from Aliens and reintroduces feminist themes of techno-pessimism from Scott’s first film. In comparing these texts, we will focus on what it means to look at the titular alien monster, beginning with Creed’s (1986) discussion of maternal monstrosity and the ‘fifth look’ of horror film. We discuss how Isolation reintroduces the critique of technicity present in the original films, thematised through its design of ‘psychopathic serendipity’

The Mother Monster and the ‘Fifth Look’

Videogame Technicities and Techno-Masculine Anxiety

Isolation

Psychopathic Serendipity

Conclusions