

One of the few game developers trying to write for the medium of gaming instead of trying to write a book/movie and slap it into a game. One of the few who eschews the three-act arc so prevalent in plays and films.
He really understands that as a different medium you should play to the mediums strengths and how the medium functions for storytelling like his attempts synthesize meaning between gameplay and story. Writing for games shouldn’t be like writing for books or films because while analogous they are nowhere near the same kind of mediums.
The medium is the message.
-Marshall McLuhan











I mean he’s been using visual shortcuts to human emotional states instead of, you know, character development since fucking Titanic, if not before.
The obvious example to contrast the Avatar films with is District 9, which came of the same year as the first Avatar film. The “prawns” of District 9 are absolutely ugly to behold, but they are “humanized” through character development instead of shortcuts like giving them giant, dewy, innocent looking eyes and making them look like innocent animals like cats or dogs. Cameron make the Na’vi aesthetically pleasing to humans because it’s easier to make them the “good guys” this way than it is if they looked like District 9’s “prawns.”
I mean, no shade, Cameron is good at using the techniques he has chosen as a way to short circuit his audience into feeling the things he wants them to feel… but that doesn’t make them not cheap, easy, and overall weak compared to serious character development since it’s a complete reliance on visual shortcuts to emotional depth without the actual emotional depth.