An actor compares TLOU2 to Schindler's List. Twitter does NOT like it.

Why would you pick Schindler's List over literally any other dramatic film.

Schindler's List is the Citizen Kane of movies.

The number one rule of twitter is that you endure the pile on if you post a staggeringly bad take. You get dunked upon and learn a valuable lesson about character limits, while we all get to flex our comedy skills. It is the risk we all take being part of medium that brought us dril tweets and Florida man.

This was all fun and good right up until the developer decided to defend the bad take. Now it’s weird. Neil made it weird.

Edit: also, movie reviewers, critics and the like avoid the black and white holocaust movie like the plague. Just like Citizen Kane. They are the third rail of critical discussion that will obliterate any point you are trying to make. This tweet was asking to be dunked upon.

Here's the thing though: games discourse is past that. Games discourse is so far past comparing games to great works of cinema that The Giant Bombcast stopped making fun of that take five years ago. Video games are already a respected medium in their own right, and comparing a game to a great work from another medium reads more like a desperate plea to be taken seriously than an opinion of actual substance.

At the risk of sounding cold hearted or maybe just stupid, someone's going to have to explain to me what's wrong with comparing a game with a harrowing "not fun" story to a movie with a harrowing "not fun" story, regardless of whether it's based on real events or not.
I don't see any problem with it.

<NOBODY WINS GIF>

Man, talk about something where everybody takes a hit!

Jeff: The analogy is clumsy at best. One of those stupid leadership quotes that stuck with me is "Communication is what the listener does", and if you have to spend a few days explaining the analogy, it's not a great analogy. The reason why perhaps that movie hits harder than The Road is because it references a RL event, so the comparison gets muddled. He deserved the benefit of the doubt since he's earned it, but probably should've not doubled down, but that's hard not to do when the mob is blowing you up.

Schierer: Putting someone on blast like that is crappy if they're just trying to do a review of a game, even if inelegant. I guess you can't call it punching down, but sicking 200k followers on someone is lame. Then the mocking, look, it's Twitter, but it's just seems petty.

Sony People: <Insert wrestling analogy here>. From the top rope! It's <X>'s music! I get it, but it's just bad optics to defend your game on twitter, especially since they have a strained relationship with Jason due to the reporting. Because the first thing that comes up is the crunch stuff and people can see an ulterior motive. It helped nobody and poured gasoline on it.

I was bummed about all the other game journalist people (Bob Mackey, Nadia Oxford, etc.) taking their shots at Jeff... thought they were above it. Guess not!

In conclusion, never share anything on social media. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

That's such a great point. Like, Ebert's gone, the war is over. In a world where The Witcher Netflix series is a big hit and the Last of Us itself is turning into an HBO (?) show, stuff can stand on its own. It'll always be different because it's an interactive medium, but that allows you to make different points. Some games have been very successful in doing that (original Bioshock, Spec:Ops), and others... not so much, but you shouldn't have to reach into a different medium to make your point.

People shouldn't kid themselves that video games are respected on anything close to the same level as movies. Among peers it is, to the outside world? Video games still solicit the same tired response as they did decades ago. When Henry Cavill was promoting the Witcher TV show, a talkshow host was astounded to hear that he played games. That same host asked him in disbelief how he does it, and does he have a "man cave" because gamers are typically fat nerds drinking soda and never going out. This is sadly STILL the image that the medium is known for.

That said games really don't need to aspire to be movies. They're not better either - it's a completely different medium, with completely different levels of interaction and involvement. I enjoy both in their own ways.

I pretty much get what you mean, but this part about "among peers" does actually seem to be what is in contention. The most unoriginal tweet of the last few days in the video games twitterverse maybe goes to some version of: LOL TLoU2 is just a zombie video game and not Schindler's List.

Incidentally, this might be true that they are not on the same level. I am not arguing that either way. I just think that some video game industry peers still don't view the biggest, highest rated releases as an art as legitimate as movies (again, not saying they should have or need to).

@nathhaw: The last of Us 2 is getting the reception I kinda felt it would get, effusive praise from many reviews and some claiming it is the peak of video game craft. And another, smaller group saying it is a boiler plate revenge story set in a bleak off brand zombie, with some saying it’s a bit suffering porn.

But at least we are not hearing about reviewers getting death threats because they didn’t like LoU2. So in that sense, we may have evolved.

Not a great analogy, he probably could have picked another film for comparison, but I still come away from this thinking Jason Schreier and Leigh Alexander are the bigger assholes here.

Isn’t this the guy that went on the e3 after show and asked “are we going to talk about games at all??” In the middle of a conversation? What a nerd.

You guys remember when Leigh Alexander got drunk on GB and said that the Nazi uniform looked hot? Or when Jason tweeted, then deleted, a snarky remark mentioning that when Michael Jordan donated to BLM he must have been confused and thought he was ‘betting on black’?

If you’re going to call someone out, and bully him while you’re at it, better make sure your shit doesn’t stink first.

You clearly don't understand how a memory hole works.

Ok, I will help the ones still on the fence that are not convinced that it is utterly unacceptable to compare the Last of Us 2 to the Schindler's List.

Schindler's List has become a symbol for later generations to get an understanding about genocide in the second world war. It showed graphic depictions of mass killing of jews and others the nazis thought were inferior. These depictions are actually accurate. Mountains of death bodies were created in concentration camps around Europe. Millions of bodies were thrown in ovens to wipe traces of their existence. Schindlers List also shows a scene of mourning people at the end that have lost family during the war. It is a symbol for remembering what happened, and that it should not be forgotten, as we may then repeat the same mistakes. There are other world war 2 movies, La vita e bella, the pianist which would also have been in extremely poor taste to use in this context but are probably less known in America and therefore less of a symbol.

We must never forget the lives lost in the second world war, in particular the victims of genocide as their killings were not circumstantial but a great act of racism. It is one of many terrible consequences of racism and hate. Comparisons between a fictional setting like Last of Us 2, how good the game may or may not be, hurts that remembrance. Schindlers List is used often to show people about the genocide now many generations ago, a substitute for physically going to Aushwitz or other camps.

Maybe games will be used as symbols of remembrance with such weight some day. At the moment, they are not. Last of Us 2 can't be compared to Schindlers List because it is not educating about the second world war 2 genocide. Even if it is really good.

Jeff Cannata: Still corny after all of these years

How did people make the connection that his analogy is a comment on the historical events of Schindler's list, rather than the tone of the movie? Even more baffling is that a few misconceptions grew into the collective voice that this Jeff guy was comparing a video game about a zombie apocalypse to a film about the Holocaust.

If people were judging based on the subject of each artistic piece in question, then lets look at them: one is about the Holocaust, one is about a zombie apocalypse, and one is about a super vengeful assassin. None of them are related, and since Jeff never once pointed to each creations' subject, then he's clearly talking about their tone (or execution in tone).

There some who do make mistakes in judgement, and there are others who don't seem to want to think for themselves.

Not surprising to see Jason Schreier piling on the cancel culture garbage. If you read that original tweet and framed Cannata as some kind of anti-semite, you have serious problems and should probably not be on social media.

I realise it's probably not intentional (or at least I really hope it's not), but it's unfortunate that people keep singling out Jason Schreier and Leigh Alexander, who are both Jewish, when they were far from the only high-profile games people beclowning on Jeff Cannata.

Apparently 10 years and an apology still aren't enough for some GB folk to let this one go.

@conmulligan: their Jewish-ness has nothing to do with me thinking they’re being asses. I’m only emphasizing Jason and Leigh because I know what they said. And you’re right, it’s petty to bring up Leigh’s mistake in the past. I guess it’s just hard not to be petty towards the person who is being petty as well. But it’s not the right thing to do.

One must be pure and free of sin before one can dunk on a bad take on Twitter dot com. Especially when that bad take involves praising Super Hype Video Game Of The Moment.

@conmulligan: I mean the irony of this is pretty spectacular you have to admit. But regardless Leigh Alexander, while a phenomenal writer, is full of bad takes.

Honestly, we've all said things and had them misinterpreted into something worse. It's a horrible feeling when it happens and when you know you didn't mean the bad thing. This is how you handle it:

"Oh wow, I apologize; I can totally see why people saw this as a bad example to draw, I was just saying the mood of that film and how it affected me is very similar, nothing beyond that."

Done. Pin it, stay off social media for a day or two, never mention it again. Twitter people are much more likely to point fingers and have the last word on a subject than to forgive, say "all good", and get on with their lives, so do something productive with the time it would have taken you to appease everyone, which is probably the rest of yours.

Remembering how the very mature and well read gaming audience took the “Gamers are over” article about the widening audience for video games, I always felt Leigh’s harsh takes were justified. The reasoned and measured response to that headline that she likely didn’t choose might have permanently colored her opinion on the video games likers.

The way this guy chose to write about this and the domain he chose to do it says everything. Honestly, I don't know what I find worse--a 3000 word personal essay about how the "brutal" and "raw" moments of TLOU II were or a tweetstorm that reads like breathless ad copy.

What blogging has become totally flips the promise of blogging on its fucking head. I'm not going to say that 15 or 20 years ago places like IGN, GamePro, and even GameSpot weren't chock-full of average-level (or worse) writers who weren't critical minds to boot. I won't say that these places haven't always been rotten with in-industry ad money, because they were. Jeff Gerstmann was famously canned for giving a middling review to a video game whose publisher had ads plastered all over the same website. It's a complicated relationship to say the least.

But 15-20 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, blogging was a space for interesting amateurs to hone their chops in front of an audience. People with unique voices who maybe didn't adhere so well to AP style guides but felt like real people writing their true feelings. Now, the way writers write and talk all runs together, because for whatever reason the majority of writers/bloggers/critics spend every waking hour with their head stuck in the fucking beehive that is twitter. Constantly steeping yourself in the thoughts and opinions of other people is NOT a great place to form an opinion of something you're covering. Some people can handle it! Most can not.

When you make Twitter the platform that you choose to espouse critical views on, x writer is putting immense pressure on himself to be as snappy and un-nuanced as fucking possible to be coherent without making a 200 tweet thread.

For what it's worth, I have a lot of reservations about this game series anyway. I did not understand the hype for The Last of Us when it first came out, but I mostly shut the fuck up about it. Here's my two cents: video games are not film. Video games should not aspire to be film. Video games are a unique medium just like music, film, or photography or visual art--whatever. They are also distinctively closer to being "toys" than any other medium. I'll make the concession that video games are a unique space to tell a story, but that story should fit within the confines of what makes sense for the games narrative and the game mechanically.

Hideo Kojima has received lots of flak for making "movies" in his career after the first Metal Gear Solid. There's no getting around the veritable mountain of cutscenes and spoken dialogue between characters in those games. Sometimes it is truly fucking insane. But what about the game? Metal Gear Solid laid the groundwork for the stealth action genre. There's a lot of game there! Deep mechanics, lots of systems interacting with each other, and a player progression that's achieved mostly through the player picking up new items as the game goes along--it's a game!

The mechanics in The Last of Us are basically static. Maybe the sequel remedies that. But it's this narrative that seems to ensnare people into the beartrap of saying insane things and making the headiest comparisons possible. My pet theory is that grown-ups who love video games (like me!) are ultimately desperate to make their toy-like hobby appear as adult-oriented and mature as possible. The idea that the super affecting game for adults and not some little baby is this...C+ zombie movie...it's so funny to me. Like get some fucking perspective.

Video games shouldn't be moving in arc that points towards Citizen Kane, they should be pointing closer to Galaga. It's a wholly separate medium, and the infatuation towards the sentiment "wow it's just like a movie!!!!" totally falls on deaf ears for me. The story is average at best and the gameplay is as shallow as a puddle after a rainstorm. I would love games to tell me an amazing story, but it's gotta be a game. Otherwise, go the visual novel route if you must. A game needs to be a game first and everything else second, or else it betrays the entire medium. Games are art, and they always have been. Games don't need to emulate other forms of art to be appreciated as art; Mappy is art. If games need to be disguised as something else to be appreciated, than the vantage at which games are appreciated needs to be reevaluated.

I often find the interactive nature of gaming generally more emotionally impactful than watching a movie, I'm not sure how Jeff can be wrong its his experience he shouldn't be mocked for it.

While the original tweet was an hyperbolic comparison probably due to the freshness of the experience, the replies are proof of lack of reading comprehension that would be put to shame by 10 years olds.

The issue is not about the theme, but the tone, and it is not about comparing Schindler's List to Last of Us 2, but that the focus on narrative and emotional impact between Last of Us 2 and most modern members of the medium (like Fortnite or Call of Duty Warzone) is comparable to the gap between John Wick and Schindler's List; which, haven't played it, but yeah... is probably right (after all, the gap in care and quality of the narrative between Last of Us 1 and other 2013 games, like DOTA, Call of Duty Ghosts or Beyond, was pretty noticeable). He could have used any other example, like The Raid and The Godfather, or Avengers and Parasite, or Avatar and The Pianist, and his point would not have changed one bit.

At this point, it is hard to say if Alexander and Schreier have a beef with TLOU2 because their recent research on the poor work conditions of Naughty Dogs colors their opinions, if they are jumping to the stereotypical "everyone is snarky and offended about everything" stance on twitter at the first thing they saw, or they just didn't like the game all that much, but they come out as bullies that don't even tried or cared to read and interpret what other people have to say before being all high and mighty.

All I took away from this is that I wouldn't want to ever be in the same room as any of those people.

@regularassmilk: Why the giant rant on the downfall of blogs, and the curse of twitter, and completely ignore that Jeff here has a podcast where he talks at length about stuff. TLOU2 included? And like, it's totally fine to compare things cross-medium. They are comparisons after all. Nowhere did anyone state that movies are the end goals of video games.

@regularassmilk: I find games critics in their 30s and 40s who are so clearly desperate for their hobby to be taken seriously to be exhausting. Games are their own thing, who the fuck cares if someone else doesn't like games? And then these same critics, ironically, are the ones who are like, "I don't get Fortnite lol."

In the case of TLOU in particular, which gets praise for its visceral and brutal and other adjective combat, it's amusing to consider that its combat is heavily reminiscent of the up-close, in-your-face camera work of The Bourne Identity, which is definitely a movie.

I'm keen to see The Last of Us 2 but the talk about tone and brutality only finds me drawing one comparison:

Alice in Chains' Dirt. I listened to that again today and there is a relentless, unstoppable grim misery which comes to mind. In terms of twitter, it's way too confrontational. It's a battle of opinions rather than a conversation.

@shindig: Thanks for the reminder, Dirt is top 5 albums for sure.

@hermes: Jason and Leigh have not yet played the game, but Jason did say he is eager to.

------break--------

I still see some people thinking Jeff was basically comparing the quality of TLoU2 to Schindler's List. I think he was just saying that the game is like the movie in that it has a different goal than most games or movies, which is to make you feel something other than good/fun. Jeff was not getting all that excited as everybody keeps saying. Excited? Sure, a little, I guess -- but he wasn't just talking nonsense, saying the game was as narratively good or important (or anything like that) as Schindler's List.

edit: But really, if your tweet caused this much confusion, it's best to just delete it, which he did, rather than have to defend it over and over from misunderstanding.

After digesting this mess for 2 days. I think this is where I stand too. Mocking someone rather critically engaging in their discourse just seems petty. Further writing off the game's ability to be considered meaningful by the community a week before it even comes out, that seems like an intentional act of provocation; rebuking those actually excited for this game (which in reality is a lot of freaking people).

Boy, this thread is great proof of a) it was a good decision to take a week off of social media; and b) why the break might be extended. What a mess.

Really appreciate a lot of the posts here. My personal reaction is that nobody comes out of this looking good, but Druckman and Barlog look the worst. This could have just been yet another petty Twitter squabble in the pantheon of petty Twitter squabbles, but as someone else said, they made it weird. Especially Druckmann.

Boy this all seems dumb.

Yeah, it's strange. There's something very pathetic about the creative director of a massively critically acclaimed game wading into the middle of a minor Twitter shit-fling to protect their work. Comes off as very thin-skinned and insecure (and, in this case with the backdrop of the labor reporting, like you have an ax to grind). Let the work speak for itself; your game's already getting showered in praise from just about every other corner of the internet and will probably sell millions of copies, why do you give a shit about a random Twitter kerfuffle?

@banefirelord: "Please don't discuss my game that way" is how it came across.

Kinda off topic but the last time I had read a Jeff Cannata tweet it was about being disappointed in the GB hirings of Dan and Jason because they are two white guys.

@banefirelord: it seems embarrassing for all involved. These are ostensibly grown adults and industry veterans at that, squabbling over words like children during lunchtime. The Schreier/Druckmann thing is getting uncomfortable to the point of second-hand embarrassment. It doesn't help that Jason always had a pretty confrontational "smartest guy in the room" attitude. In a way it is earned because he's a very well informed guy that does great reporting, but attitude does go a long way.

@mikewhy: It is totally fine to compare things cross-medium, you're right. But games are compared to movies--in ways both positive and negative but often positive--at a hasty clip. What is even the point of that guy's Schlinder's List comparison? Is Schlinder's List "raw, and brutal. not fun."? It just seems like a super inappropriate comparison, both from an ethical and an editorial point-of-view.

Movies aren't the end-goal of video games, but a lot of major outlet critical minds in the industry seem to think so. The guy in the OP plainly states that it's not fun. So doesn't it fail as a game, then? What are the terms by which a video game is enjoyed or appreciated? Does a notable aspect, in this case the story, make the game good?

Because the disconnect for me here is that I've played great games with terrible soundtracks. They were great games. Conversely, I've played terrible games with great soundtracks. They were bad games. I also have my doubts--based on playing the last one--that this isn't much of a game and that you'd be kidding yourself to believe it's a great story.

The problem is that Children of Men is right there and isn't based on real life events. Or the Road. Literally any piece of bleak, challenging media that isn't based on the Holocaust will mitigate this problem.

I can’t stand Twitter beef on the best of days, but the thing that makes all this even dumber is the fact that the game isn’t even out yet for the general public. All this arguing and public embarrassment for something that no one in the audience has any context for.

People should stop using Twitter.

They sure are #woke in handling this guys #badtake. I wonder how he'll react if he gets #canceled? I would just say #yeet and then spend the rest of the evening watching Netflix and chilling.

There was nothing wrong with the original tweet. The jump to outrage was cartoonish. A game can be as affecting as a movie with a bleak, oppressive topic like the holocaust. Thats the idea. I get it ifvyour stance is the medium can't do that (people like Roger Ebert have made this argument before. I disagree but that was his opinion). But the personal attacks and straw mans used against this guy for expressing that view point is ridiculous. Find a real battle to wage, something that justifies your tantrum. The snark and militant outrage from these internet bullies with huge egos gives you the kind of social and political pushback that eventually gets someone like Trump elected.

Cannata made a disappointingly silly generalisation about all videogames to hype up what was rightfully pointed out as what probably boils down to the flavour of the month. I agree that his problem wasn't "man compares new zombie game to the Holocaust", but his hyperbole was super reductive and deserved to be dunked on pretty hard.

I don't even think that he's wrong about having a conversation about games explicitly eschewing fun to convey a theme, but let's not pretend that this is somehow a novel, groundbreaking concept (to say nothing of how TLOU2 is probably still designed to be mechanically, if not narratively, satisfying).

Druckmann and Barlog should have just avoided putting themselves out like that and saved themselves the embarrassment

This seems to happen more and more often before a game comes out. People having really well-informed opinions that are based on anything but their own experience.

If PLEASE STOP was still a thing, I'd argue hard for this trend to "win."

Those tweets read like a who's who in the worst people in gaming