National Review writer Peter Suderman has been playing Killzone 2 lately. It inspired him to speculate on the American Scene blog about where all the B's have gone. B-movies, that is.

...part of the problem is that there are simply a lot few B movies -- good, bad, or mediocre -- than there used to be. Absurd, mega-budget summer blockbusters like Transformers and G.I. Joe have siphoned off a lot of the energy that used to go into making moderately priced genre flicks, but recently, it's struck me that another part of the equation is probably the emergence of scripted, action-movie style video games -- everything from the Halo games to Assassin's Creed and Half-Life.

I've been playing a lot of Killzone 2 this week -- which, by the way, I highly recommend -- and, in many ways, it's really just an interactive B-movie. The scripted bits that carry along the in-game action consist almost exclusively of tough-guy cliches pieced together from the last forty years of action movies, comic books, and war films. It's silly, outrageous, over-the-top, and incredibly entertaining -- just like a good B-movie should be.

Secondly, it's always cute when non-gamers pontificate about videogames. They're just as likely to be inspired by hits as they are to be inspired by unlikely middling games, often on the Wii, but sometimes even on the Playstation 3. Someone seems to have foisted onto Suderman copies of Killzone 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4. Dude. Come talk to me. I can recommend some good stuff. You won't even need to get a 360.

But most of all, I think Suderman is sort of right for a couple of reasons. Yeah, Killzone 2 is about on par with a lame action movie. And videogames are directly competing with the young male dollars that were spent on movies like Death Race 2000 (pictured) and Escape from New York, both of which Suderman offers as examples of the sorts of movies not being made anymore (never mind that B-movie king Jason Statham was just in a remake of Death Race 2000). Furthermore, videogames are increasingly a creative outlet for the sorts of people who would have made those movies. They might just as well work at places like Valve, Electronic Arts, Infinity Ward, Bungie, Pandemic, Rockstar, and so on. Would-be scriptwriters will write videogame scripts, would-be cinematographers will be artists, and would-be directors will be designers. Instead of B-movies, they'll make videogames.

So I wouldn't say videogames are killing or replacing B-movies so much as they're an offshoot of them. And at the rate we're going, I look forward to videogames also being an offshoot of A-movies and even art house films. Perhaps Mr. Suderman might ponder that if he were to play Brutal Legend, Arkham Asylum, or Flower on his PS3.

(Thanks Daily Dish and Dingus!)