How not to mix movies and video games
We've all seen the adverts. We've all been blown away by the game trailers featuring stunning movie like visuals. We've all bought into the hype and ended up purchasing the game. And once we started playing we've all had that sinking feeling that somehow we've been conned. So what can go wrong when game designers start having illusions of grandeur? The problem can be broken down into two categories. Games that want to be movies and movies that want to be games.
Games that want to be movies
When CD-ROM drives were first released for computers game development companies were quick to pick up on the new trend. No longer were they limited by how much you could squeeze onto a floppy disk, games could now be hundreds of times the size. What this meant was Full Motion Video (FMV) games. The reality was choppy grainy small windowed video clips. These soon improved but the types of games developed can be broken into three categories:
Interactive Video
These types of games were the most prevalent and also the most notorious. Essentially the gameplay would involve interacting with a full motion video. This typically involved shooting enemies or operating switches. One of the more infamous ones was Night Trap which had the player operating traps during extended video sequences. One of the few games of this type which did do well was Star Wars Rebel Assault which involved piloting spacecraft down pre-rendered flight-paths avoiding obstacles.
Separate Video
The second type of FMV game were the ones that separated the video clips from the gameplay. 7th Guest and the 11th Hour are both good examples of this. In essence they they are puzzle games wrapped within a FMV story and environment. Each puzzle is quite separate and self contained. Although 7th Guest had some success the majority of them were mediocre as most players saw them for what they were: puzzle games.
Integrated Video
Probably the most difficult design to do well would be the one were the video and gameplay are much more integrated. A good example of this would be the puzzle/adventure game Myst. Unlike the 7th Guest the puzzles were more tightly integrated into the environment. Although it relied on less FMV it still retained an epic movie like feel.
Movies that want to be games
When Hollywood comes knocking on a games designers door the question on everyones mind is who will have control of the project? If it is the game designer then the final product may be playable but may also have little to do with the movie. If the studio has the final say then the end game may be an unplayable mess. The problem is that film studios don't know how to design games and game designers don't always fully understand the subject material.
In 1982 "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" was released in cinemas and become an instant hit. To quickly capitalize on the success of the film a video game version of it was developed in just five weeks. The result was a disaster. It was designed as an adventure game where the goal was to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone. However the gameplay consists almost entirely of searching wells for the three pieces. It was savaged by the critics and even with E.T. merchandising flying off the shelves the brand name could not help this game. There is even an urban legend that several truck loads of unsold game cartridges were crushed and dumped in a landfill.
Product association can be taken to the extreme. A good case in point would be the video game "Home Improvement" which was based on the sitcom of the same name. The show ran from 1991 to 1999 and featured Tim Taylor as the accident prone host of a cable home improvement show. To capitalize on the success of the show a video game was released for the SNES in 1994. The game entailed fighting off dinosaurs, mummies and robots using a variety of power tools. Needless to say the gameplay and the environment had nothing to do with the sitcom. Essentially the developers had taken a generic side-scrolling platform style game and plastered Home Improvement all over it. This type of game is easy, quick, cheap and its only design criteria is that it capitalizes on a popular TV show.
Conclusion
The basic problem with turning a movie into a video game is that you are taking a two hour non-interactive medium with a huge budget and trying to convert it into a twenty hour interactive medium with an average budget. Unfortunately this tends to produce less than stellar results. Trying to do the opposite by turning a game into a movie also makes as little sense. Why would we want to limit our gameplay so we can watch video clips for that cinematic feel? What both industries need to understand is that both mediums deserve to exist and thrive in their own right. Until the designers and studios realize this we will be subjected to more average at best games trying to be movies.
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