The Perfect Planet - On Games, Comics, Worldbuilding 11
Thanks to OgreCave for pointing to an essay by graphic novel writer/artist Dylan Horrocks discussing why "much of the 'action' in narrative art today is going on in places that are below the radar of most criticism and theory", and going on to reference traditional role-playing games ("[a] little-understood literary genre") and newer videogames such as The Sims as particularly important, leading to Horrocks' conclusion: "When the generation of writers and artists who've grown up immersed in virtual playgrounds begin using the medium of the video game itself to 'boil in the intensity' of their experiences, many in the so-called art and literary worlds won't even notice."
Boil in the intensity (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting article (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of guys I know created a world to play and write in. One of them, Steven Erikson, is now a critically acclaimed fantasy writer. We still get together for our weekly game in the world of the Malazan Empire... which is weird, but cool. Some of the characters in his books have their roots in games, and as the books come out (the fifth, Midnight Tides, was released about a week ago), they in turn influence characters in our games.
To say nothing of the subversive social critique Steve has been known to throw in...
Fascinating Article (Score:5, Interesting)
"Sub-creation" is probably the biggest of them. Since earliest childhood, I would spend time making little worlds, using whatever media I had available - mapmaking was one common form of this, and still pictures another. But I wanted to make video games always, because they were the best at it, at making a world full and realized, and I knew it.
Also, I had accepted the McCloud definition of art as communication for a long time, but seeing the alternate view makes me wonder if I had perhaps been wrong to follow it. Communication and world-building don't go together well, after all.
Re:Fascinating Article (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Fascinating Article (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, hang on
Re:Fascinating Article (Score:2, Interesting)
I have one particular world that I have been working on for about 10 years.(yikes!) I keep going back and forth, trying to decide whether I'm going to write the book, or run the game. This article gives me some insights into what my debate has been.
My main impetus was to take a lot of very disparate elements, put them together, and then see what happened. I didn't have a plot, I had an initial state, and I wanted to see what players reacted to, which factions were interesting and which would
What about the cactuar (Score:1, Funny)
The Confluence of Game and Graphic Novel (Score:5, Interesting)
The graphic novel format is a great way to tell a story within a computer game; and it's possible to do this without astronomical production values. First-rate CGI cinematics [gamershell.com] are outside the reach of smaller studios; and even in-engine cinematics [gamershell.com] require artists, programmers, and voice actors to do right. Given budgetary constraints, their talents are often needed elsewhere, (else you'll get a pretty game with no gameplay). And while you can more cheaply tell a story through a screen full of text, few gamers want to read a novella between a game's levels. The graphic novel strikes a great balance between the two extremes -- done right, it can be both visually powerful and expressive in narrative.
Recently and notably, it's been used in Freedom Force [bestgameshots.com] and Max Payne [gamersright.com]. It may be that these games have legitimized the graphic novel's use, or that the public will simply consider future titles that go this route as being derivative. I'm banking on the former, as it would allow independents to do more with less (so to speak). Our upcoming game will tell its story this way -- a trio of photo shoots [synthscribe.com] and an artist slaving over a mouse make the costs very reasonable. (Here's an example of the result [synthscribe.com], written earlier today.)
Without the graphic novel, we simply wouldn't have the resources to tell a story that players would want to hear. With it, we have a shot at telling them a story they'll enjoy.
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Random Trivia: The voice actress who played Mona Sax in Max Payne 2 also did the voiceover work for Jane Lane in MTV's Daria.
Definition of Art (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't believe that McCloud's definition of art as communication necessarily conflicts with Kochalka's. If one is building a world in order to condense all of one's experiences, hopes, and dreams into this alternate reality, the medium must still communicate this in some way to the reader/viewer/player. Whether or not most readers are effectively communicated with probably seperates "great" art from the rest.