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Fight Club Game Perplexes, Amuses 112

Posted by simoniker from the first-rule-of-pet-club dept.
Thanks to 1UP for its coverage of Vivendi's announcement of a Fight Club videogame for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. As the title might suggest, this is indeed a "3D fighting game based on David Fincher's film Fight Club", and 1UP notes that "you can see Tyler Durden and Edward Norton's nameless narrator in the first round of screens." Vivendi's official press release plays up the "gritty, visceral world" of the film, itself adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's celebrated book, and insists the title will "portray the brutality of street fighting while encompassing the action and story elements from the movie with intense visuals, untraditional moves, and bare-knuckle destruction."
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Fight Club Game Perplexes, Amuses More

Fight Club Game Perplexes, Amuses

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  • huh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sirmikester ( 634831 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @08:57PM (#7759759) Homepage Journal
    Am I missing something here? From the screenshots shown, it looks like it will have NOTHING to do with the movie. Edward Norton wasn't a body builder! What a cheap movie to game cash-in.

    • Re:huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by culain ( 733686 )
      The article implies that the game will have a combat mode and a story mode. given that "winning" the fights he was in was not necessary for Tyler's master plan, i'm not sure how faithful theyre going to be to the plot of the movie, unfortunately. Yes, it looks like another case of cashing in on a box office hit.
      • Yes, it looks like another case of cashing in on a box office hit.

        Actually, Fight Club did pretty mediocre at the box office. It only gained a cult following after its video release.

    • ...games like this give street violence & insanity a bad name. This can only be a bad influence on our children. ;^)

      Seriously, though, I really do agree. I had to do a double take when I saw how built these game characters were. The only way that this could be any good is with the game's story line, otherwise it'll be yet another fighting game.

  • *flicker* *flicker* (Score:5, Funny)

    by cuiousyellow ( 89995 ) <grant@nOspAM.jokerbone.com> on Thursday December 18, 2003 @08:58PM (#7759765) Homepage
    If the game is going to be feature complete, it needs:

    n, b, c *flicker of a spliced pr0n frame*

  • Where's the huge cock? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm sure most of the /. crowd is disappointed to find the huge cock not part of the features.

  • Anti-violence (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @09:06PM (#7759814)
    According to the director/actor commentary on the Fight Club DVD, the film is anti-violence. So doesn't a beat 'em up game tie-in completely miss the point?
    • How do you know the game is pro-violence? Just because it features acts of violence?

      • Re:Anti-violence (Score:5, Funny)

        by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @10:10PM (#7760231)
        Well let's see, we can safely assume that it fits into only ONE of these categories...

        1. It has a message of anti-violence. Players are discouraged from seeing violence as a solution to a problem. Players are encouraged not to fight and are taught that they should just put their fists away and get on with their fellow man.

        2. It's a fighting game with a focus on violence and the violence is intended to be fun.

        Shock revelation time: The developer will make the game that will sell best!

        Call me crazy but I'm guessing that a game that is said to "portray the brutality of street fighting while encompassing the action and story elements from the movie with intense visuals, untraditional moves, and bare-knuckle destruction" will NOT be anti-violence.
        • Call me crazy but I'm guessing that a game that is said to "portray the brutality of street fighting while encompassing the action and story elements from the movie with intense visuals, untraditional moves, and bare-knuckle destruction" will NOT be anti-violence.

          Didn't the movie (and book) do these things yet, as you said, are anti-violence? Didn't the movie have a focus on violence with the violence intending to be entertaining? Why can't a game feature violence while at the same time having an anti-vio
        • Yet another great movie turned into another shallow game.
          In other news EA has announced the Citizen Kane Expansion Pack for The Sims.
          Hold your breath for Duke Nukem: Casablanca Revisited.

    • Re:Anti-violence (Score:3, Insightful)

      by alphaseven ( 540122 )
      According to the director/actor commentary on the Fight Club DVD, the film is anti-violence. So doesn't a beat 'em up game tie-in completely miss the point?

      Probably, like Platoon for the 8-bit Nintendo completely missed Oliver Stone's anti-war message.

      • You know, I probably shouldn't say this in public, but I played through that game [Platoon for NES]. But... I've never seen the movie.

        Ah well. Feels good to get that off my chest.
      • Hahaha! I just finished playing the VS. version of Platoon on MAME... talk about lame.

        Anyhow, don't you think that a tie-in of any kind sort of undermines the anti-corporate POV of the movie?

        Unless the game makes you feel bad about sitting inside and playing in the dark... taunts the loser of a match to go outside and get a girlfriend or something.

        • Anyhow, don't you think that a tie-in of any kind sort of undermines the anti-corporate POV of the movie?

          No more so than convincing 20th Century Fox to turn a pulp novel into a big-budget film.

      • Platoon for the 8-bit Nintendo completely missed Oliver Stone's anti-war message

        I'm still trying to figure out what Oliver Stone is about. Was he saying that we should not have been in Vietnam so that all those Natural Born Killers [cinepad.com] could practice their trade in the good old USA instead of doing it to My Lai?

        • Was he saying that we should not have been in Vietnam so that all those Natural Born Killers could practice their trade in the good old USA instead of doing it to My Lai?

          Uhm no. The main point of NBK was to illustrate the media's fascination with and encouragement of sensationalistic violence.

          • Re:Anti-violence (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Phronesis ( 175966 )
            Actually that's a pretty facile excuse. The real point of NBK was to show as much brutal violence as possible while pretending not to take prurient pleasure in it. If the point was to illustrate the media's fascination with violence in any critical way, Stone would not have taken such obvious pleasure in the brutality.
            • I agree. The same also applies to Rockstar's Manhunt.
    • It's also supposed to be an indictment of McCulture and crass materialism. Doesn't a beat-em-up game tie-in GROSSLY miss the point?

      I'm still convinced this is some sort of hoax. It's just safer that way.

    • of the ridiculous level of marketing applied to the film and its merchandise.

      cracks me up to see the sheeple gobble up the super special dvd's and whatnot.

      you gotta figure Palahniuk's gotta be tempted to follow Hubbard's lead and give up on writing to begin an extremely lucrative cult.
      • Cracks me up to see people who pass by an excellent movie with a really interesting DVD commentary because they might lose their indie karma points.
        • funny... i just rented it.
          i mean, i'm only going to watch the special features once, and i'll have already seen the movie twice after i rent it...

          so do i really need to -own- the super special movie to have not 'missed out'?

          I don't intend on rewatching it often, so I don't see the point in buying this [amazon.com]. let alone protesting [petitiononline.com], this [amazon.com]. Maybe you do, and more power to ya. My preferences aren't for everybody, and I wasn't passing judgement. I was just noting irony.

          perhaps i should have focused on the merchand [google.com]

          • Yo, yo, calm down man, I'm not your enemy. Just took a little offense at the (apparently misconstrued) implication that all people who buy the DVD are sheeple.

            You certainly don't need to buy a movie if you aren't that into it. If you just kinda liked it, there's certainly no point buying the supersmurfy edition, nor protesting. Heck, I liked it, but I went and got the single DVD version (I didn't know about the 2 DVD version until after I'd made my purchase). Sure, I woulda liked the 2 DVD version, b

  • shhh (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrkslntbob ( 731248 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @09:12PM (#7759845)
    this article is breaking the first two rules of fight club. 1. Do not talk about fight club. 2. Do not talk about fight club.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dr. Photo ( 640363 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @09:15PM (#7759865) Journal
    ...Vivendi also announced a bird hunting game based on To Kill a Mockingbird. Players will choose from a traditional assortment of hunting weapons, including the .22 rifle, rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and the ever-popular flame thrower.

    Vivendi is also planning a baseball game based on The Catcher in the Rye.

  • My version of the game (Score:4, Interesting)

    by eamonman ( 567383 ) <eamonman2@h[ ]ail.com ['otm' in gap]> on Thursday December 18, 2003 @09:32PM (#7759965) Journal
    It would be a mmorpg, with you as a recruit. There would already be a hierarchy, with Tyler at the top. You would have to complete tasks, and submit a story to the effect of what/how you did your task. It is then reviewed by your superior, and depending on the believabilty of the story or simply the greatness of your story. Of course, this could all be B.S.-able by people, but it would be more interesting if people didn't and the game was subversive.

  • bad idea from the start (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ghettoreb ( 711310 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @09:33PM (#7759974) Homepage
    am i the only person who thinks this trend of every movie having a franchise game does not lead to excellent games?

    a movie plot is just not very suitable to be made into a game. i don't see many novels based on poems, or movies based on a song, paintings based on folk dances, etc, etc for a very similar reason. When you write/make something in a particular form, you choose the form that can best portray your message to the viewer. Trying to repeat that in a different form is bound for failure.

  • not for the fans (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 1isp_hax0r ( 725178 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @10:01PM (#7760185)
    I don't think this game is going to be appreciated by the fans of the movie (me being one of them). Contrary to what the title may suggest, this movie is not about fighting. I cannot say that it is about non-violence, but I _can_ say what it is about.

    The movie is about the human mind and the state of our society. It presents some pretty valid points about the state of the capitilistic culture we live in. And it pretty much leaves the questions about the human mind up to the viewer (or reader). Bottom line, the fans of the movie do not like this movie for the brutal fight scenes. At least I hope none do.

    So, I only see this game spreading the wrong message about the movie.
    • I would have to agree, the fight scenes were nothing special in
      • Fight Club
      . They were the hook that helped get you engaged with the movie but the movie progresses far beyond that to something that is quite a bit deeper and attempts to look at what is beneath the vineer of capitalism.

  • I am Jack's... (Score:5, Funny)

    by rodbegbie ( 4449 ) * on Thursday December 18, 2003 @10:05PM (#7760209) Homepage
    I am Jack's mild amusement at Vivendi Universal missing the plot altogether.

    Rod.

    • Re:I am Jack's... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by culain ( 733686 )
      You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking awful movie to computer game translations, You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
  • Yeah, because the point of the movie was the fighting. Geez, what happen? Someone had a license they needed to go ahead and cash in on?
  • DON'T MAKE A VIDEO GAME OF FIGHT CLUB!

    On a serious note, I hope it has subliminal images of teletubbies or something, or if you win, you're suddenly playing the Death to Smoochie game... Something completely off.

  • Winning is everything! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by culain ( 733686 )
    "Fight club wasn't about winning or losing. It wasn't about words. The hysterical shouting was in tongues, like at a Pentecostal Church." A fighting game where the aim is not to win but to simply try to detach oneself from ones material and societally required possessions, does anyone else wonder if they'll try to implement this, or if they'll simply require that you win every combat to proceed.
  • Looking at those screen shots reminded me of those pr0n images with celeb faces photoshopped in. Come on, where's the pasty white geek of a main character and that weight lifter with the bitch tits?

    So anyway, I will refuse to buy without those lovable characters, hehehe. I'm scared to show my girlfriend, though, she might buy the game and play it as often as I play DOAX just to get even...

  • Madness!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheSwink ( 720021 ) <sswink@flashbangstudios.com> on Thursday December 18, 2003 @10:48PM (#7760429) Homepage
    So, I interviewed with these guys about a year and a half ago. At that point they were only saying about the licensed property that it was 'an action movie released in 1999 by Fox that featured two big stars'. At that time the only film I could come up with that fit that description was Fight Club, but it seemed so implausible. I just can't imagine why anyone would license Fight Club as a game property. Quelle surprise!

    Palanhniuk's novels inspire a particular kind of devotion in a particular kind of people. Some of these people are gamers, to be sure, but I would argue it unlikely that many of them would be interested in a game based on the film. This thread in and of itself gives credence to my reaction to the announcement which was that there is no conceivable way to make a good game out of Fight Club. And that was my reaction before reading that press release nonsense about it being a 'gritty street fighting' game. I have to wonder if the developers even saw the film.

    Whether you find the movie itself engaging or pseudo-intellectual it must be admitted that it touches on some complex ideas. Some complex, reactionary ideas. Games as they exist today are not a good medium for conveying complicated ideas. We're simply not there yet. I've had some experiences playing games like 'X-Com' and 'Hidden and Dangerous' that show me tiny glimmers of a vast and limitless potential for complicated emotional involvement with games. Certainly The Sims touches on some high emotional concepts. The thing that's different is that Fight Club already exists. It has already achieved its emotional goals and struck its nerve. If the goal is to produce the same feelings in a game, then it's a game that is about three generations ahead of its time. It's not a gritty street fighting game that borrows likenesses from big name actors.

    All of that said, the problem of designing a Fight Club game is wholly intriguing. Conceptually there are some interesting directions you could go. You could play as Tyler Durden, your goal being to complete Project Mayhem before the Narrator became aware and could consciously intervene. The problem with that concept is that it's just that: a concept. What are the verbs? That idea doesn't define game play. What does the player do? Obviously there should be some fighting involved but the question to ask is 'what does fighting accomplish?' In the film it was one tool Durden used to recruit to his cult and inspire devotion in his followers. One of many tools. So perhaps the game could be a sort of Cult Builder or sim. The time you're able to spend as Tyler Durden each day could be a sort of resource, with successfully fought Narrator vs. Tyler fights earning you more time to recruit and lead your cult. As your cult grew you could carry out more and more complex missions, with the eventual goal of erasing the debt record, as in the climax of the film. There are a couple problems with this, though.

    One is a lack of a defined enemy. In the film the ostensible reason to destroy satellite dishes, to trash coffee bars, and to generally disrupt modern society was some nebulous concept about freedom. Freedom for people who are dissatisfied with the role they've found in said society. In the end it all seems to have been about one man's struggle to find himself and to come to terms with his past and future. My point is that, as in the film, ideas and motives so incendiary will burn themselves out. They can't be sustained because they don't present a real sense of danger. The members of Project Mayhem aren't in mortal danger. They choose to rebel because they are unhappy, they are not fighting a defined enemy. So how do you quantify success? Erasing the debt record, I suppose. Accomplishing each mission without Meat Loaf being shot in the head by the police, I guess.

    All in all, I think it would be most difficult to make Fight Club a game because its conflict is internal. Internal strife is hard enough in narrative. We're nowhere near close to being ab

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • ... it's a game that is about three generations ahead of its time.

      You watch out, or this quote will end up on the box.

    • Look at those muscles on... "Jack". The form is excellent on "Jack's" slide side-kick. Well, rack up one more to clueless licensing.

      Personally, I find the most ironic thing being that the point of the fight scenes in the movie were about overcoming the vacuous isolationism felt by modern man in a society without real connections. However, the game takes those incidents and creates a vacuous, isolationist single-player experience. They don't even have a simulated crowd. Personally I feel Pit Fighter [mobygames.com] di
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Anybody who makes a fighting game based upon fight club is a frigging retard.

    And the screens that they showed look like shit.

    Don't people that say these types of things work at the game companies???

  • Chuck's View (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Quobobo ( 709437 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @10:59PM (#7760485)
    "No, I'm serious," Chuck deadpans. They [20th Century Fox] just sold the rights to the Fight Club video game."

    "Are you serious?"

    "Yeah, I'm serious. And ask me if I care."

    "It's all assimilated. Everything," Chuck quietly jabs. "Those things demonstrate nihilism. It demonstrates that everything becomes a commodity, that everything is trivialized and destroyed."

    "But that's so raw," I say, confused.

    Almost playfully, Chuck smiles and says, "No, it's not, because it makes room for more stuff, more cutting-edge visions."

    From ChuckPalahniuk.net [chuckpalahniuk.net]

  • You've forgotten the rules. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dr. Bent ( 533421 ) <ben AT int DOT com> on Thursday December 18, 2003 @11:02PM (#7760506) Homepage
    While the first and second rules of Fight Club are "Don't talk about Fight Club", I believe the 14th rule of Fight Club is:

    Don't make a crap-ass game about Fight Club.

    I see a lot of you have been breaking the rules...

  • "Untraditional moves?" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Friday December 19, 2003 @12:01AM (#7761010) Journal
    "Untraditional moves?" Are there any even remotely plausible "untraditional moves" left to exploit in a fighting game? We long since left the realm of even faint plausibility, even in the hand-to-hand only sub-genre, and in this era of 20-30 fully realized characters with 100+ moves each in fighting games, what moves could be left?

    "Use X, dragon-punch CCW, dragon-punch CW, circle circle square to deliver the dreader flower picking move! Your character will pick flowers and hand them to his opponent, whereupon the flowers will cause the opponent to swoon and loose half of their health."

    And I'll lay money that if you substitute "health" for some sort of "love resistance", there's a Japanese game/"dating sim" that has done this. Seriously. (Except maybe the "half" bit.)

    What's left?
    • I don't think I've ever seen an eye-gouge in a fighting game. also a good deal of submission fighting moves are unexplored.

      that's about all I can think of, though, and I have extensive training in various martial arts. the eye-gouge is probably just too evil to add in and submission fighting moves don't translate well into games, no matter how hard Crave tries to market UFC.

      • Is there a fighting game where you play a pro wrestler, and instead of letting the player do everything they can to win, the game forces them to play according to a script which they must follow, or they will be fired? Hell, I bet you could make a decent rythym game based on that...
    • I've seen the game, and it really does have some new and unique mechanics.

      For example, you start the game with a full Nihilism bar. Your bar drains by observing the pointlessness of the game and the honor of futile struggle. Once the Nihilism bar is fully empty, you become the dreaded Uberman. Your character no longer cares if he takes damage or not, and becomes highly motivated by his sheer superiority.

      You win the game because your opponent secretly wants you to win the game. However, this victory ca
  • A lot of the allure of Fight Club, at least for me wasn't the fight scenes or anything like that. The fight scenes just happened to be a necessary means to project the true meanings of the movie and to get people thinking. I am not sure, I think this game will be a flop... What can it have that other "fighting"/"combat" games don't?
  • I read about this a few days ago. It reminded me of the cancelled Xbox fighting game based on Stephen Spielberg's AI. Hopefully an exec overseeing this project will realize what a huge mistake it is before they spend too much money. It can't be too far along, or there would be screenshots of other characters, right?

    Do people actually buy enough of this kind of licensed crap to make it profitable? The last time I got suckered in by one of these games was with Acclaim's Alien Trilogy for the PC, and that was

  • To Quote Tyler Durden (Score:3, Insightful)

    by felonious ( 636719 ) on Friday December 19, 2003 @04:41AM (#7762346) Journal
    Tyler once said "The things you own end up owning you" and was totally and completely against consumerism. To me this would mean Tyler Durden would not sponsor any consumer product what-so-ever.

    If this game was true to F.C. then once you popped in the game you'd get the spliced porn and it would fry your pc/console.

    P.S. A good game would be to dumpster dive for bags of womens cellulite and cooking it up to make soap in a lab.
    • Tyler Durden would not sponsor any consumer product what-so-ever.
      But didn't Brad Pitt do a TV ad in Japan for one of the cars that Tyler smashed up in the movie? I think I read something about that a few months back. If I remember correctly, there were a few big US stars who were trying to shut down a web site that featured adverts they'd done in Eastern countries. The ads kinda went against their Western image.

  • philosophy (Score:2, Informative)

    by acxr is wasted ( 653126 ) *
    This is your life, good to the last drop. It doesn't get any better then this. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. This isn't a seminar, this isn't a weekend retreat. Where you are now, you can't even imagine what the bottom will be like. Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything, that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static; everything is evolving. Everything is falling apart. This is your life. Doesn't get any better then this. This is you
  • Nobody? What a surprise...

    Perhaps one of you incredibly prescient game critics can answer these questions:

    1. What genre of game *would* be more suitable for adapting Fight Club?

    2. Why is it assumed that an action game can't have a narrative component? (I guess Shenmue, Deus Ex et al didn't happen?) Because the press release concentrates on the action? I don't recall the trailers for the movie focussing on the anti-capitalism message.
    • 1) Puzzle game. 2) Because the movie is nihilistic and iconoclastic, and a game based on it would have to give up on the concepts of "winning" in order to progress. Sure, I guess it's possible that you could have a game whereby if you win too many rounds in a row you lose because of your attachment to victory; where losing would be critical for character development, and where things just kinda happen...However, generally players need goals, things to work towards, and a game based on a movie that shows t

      • ...where losing would be critical for character development, and where things just kinda happen...

        I know I'm waaayyyy late on this, but two things that immediately sprang to mind were Ogre Battle and Planescape: Torment.

        In Ogre Battle, if your main character won too many battles, the people would stop liking him. Eventually, he'd lose all popular support and you'd lose the game, especially if he won mostly at night (because that made him darker). There was incentive NOT to win too many battles with th

    • 1. What genre of game *would* be more suitable for adapting Fight Club?

      MMPORPG? Just because there is no suitable genre for a movie to game transition doesn't mean you randomly pick one. "Hey Jim, all the kids love this new 'Bowling for Columbine' movie." "That's great Bob, let's make an FPS!"

      2. Why is it assumed that an action game can't have a narrative component?

      Because they used the magical word "fighting game." Shenmue was not a fighting game. Deus Ex was not a fighting game. Tekken was a
  • Although I loved Fight Club, something bothered me about the ending. Surely all the credit card companies had offsite backups, if not offsite datacentres. Just blowing up the headquarters wouldn't have destroyed everyone's credit histories at all.

    I know it's only a movie and this is slightly offtopic but this is slashdot-the home of geek pedantry so I thought I'd get that off my chest.

    thanks, all better now.
  • I just hope the game is as good as the movie...
    We know game to movies don't work (see:Final Fantasy). I doubt the game will be as great or engrossing as the movie. But hey, it's a game, it's not supposed to be deep or anything. GL Vivendi!
  • Sigh. I am Jack's...

    Never mind, I am not Jack's anything. Please, no more ur-hip commentary on how ironic development of a Fight Club game is, given that the book and movie were such insightful commentary on our material culture and a revitalization of self-reliance and blah blah blah.

    Fight Club was more or less an intellectual jerkoff session for unsatisfied adolescents, despite its pretensions of enlightenment to a more fundamental meaning. It was a good bit of candy with some bracing flourishes - but u

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