Earl Newton.com » video games

Less Talk, More Rock (Video Game Narrative)

Earl Newton — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:56:10 +0000

Boingboing.net is hosting a terrific manifesto by Craig Adams (AKA Superbrothers). It speaks about the narrative experience of video games, but storytellers of all sorts can find something here.

Here are a few excerpts to whet the appetite:

When there’s just a little bit of talk…it has a peculiar, haunting, poetic effect. It tickles the intellect just enough for it to stir, but not enough to irritate it.

An entire generation seems to have become used to experiences …choked by voice acting, mangled by incongruent narrative…These elements serve to undermine the aesthetic coherence of the work — they can dilute the magic, they can interrupt the flow, they can disrupt the basic audiovisual communication, they can break the spell.

Find the link to the whole manifesto below.

Less Talk, More Rock

One Step Closer to an Interactive Future

Earl Newton — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:46:03 +0000

I’ve written before about video games as the future of entertainment. I have another post brewing in me about the difficulty of merging the active video game experience with the passive entertainment experience we’re already familiar with (primarily the printed or moving image).

I just read a preview for a new XBOX 360 game called Alan Wake. Read the preview here.

The game seems to offer a more matured story experience than what we’ve seen in the past, and that’s already a good sign as far as serious artists getting involved in the craft.

But what caught my eye are the mentions of product placement. Energizer batteries, for one, and an unnamed car company.

If this works, then I think we can expect to see a lot more of this in the future, and perhaps see much of the advertising dollars that have dwindled from television and print rush into this new medium.

Remember, no one was interested in California, new medicines, or that sticky gunk called “oil” until someone figured out how to make money from them. Right now, video games have only tapped the existing models of income used by books and movies: develop a product, and sell it to consumers.

But if the video game — a fixed form product — could tap into the advertising model that supports the constantly-renewing products like newspapers and television, the potential revenue could be staggering.

Indies Go Solo Part 2 (Video Games)

Earl Newton — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:32:52 +0000

The other day I posted a link to a New York Times article about indie filmmakers self-distributing, and erosion of the mainstream film market.

The most interesting aspect of this discussion, to me, is the lack of discussion about the role of video games in eroding the film market.

By and large, the movies that sell the most are escapist entertainment. The problem is: movies don’t have the corner on escapism any more.

I can pay

(for a movie, avg. 2 hrs)

$10 for two hours of watching a protagonist leap from one near-death to another ($5/hour)
$25 to buy the Collector’s Edition DVD at BestBuy (after waiting four months for it to release; $12.50/hr, slightly less if you include “behind the scenes,” and I don’t)
$10 to buy the Cheapie On-Sale Walmart edition ($5/hr, but I have to wait a year)

(for a video game, avg 12 hrs gameplay)

$60 to buy the game the day it comes out ($5/hr)
$30 to buy it at cheapie Wal-Mart discount prices (waiting eight months for prices to drop, $2.50/hr)

So I can buy either medium, on the first day of availability, for $5/hr. The difference with video games is: I get 6 times the entertainment at the same rate, and the longer I wait, the cheaper it becomes.

And don’t forget replay value: any game with decent replay value (anything in the Mario franchise, open sandbox games) will last you at least fifty hours. Games with multiplayer capability or ongoing storylines (Halo, the Sims) will go two hundred or beyond. (Do I have to bring up World of Warcraft?) That’s two hundred distinct, original hours of entertainment. How many times will you rewatch a movie?

Most importantly, whatever entertainment I derive from the experience is completely mine. I leap across dangerous chasms at the last minute, not Nick Cage. Any experience, large or small, takes on a larger import, because I am the protagonist.

Escapist movies are, “Hey, audience, watch me do this cool thing!”

Escapist video games are, “Here’s a gun and a map. Get out alive.”

Which sounds more dramatic to you?