Archive for July, 2010
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
MMORPGs: What Would It Take To Tempt You?
I’ve never played World of Warcraft. If I’m honest, I didn’t even know what it was until long after everyone else was a level 55 arch mage. But I’m curious as to what it would take to convince YOU to upload yourself to a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG)
This is pure speculation, but I think the online gaming world would be a different shape had the sequels to The Matrix (somehow) lived up to all their hype and The Matrix Online would have been the perfect opportunity to bring new audiences into Neo’s medium. Regardless, The Matrix Online still went ahead, expanding the story-world for the die-hards and the sci-curious, But it could have been bigger.
But are potential audiences just waiting for their favourite franchise to expand into the internet? As the launch of the DC Universe Online draws close, I’m finding myself deeply considering coughing up and crossing the line into online gaming. What’s tempted me? Not just that you can create your own character to then be mentored by the DC Hero or Villain of your choice, but the stories have also been written by some of DC’s top writers and features voice talent from the DCU cartoons (Mark Hamill as the Joker included).
Sounds a lot like Batman: Arkham Asylum really. So if you played and enjoyed Arkham Asylum, why won’t you be signing up for DC Universe Online? Seriously.
‘cos as cool as that video looks (from my POV, anyway), these MMORPGs seem different, don’t they.
In learning about writing for games, I was taught that describing your game as a list of adjectives is a good way to describe the experience (ie - run, shoot, duck, fly, hide, find etc) Is what’s keeping you offline that they aren’t developing the MMORPG with the right adjectives to suit you? If so, what’s missing? Is it a genre thing? Is the fact that the main examples I’ve mentioned feature flying around and probably thumping people what kept you positively unintrigued? (but there are others)
MMORPGs seem to have it all - serial storytelling, stand-alone missions, social networking and an independent gaming experience. So why are they still a niche thing? What’s keeping you offline?
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
Question: Should you Use the News to Narrate?
While watching Stephen Moffat’s first Doctor Who finale the second time round, I noticed one of many differences between him and Russell T Davies’ writing. This was the first series finale for ages which didn’t feature real-life BBC journalists describing the way that the world was now being devastated by Daleks or Cybermen etc. Even without this device, there was no sense that the world wasn’t in peril so I was left wondering…not only, ‘is it okay’ to use the news in storytelling, but do we ever actually need to?
It clearly breaks the ‘show – don’t tell’ rule so could just be labelled as lazy writing. But in his book ‘Save the Cat!’, Blake Snyder described how Stephen Spielberg considers it just plain bad writing: As he explains, in ET – The Extra-terrestrial, if he’d shown the news breaking worldwide of proof of alien existence, this becomes the planet’s population dealing with this news – a very different story to an isolated boy helping his alien friend get home. There are plenty of journalists in ET – but we don’t follow them, the focus stays on Elliott.
But then I can’t help of thinking of examples I really like of the press covering all angles of particular events. Shaun of the Dead (a script I am increasing impressed with the more and more I look at it!) not only has the Doctor Who-style cameos of real news presenters (and Vernon Kay) but also plays it for laughs by channel-hopping through them to conjoin sentences in funny ways. Crucially, it also clearly shows that the main characters are the ones watching the news – not just us. Too often I think this device is used to dump exposition on the audience – but is it okay to use the news if we are learning stuff alongside the characters?
I can’t not mention a glaring example from my favourite film either. The above cameo-heavy montage shows the rise and rise of the Ghostbusters as heralded by the media. But is the difference that the news actually features our main characters, showing them ‘growing up’? I think it’s interesting to note that this sequence is the only moment of media coverage in the film. When the Ghostbusters take on Dana Barrett’s building at the film’s big battle, the events are not relayed to us by journalists (unlike the dismal ‘narrated’ climax to Spider-man 3) the audience is instead put there right in the crowd, cheering on our heroes!
We see it often enough, but how often is news-narration the most-effective method of storytelling? Is it okay when the characters are learning stuff alongside the audience? Is it okay when our protagonists are themselves the news? Is it lazy writing? Or just a quick and efficient way to get through vital exposition? When is it okay to ‘use the news’?
