I don’t know Justin Marks, but someone retweeted this thought of his into my stream this morning:
Difference between a video game hero and movie hero: a vidgame hero is expected to do what he’s told – a movie hero is supposed to defy it.
We haven’t done any questions on Gameplaywright for a while, so let’s rectify that:
Is that true? Is a video game hero expected to do what he’s told, and a movie hero to defy it?
Poking around, I found this follow-up tweet Justin wrote:
This is the biggest difficulty when adapting games to film. Only the game heroes who question this relationship are actually “dramatic”.
Justin’s follow-up suggests that he thinks the unquestioning video game hero lacks some dramatic spark. I agree with that. Gameplay isn’t necessarily drama, but part of our overarching point here at Gameplaywright—if we have one—is to suggest that games and stories can each be improved by the other.
What do you think?
Movie heroes never stop to loot the bodies.
I think that’s certainly the most common case, but it’s not universal. Games like Fallout or Knight of the Old Republic are based on the idea that they give the player actual choices (how well those choices are implemented is another question). This is hard to do, so most games are all about following instructions for simple economic reasons: easier to design, less programming time, smaller payroll, higher margin.
Or look at it another way: in film, the characters always follow directions: the director’s. 😉
I need to mull this over, but I will say my first thought (and before I read Mr. Roby’s response above) was, “I certainly don’t do what I’m told to do in Fallout.”
The secret here is that video games aren’t being played by heroes. So rather than doing the hard work of making them into heroes, games have opted for the quest-giver shortcut.
Gamers raised on this quest-giving dynamic literally struggle to operate under the paradigm of a game like the old Ultima series.
Movies are full of people who do what they’re told: James Bond pops instantly to mind, as does Jack Aubrey, along with the heroes of virtually every not explicitly anti-war war movie.
Then there are the heroes who do what they decide to do at the beginning of the movie, without doubling back: Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker (once the cut-scene “your parents were killed by the Empire” is out of the way), Vin and Chris in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, Jimmy Stewart in Winchester ’75; the list goes on and on.
Comes to mind the occasion when a friend has showed to me a new game (in that year…) Ecstatica. We laugh when the hero come down the chamber and Ecstatica levitates and then he fled in panic. That’s one of the first times I saw a hero that don’t do what he’s told. But that was a clever use of character personality as a puzzle in the game-play.
I think in movies the movies the history is set, and you identify yourself with the hero in a different mood, since you are not controlling him. When he creates a twist in the plot you get astonished and loves it or even gets mad with him, because your different expectations.
In games you are in control, the “personality” of the character it’s a intellectual bling that makes the gameplay more fun or challenging in most times. You can get surprised by revelations in your hero’s past or motivations, but that don’ give the impression your hero defy’s you, since he’s basically your’s to play around. The movie hero can betray your expectations more easily.
I think someones are misreading this, to make it simple:
A video game hero gets a mission and he goes out to do it.
A movie hero can struggle with his thoughts, emotions and situations with people around him and changes his goals.
Example, in a game, somebody could tell you choose just one, this or that and even if you want both you can’t, “choose one”. In movies like Batman Forever and Spider Man 2 happen something similar but, the hero decides to save (get) both, cuz, those are important for him at same level.
I can list Mel Gibson movies, Braveheart and The Patriot, they told him to help in a cause, but he didn’t want till something changed his life. Now, game Gothic, they gave him a letter (and option to accept this assignment) he must give to a fire magician and says “alright” and his adventure began for taking this job.
There’s exception to the rule, simply exists traditional “ways” to make them and could have exceptions to those ways.