As I was absent during this class I missed the activity but have taken the liberty of recreating it - using a few of the drunken art students loitering at my house ranting about how come they're not famous yet.
What follows are the results of each of us answering the questions and randomly selecting the answers from out of a hat.
  1. a character name and attribute [eg martha the vandal]
  2. an obstacle [eg main character is blind]
  3. a setting [eg inner london]
  4. a *disturbance* or event [eg a stranger arrives]
  5. another character [eg dark stranger]
  6. a premise or idea [eg this game is about justice]

Picture
Above: Okay.Well,the first selection was somewhat challenging, mainly due to the final note specifying the game's theme. But after some time brainstorming, I decided that I could see what this game really wanted to be:

A Christian propaganda game about the inability of homosexuals to reproduce.
Ben Smith is an amiable young Christian man whose tendency to be overly polite keeps getting him into trouble. After failing to refuse an invitation to go to a roller-disco with a quirky neighbour, Ben arrives to discover that the place is a favourite hangout for the homosexuals, sent by Satan to turn everyone gay so that the human race can no longer reproduce. After attempting to politely dismiss himself to return home, the homosexuals turn predatory and chase Ben outside to convert him to their ‘satanic church’. At his most desperate moment, God opens the heavens – and the gays, not wanting to damage their delicate ensembles, flee back inside. Ben, now infused with the power of the Holy Spirit, returns back inside to finally say what’s really on his mind. After his sermon bar reaches maximum, Ben can preach to his enemies and attempt to convince them to be baptised. When his sermon bar is below full, he is not helpless however, and can instead, by using ‘the good book’, beat his opponent to submission or death.

Picture
Picture
Picture
 
In order to satisfy the requirements set forth by Lady Truna for Workshop #1, whereby we delve into the rich and complex world of PONG, I have arranged an 'interview', if you will, with two of the newest generation of gamers. Unlike many of their contemporaries, they have remained relatively un-seduced by the lure of the 21st-Century's hi-def graphics and Attention Deficit Disorder-style gameplay which requires little to no patience, persistence or cunning of any kind.
Thanks to their stepfather (an old-school gamer who served alongside the likes of  Roger Wilco, King Graeme of Daventry and Sonny Bonds of the Lytton City Police Department, and fought in the Quests for Glory in Gloriana), care has been taken to ensure that the siblings both played and respect early, graphically-challenged games.
Of course, they are still products of their time, and so chiefly play Flash games, and games which benefit from the technological improvements common to their time, such as both touch-screen control and motion-control.
Being as yet unacquainted with any games older than those of the early Sierra days, I had them both play through Pong, Tennis for Two, and a few of its variations, and then asked them whether they would permit me to transcribe their response for ludology's sake.
What follows, are the results:

COLBOURNE64: Welcome. Thankyou for your time. I appreciate you two granting me this unique and educational opportunity to, not only witness, but to 'engineer' this metaphorical 'bridge', if you will, between you - the latest generation of gamers, and stretching back into the past, back to the dawn of (real)time - when lives were cheap (about a penny) and the world was fraught with monochromatic danger and peril. When gamers were built of tougher stuff - and would literally line up and willingly lay down their two or three lives in defense of our freedom, against the marauding pixelated alien invaders. When men were men, and women were... well, usually kidnapped by giant 2-dimensional apes.
With you - the 'bricks and mortar', the 'metal' um, 'ingredients', I mean... 'bridge-type supplies', in our project, and with me - the burly and hard-working 'builder', who, little by little, pieces this giant metaphor together, ocassionally pausing to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of a sinewy tree-trunk-like forearm, and taking off his tight and dusty singlet to wring the man-sweat from within - his muscles bulging and throbbing in the sweltering heat, as ladies look on and fervently hope that later, after coming up with a pathetic excuse to walk past the construction, they will manage to at least warrent a sideways glance - however brief - from the sexy man-beast, and perhaps, dare-they-hope, one day perchance to even illicit a wolf-whistle from him.
In conclusion, with a little bit of luck, today's results will help allow both scientists and designers to build bigger and better metaphorical bridges and structures which will one day reach far away destinations such as the moon or God himself, so we can stand atop them - our legs splayed proudly apart, our heads held high - and proclaim "yes, we have done it. We have built a metaphorical bridge or other such structure which can reach far away destinations such as the moon, or God himself, and now we are truly the masters of the universe."

FAIRYSPICE: Do we have to do this? Did mum say we have to?

COLBOURNE64: Yes, you do. Your mum's not the only boss. I'm an adult also.

HIPPOCANDY: What's a wolf-whistle?

FAIRYSPICE: No you're not. You're not my real dad. Mum's the boss of you too. I don't have to answer your stupid questions.

HIPPOCANDY: When do we make the bridge? I want to go to the moon.

COLBOURNE64: Well she said that I'm in charge and that you do have to answer my stupid questions, or else I'm allowed to take a star off of you young lady, and don't think I won't do it.

HIPPOCANDY: Is mum coming on the bridge?

COLBOURNE64: Sure, she'll meet us there. So are you ready? First up, Hippocandy.

FAIRYSPICE: I want to go first - I'm oldest.

HIPPOCANDY: No, he said me! Go away.

COLBOURNE64: You can go next. Go and clean your teeth and get ready for bed.

FAIRYSPICE: I've already done them.

COLBOURNE64: No you have not!

FAIRYSPICE: I have too!

COLBOURNE64: When did you do them?

FAIRYSPICE: I did them before. When I went to the toilet.

COLBOURNE64: Did you do them for 2 minutes? You're supposed to do them for the whole 2 minutes, you're the one who'll pay the price if you don't do them properly. You'll be the one that everyone laughs at when you teeth rot and fall out, is that what you want? You want to look like your mum's friend Brian?

FAIRYSPICE: I'll do them again. But I already did them.

COLBOURNE64: Great. Then they'll be extra clean. So, Hippocandy, this game is called Tennis for Two, it's from 1958. Take a couple of minutes, and then let me know what you think. And then, FairySpice, it will be your turn.

HIPPOCANDY: Okay.

........
* From this point the interview is edited for reader sanity - discussions and taunts against the computer ("Nobody does that to me - you're going down! NOOOOOOOO!" etc., have been omitted for brevity and relevance.
........

COLBOURNE64: So, Tennis For Two... is it fun?

HIPPOCANDY: Yes. It is very fun.

COLBOURNE64: Ummmm, WHY is it fun?

HIPPOCANDY: 'Cos it's the first game ever made. And it's awesome. I like that there isn't any point to the game.

COLBOURNE64: Why is it not fun?

HIPPOCANDY: It IS fun! I just told you!

COLBOURNE64: Okay... so, what DIDN'T you like about it?

HIPPOCANDY: I don't like the graphics but the sound was good. No way to make the game better except for improving the graphics.

COLBOURNE64: So, next up... PONG. Is it fun?

HIPPOCANDY: No. It's a little bit boring.

COLBOURNE64: Huh, really? Why is it not fun?

HIPPOCANDY: This one, you have to move something and then hit a ball and I don't really like that.

COLBOURNE64: Hmmmm, well try these variants.

.....

COLBOURNE64: So, what did you think of 3D Pong? Better?

HIPPOCANDY: No. It's the worst game ever.

COLBOURNE64: Why is it not fun?

HIPPOCANDY: No.

COLBOURNE64: Hmmmm. Well put. I think there's something in that for all of us.

.......

COLBOURNE64: Ultra Pong? You like?

HIPPOCANDY: Fun without the slide.

FAIRYSPICE: Yes it was. It was fun with the slide off.

COLBOURNE64: Why is it fun?

HIPPOCANDY: Cos you can have more than one ball.

FAIRYSPICE: It was fun 'cos you can like, choose how many palyers you want... and ummm... and you can choose like the background so if you're like good at it you can choose the background to distract other players. Yeah, and you can put more than one ball in... and ummm... yeah.

COLBOURNE64: Was it more fun with two people?

HIPPOCANDY: Yes.

FAIRYSPICE: Yes it is.

COLBOURNE64: Hmmmm, powerful words.

FAIRYSPICE: The graphics were good.

COLBOURNE64: Any bad elements?

FAIRYSPICE: The music was distracting. But I liked it.

COLBOURNE64: Okay, interesting results.

FAIRYSPICE: Good graphics and I want to play it all over again and again and again and again and again and again and again - (*etc.... this continues for some time complete with a kind of elaborate childlike trance involving skipping in circles which they both participated in.)

COLBOURNE64: Okay guys? Guys? Plasma Pong - is it fun?

HIPPOCANDY: (*referring to the "interactive solver") I liked the drawing bit.

COLBOURNE64: Why is it fun?

FAIRYSPICE: I liked the music. I liked the graphics and it was very pretty because it was all wavy. Very nice and pretty. I like the sucking thing and I also like that you can shoot it at them.

.........

COLBOURNE64: Battle Pong. Is it fun?

HIPPOCANDY: I don't like this one. It's very complicated.

FAIRYSPICE: I don't like the music. Graphics were okay.

MRS64: Okay kidlets, bedtime. Teeth and pajamas.

COLBOURNE64: Oh, but there's still some questions -

MRS64: Steven, it's already 8:20 - they've got school in the morning.

COLBOURNE64: Fine. I'll just fail my course then.

MRS64: Dominick, bedtime. If you've done your teeth, into bed.

HIPPOCANDY: I'm just getting a glass of water.

MRS64: Honey, can you put the kids to bed?

COLBOURNE64: I'm just getting a glass of bourbon.
 
Okay. So, a pre-existing work on which to create a video game... Wow. This is going to kill me. My OCD will not handle this well. There is just too many damn work’s that I would like to make into a game.
Obviously, my first move is to take a list of my favourite literature pieces. Straight off the top of my head, here we go:
  • Ishmael – Daniel Quinn:
Hmmm... This is certainly a good one for a challenge – awesome book but described almost unanimously as unadaptable – that god-awful movie version/”homage” (Instinct – Anthony Hopkins, Cuba Gooding Jr) is testament enough to that. So what was it that actually went wrong with that anyway? Hopkins is almost always good... Alright, well Ishmael: A story about a young, bland (read: everyman) character who one day sees an interesting ad in a newspaper about saving the world. He responds to it clearly out of curiosity, going to the location specified, which he is surprised to see is an entire empty, abandoned level of a building. He decides to leave but soon hears a voice, and is even more surprised to find himself face to face with a giant talking gorilla. Heheh, I just love that. Whenever I’m telling someone about this book, this is always the part where they tune out – deciding that it’s clearly some goddamn kid’s story book. Anyways, the book continues with the gorilla (named Ishmael) explaining his origins to the guy, and then he pretty much tells the guy everything that humans are doing wrong with the world. And they discuss. Philosophy ensues. I guess kind of like Sophie’s World.
Okay so this book has won numerous awards, it’s got like a cult following and everything, there’s even a statue of Ishmael the gorilla out the front of Georgia University (I think) as well, and so the rights for the book sell really well and quickly. Unfortunately no one has a goddamn clue what to do with the text. They eventually make it into a movie about a crazy, wild man who’s been arrested for murdering a bunch of hunters, and his defense lawyer who tries to figure out what this guy’s deal is. I think the problem is that the book really is just a conversation. A long conversation, about important, but often too overwhelming a topic. And everyone’s too scared to make a movie about a discussion (despite the fact there is some incredibly successful and incredible precedents for it, eg. The Conversation). It would work in the vein of Before Sunrise, or actually even, Waking Life, because essentially the whole thing is philosophy. The thing is, I do actually think I could make a damn fine movie out of it, I’ve been thinking about that since I watched Instinct. In terms of a game though... I think it would suffer from what a lot of the James Bond game franchise suffers from - it would be hard to keep it from getting too ‘bitsy’. It would not end up as a complete, holistic, solid game – it would be a collection of inconsistent, too unfocussed puzzle-like ‘toys’ which don’t really fit together nicely. Kind of like the game design equivalent of “sitting on the fence” – there would be no single unifying belief or vision to keep it together. Certainly there’s some brilliant metaphors for complex systems and ideas in the text, and they would be really fun to design mini-games around, but I think that’s probably it. It probably would make a really successful flash-based mini-game fansite for Ishmael, but that’s it. I think.
  • Okay so next up, anything by Vonnegut.
Ummm, Cat’s Cradle? You know what? Vonnegut, my favourite author, and honestly NOTHING is coming to mind. Nothing. I think, I just like Vonnegut too much in book form. I have no desire to try and murder that text.
  • The Jason Bourne series.
Man, these are pure gold. I often have thought about making a game out of them. Of course Sierra already took a crack at it, and while it didn’t suck completely, it didn’t really have anything to do with the books. The movies are goddamn fantastic, up there with my favourites, but once again they don’t go anywhere near the novels. Completely different story. And so the story hasn’t really been done – neither in movie or game form. Actually I tell a lie. Ooop – two lies. There was a mini-series version from the 70’s with Richard Chamberlain that, although it’s quite dated, was pretty damn close to the book. Also, I think in a way the game has already been done – Ubisoft’s XIII. That’s how I imagine a game version being.

Okay, so while I know that I haven’t really got in-depth about what a game version of any of these would entail yet, I think it’s because none of them are really feeling original or anything to me. I want something challenging. Like Pride and Prejudice was for us in Arash’s class. That turned out pretty exciting.
  • Another book that springs to mind is Lord of the Flies.
Now this is one of my all-time favourites. Back in the 90’s I remember I played a text-based version of some Lord of the Flies thing. I think that it was more of a study-guide type thing than a game per se. And also there’s this pretty sweet flash-based “game” online. Once again, a study-guide rather than a game. While I love the story, I can’t help thinking that it would be turn out kind of like Ubisoft’s LOST game. Which sucked. I can appreciate the challenge they had (well, because it’s the same one we have) – staying true to the spirit of something without purely ‘transcribing’ it into an adventure game where you follow the plot action for action. I’ve played those games before, and while I enjoy the first level or two, purely on a fan-boy level, it gets really old really quick. I think the “Enter The Matrix” game did it well, (although it’s been made clear to me that I’m supposedly alone in thinking that), but I think that was cheating really, because the game was made simultaneously with the second two-films and so they left large blanks for the game to capitalise and inform on. But yeah, if I ignore that little factoid, I suppose maybe there’s something else I could learn from it. Well, the main characters in the game were not the main character’s in the movie, and I do think that’s a good move. A game character seems to work best when he’s unestablished enough that he’s a tabula rasa for whatever the hell you wanna play him as. We saw Niobe and Ghost in the films, so we know that they belong in the story, which certainly helps. That’s another thing that was just wrong with the LOST adaptation. They didn’t want to be disrespectful to the existing plot or anything, and so they created a character from scratch and just ‘slotted him in’ to the show. This game them freedom to go where they wanted with him, but it unfortunately, just didn’t feel like LOST. I think they perhaps should have taken a really minor character that we have seen from the episodes, and just fleshed that out. I feel that would have worked better.

Ooh, Rockstar Games’ The Warriors. Genius adaptation. Immensely re-playable, firmly and unashamedly rooted in the source material, and original enough that you’re not just following events from the film. Also, it certainly helps that the character’s were never hugely developed in the film, so there’s a lot of room for character development. I guess this game should be my “exhibit A” of successful adaptation (I know it’s from a film, but the film is actually an adaptation of a book, and incidentally the entire story is a re-telling of the 300 Spartans story). Yep, very happy with that game. Probably one of my all-time favourites. I love the art, I love the mood, funky style, and I love the game mechanics.
Anyways, I know where this is going now. I have explored a couple of other likely narratives, and while they’ve been quite promising, I think I know what I would like to work on.

I actually got deadlocked on two for a while – I couldn’t decide between them. For a while I was quite excited about a game adaptation of “Oedipus”. I found myself deeply amused at the possibility, and even know what I would title the game. “Motherf*cker.” Simple. To the point. Catchy. I sat with that idea for a few days, but eventually I’ve decided to backburner that. (Yes – I actually have plans of maybe coming back to it at a later date – it’s just too cool). Anyways, I eventually came to some kind of decision on what I would like to do.

Certainly in my top 3 books of all time – J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. I think what’s actually attracting me to it, is that I have no idea how I’m going to do it. It’s a goddamn challenge. I mean, ever since it was published people have been very vocal about the belief that it is unadaptable. Salinger, even, unless I’m mistaken, at some point expressed horror at the idea of an adaptation. Of course, Holden himself would be goddamn anti- a film, let alone a video game! I think I’m committed, though now.... I can feel it just here..... yep – there it is..... a little bit of commitment...

    Author

    Steven Colbourne is a carbon-based life-form with opposable thumbs and a fairly advanced respiratory system which removes carbon dioxide and provides oxygen to the blood. He is covered in a layer of protective tissue that scientists refer to as skin. He can not breathe underwater or dislocate his jaw in order for him to swallow meals larger than his mouth.

    He has never been played by two-time Oscar nominee Harvey Keitel.

    Archives

    May 2010

    Categories

    All