When you look at different types of entertainment media, things such as movies, television and books, video games always seem to be the odd one out. In fact many people don’t think they should even be in the same category. Movies, television, books, and plays are often quite interchangeable. Each has their own extremely unique charm but a story converting between them is pretty common; I think this is where video games become a bit awkward.
There are many games based on movies, as well as books and even poetry, note the recently released Dante’s Inferno, but the majority of the time they are mere clones of other games with familiar faces and settings swapped in, which sort of makes sense. In order to stay faithful to the source material the game will generally focus on the story instead of distracting the player with innovative or original ideas, as well as this there is often a low budget for movie tie in games.
It is possible to move a story from a film to a game successfully, and there have been some great move tie in games, it is however a similar effort to moving a novel to a screenplay. Games often really succeed when they are built from the ground up rather than taking cue from a media form so different from itself. For example the newly released Heavy Rain is billed as an ‘interactive drama’; offering people a similar type of entertainment as a film with the same level of drama, while perhaps offering more immersion as well as lasting for eight hours.
Some people would much rather play through a game such as Heavy Rain than watch a film, an issue raised by Peter Guber, chairman of the Mandalay Pictures production company. He said this week that the male market segment of the movie goer market has decreased, largely due to the fact that “A lot of young males are spending much more time on the internet, games and UFC” he then continued “They have not abandoned movies but they have diminished as a target, while the female audience has remained robust.”. You see what he said? He thinks female movie fans are robust.
Looking at this one way it completely makes sense, guys are playing games and so don’t go to see a film. On the other hand it completely neglects the growing female gamer demographic as well as the fact that ‘male orientated films’ are pretty much as applicable to females as males; gender just isn’t a genre anymore. Much like DVDs games must be having an impact on movie attendance, however it is surprising that the chairman of a production company is justifying this with some pretty out of date thinking.
Daniel Rowbotham