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Fight Club Game Perplexes, Amuses
Thanks to 1UP for its coverage of Vivendi's announcement of a Fight Club videogame for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. As the title might suggest, this is indeed a "3D fighting game based on David Fincher's film Fight Club", and 1UP notes that "you can see Tyler Durden and Edward Norton's nameless narrator in the first round of screens." Vivendi's official press release plays up the "gritty, visceral world" of the film, itself adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's celebrated book, and insists the title will "portray the brutality of street fighting while encompassing the action and story elements from the movie with intense visuals, untraditional moves, and bare-knuckle destruction."
Am I missing something here? From the screenshots shown, it looks like it will have NOTHING to do with the movie. Edward Norton wasn't a body builder! What a cheap movie to game cash-in.
In linux libertas
If the game is going to be feature complete, it needs:
n, b, c *flicker of a spliced pr0n frame*
I'm sure most of the /. crowd is disappointed to find the huge cock not part of the features.
According to the director/actor commentary on the Fight Club DVD, the film is anti-violence. So doesn't a beat 'em up game tie-in completely miss the point?
this article is breaking the first two rules of fight club. 1. Do not talk about fight club. 2. Do not talk about fight club.
...Vivendi also announced a bird hunting game based on To Kill a Mockingbird. Players will choose from a traditional assortment of hunting weapons, including the .22 rifle, rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and the ever-popular flame thrower.
Vivendi is also planning a baseball game based on The Catcher in the Rye.
It would be a mmorpg, with you as a recruit. There would already be a hierarchy, with Tyler at the top. You would have to complete tasks, and submit a story to the effect of what/how you did your task. It is then reviewed by your superior, and depending on the believabilty of the story or simply the greatness of your story. Of course, this could all be B.S.-able by people, but it would be more interesting if people didn't and the game was subversive.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
am i the only person who thinks this trend of every movie having a franchise game does not lead to excellent games?
a movie plot is just not very suitable to be made into a game. i don't see many novels based on poems, or movies based on a song, paintings based on folk dances, etc, etc for a very similar reason. When you write/make something in a particular form, you choose the form that can best portray your message to the viewer. Trying to repeat that in a different form is bound for failure.
I don't think this game is going to be appreciated by the fans of the movie (me being one of them). Contrary to what the title may suggest, this movie is not about fighting. I cannot say that it is about non-violence, but I _can_ say what it is about.
The movie is about the human mind and the state of our society. It presents some pretty valid points about the state of the capitilistic culture we live in. And it pretty much leaves the questions about the human mind up to the viewer (or reader). Bottom line, the fans of the movie do not like this movie for the brutal fight scenes. At least I hope none do.
So, I only see this game spreading the wrong message about the movie.
my cat's breath smells like cat food
I am Jack's mild amusement at Vivendi Universal missing the plot altogether.
Rod.
Rod Begbie done this, and he's not
"Fight club wasn't about winning or losing. It wasn't about words. The hysterical shouting was in tongues, like at a Pentecostal Church." A fighting game where the aim is not to win but to simply try to detach oneself from ones material and societally required possessions, does anyone else wonder if they'll try to implement this, or if they'll simply require that you win every combat to proceed.
Palanhniuk's novels inspire a particular kind of devotion in a particular kind of people. Some of these people are gamers, to be sure, but I would argue it unlikely that many of them would be interested in a game based on the film. This thread in and of itself gives credence to my reaction to the announcement which was that there is no conceivable way to make a good game out of Fight Club. And that was my reaction before reading that press release nonsense about it being a 'gritty street fighting' game. I have to wonder if the developers even saw the film.
Whether you find the movie itself engaging or pseudo-intellectual it must be admitted that it touches on some complex ideas. Some complex, reactionary ideas. Games as they exist today are not a good medium for conveying complicated ideas. We're simply not there yet. I've had some experiences playing games like 'X-Com' and 'Hidden and Dangerous' that show me tiny glimmers of a vast and limitless potential for complicated emotional involvement with games. Certainly The Sims touches on some high emotional concepts. The thing that's different is that Fight Club already exists. It has already achieved its emotional goals and struck its nerve. If the goal is to produce the same feelings in a game, then it's a game that is about three generations ahead of its time. It's not a gritty street fighting game that borrows likenesses from big name actors.
All of that said, the problem of designing a Fight Club game is wholly intriguing. Conceptually there are some interesting directions you could go. You could play as Tyler Durden, your goal being to complete Project Mayhem before the Narrator became aware and could consciously intervene. The problem with that concept is that it's just that: a concept. What are the verbs? That idea doesn't define game play. What does the player do? Obviously there should be some fighting involved but the question to ask is 'what does fighting accomplish?' In the film it was one tool Durden used to recruit to his cult and inspire devotion in his followers. One of many tools. So perhaps the game could be a sort of Cult Builder or sim. The time you're able to spend as Tyler Durden each day could be a sort of resource, with successfully fought Narrator vs. Tyler fights earning you more time to recruit and lead your cult. As your cult grew you could carry out more and more complex missions, with the eventual goal of erasing the debt record, as in the climax of the film. There are a couple problems with this, though.
One is a lack of a defined enemy. In the film the ostensible reason to destroy satellite dishes, to trash coffee bars, and to generally disrupt modern society was some nebulous concept about freedom. Freedom for people who are dissatisfied with the role they've found in said society. In the end it all seems to have been about one man's struggle to find himself and to come to terms with his past and future. My point is that, as in the film, ideas and motives so incendiary will burn themselves out. They can't be sustained because they don't present a real sense of danger. The members of Project Mayhem aren't in mortal danger. They choose to rebel because they are unhappy, they are not fighting a defined enemy. So how do you quantify success? Erasing the debt record, I suppose. Accomplishing each mission without Meat Loaf being shot in the head by the police, I guess.
All in all, I think it would be most difficult to make Fight Club a game because its conflict is internal. Internal strife is hard enough in narrative. We're nowhere near close to being ab
"No, I'm serious," Chuck deadpans. They [20th Century Fox] just sold the rights to the Fight Club video game."
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah, I'm serious. And ask me if I care."
"It's all assimilated. Everything," Chuck quietly jabs. "Those things demonstrate nihilism. It demonstrates that everything becomes a commodity, that everything is trivialized and destroyed."
"But that's so raw," I say, confused.
Almost playfully, Chuck smiles and says, "No, it's not, because it makes room for more stuff, more cutting-edge visions."
From ChuckPalahniuk.net
While the first and second rules of Fight Club are "Don't talk about Fight Club", I believe the 14th rule of Fight Club is:
Don't make a crap-ass game about Fight Club.
I see a lot of you have been breaking the rules...
His name is Robert Paulson.
"Untraditional moves?" Are there any even remotely plausible "untraditional moves" left to exploit in a fighting game? We long since left the realm of even faint plausibility, even in the hand-to-hand only sub-genre, and in this era of 20-30 fully realized characters with 100+ moves each in fighting games, what moves could be left?
"Use X, dragon-punch CCW, dragon-punch CW, circle circle square to deliver the dreader flower picking move! Your character will pick flowers and hand them to his opponent, whereupon the flowers will cause the opponent to swoon and loose half of their health."
And I'll lay money that if you substitute "health" for some sort of "love resistance", there's a Japanese game/"dating sim" that has done this. Seriously. (Except maybe the "half" bit.)
What's left?
Tyler once said "The things you own end up owning you" and was totally and completely against consumerism. To me this would mean Tyler Durden would not sponsor any consumer product what-so-ever.
If this game was true to F.C. then once you popped in the game you'd get the spliced porn and it would fry your pc/console.
P.S. A good game would be to dumpster dive for bags of womens cellulite and cooking it up to make soap in a lab.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
This is your life, good to the last drop. It doesn't get any better then this. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. This isn't a seminar, this isn't a weekend retreat. Where you are now, you can't even imagine what the bottom will be like. Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything, that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static; everything is evolving. Everything is falling apart. This is your life. Doesn't get any better then this. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake! You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else! We are all part of the same compost heap. We are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world. You are not your bank account. You are not the clothes you wear. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your bowel cancer. You are not your grande latte. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis. You have to give up. You have to give up. You have to realize that, some day, you will die. Until you know that, you are useless. I say, let me never be complete. I say, may I never be content. I say, deliver me from Swedish furniture! I say, deliver me from clever art! I say, deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth! I say, you have to give up. I say, evolve; and let the chips fall where they may. This is your life, doesn't get any better then this. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You have to give up. You have to give up.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
I know I'm waaayyyy late on this, but two things that immediately sprang to mind were Ogre Battle and Planescape: Torment.
In Ogre Battle, if your main character won too many battles, the people would stop liking him. Eventually, he'd lose all popular support and you'd lose the game, especially if he won mostly at night (because that made him darker). There was incentive NOT to win too many battles with the "hero".
Planescape: Torment took the "win the battle" mentality right out of the game altogether. Most battles could be avoided. The only place you really HAVE to fight is in Curst and that's only because the guards pick fights with you (since you are breaking into a prison and all). You don't even have to fight the final boss if you don't want to. While there was no incentive NOT to win most battles, you didn't get punished for losing (because your character is immortal) unless you were a REAAALLLLYYY lousy fighter (if you lose TOO much your character goes insane) and you generally didn't get much in the way of experience or loot unless it was a significant battle. There was always some new plot twist pushing you along to your next goal.
I don't think that Fight Club would make a very popular game if it was done right, just like the two above are only popular in their cult statuses. Note that I didn't say GOOD, I said POPULAR. I think, if done properly, it could be an incredible game where it was more important to follow along with the story and character development than to fight. I also think that 22 million caffiene-addled adolescent numbskulls out there are so brain-baked by stupid games like Halo and Tekken that anything that requires a more complex thought process than "push a button to solve a 'puzzle'" is doomed to cult status and low sales figures.
Call me a cynic, but I just don't think the target audience for a 'real" Fight Club game is big enough for the suits at Vivendi to make money selling to, so they're going to go after the typical numbskull crowd of moronic, over-drugged, fast food, "modern" kids. They're going to target the idiots that went to see the movie and left thinking "gee, that was booooring". I remember sitting there at the end of the movie with the guy I went to see it with and we just kind of sat there for a few minutes. Then, I turned to him and said, simply: "disturbing". He wholeheartedly agreed. It's the only movie I've not gotten up at the end of and walked right out of the theatre without a second thought. I can't say the same for most of the other dolts who left grumbling about how "dumb" it was and why there weren't more fights. Unfortunately, the dolts keep the market afloat....
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!