Slashdot Mirror
Doom Takes A Shot At Gamers
The Washington Post has a piece discussing the suck that is a movie based on a videogame. From the article: "At the heart of this competitive marriage is this question: How do you successfully turn an interactive experience (playing an Xbox game) into a passive one (watching a movie version of an Xbox game)? For whatever reasons, the recent crop of video game movies -- including 2003's 'House of the Dead' and this year's 'Alone in the Dark,' both helmed by the German director Uwe Boll -- have consistently disappointed gamers. Someone even started a Web site called Uwebollsucks.com. Is it for real? A joke? No one is sure."
"A college "gaming club" that meets weekly for an hour to discuss gaming. Wow. I bet those are some popular guys on campus." ... said the guy posting on Slashdot on a Friday night.
"Derp de derp."
The Washington post is supposed to be a reputable newspaper with a reputation for reliable informaiton. So why was this article not basic fact checked by anybody?
That is, anybody before us.
Come 'on everybody! Let's all pile on to poor Jose Antonio Vargas and point out everything he just plain got wrong.
I'll take the obvious ones.
1. Tron was not a videogame-turned-into-a-movie. It was an original movie about games in general. The videogame followed.
2. Doom cannot be categorized as an Xbox game. Doom has seen basically all of it's sales on the PC for about a dozen years, with the occasional port.
3. Console gaming and movies don't "crave" the 13 - 25 year old male audience. According to the Entertainmetn Software Association the average gamer age is 30, and 43% are female. This skewes a little lower on consoles, but the numbers are far better than the shallow stereotype Vargas passes as journalism. And hasn't box office gold been Date Movies?
Arguable points
1. Doom is not the Granddaddy of FPS games. Wolfenstein 3D is. Wolfenstein 3D begat Doom. There were other FPS games before Wolfie, but it was the first to see real commercial success.
2. Half-Life was based more on classic adventure games than Doom. It certainly didn't "follow the Doom model."
3. He points to Spielberg signing a deal to create 3 franchisable games for EA as a sign that the industry is at a crossroads. However, Spielberg has worked on games many times before, though his LucasArts and Dreamworks Interactive studios. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to see him spend more time trying to alter the craft, but it's still nothing he hasn't done before.
As a side note: Movies are about why you do something. Games are about how you do something. Movies about "how" are hollow, and games about "why" are boring.
The ______ Agenda
I had fairly low expectations, and there were even some plans in palce to guide me away from any press after the premier if I didn't like the movie, so I wouldn't say something "unproductive", but I was pleasantly surprised.
No, it isn't an oscar movie, but it definitely isn't Super Mario Brothers / Street Fighter / Double Dragon.
I do wish they had kept the true satanic / hellish theme, but I think they did a credible job with their alternate direction.
John Carmack