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Sopranos' Creator Doubtful of Game Meaning
Stephen Totilo, over at MTV Games, has up an article talking with David Chase, the creator of hit HBO show The Sopranos. Mr. Chase believes firmly in the creative and dramatic potential of television, but isn't so sure that videogames can mean all that much. Despite the new 'Sopranos' game, you'll never see the TV show bleed into gaming, or vice versa. In his mind, games have very specific goals. From the article: "'Games have a function,' he said. 'It's a physical function. The character has to go from here to there, has to shoot that, has to drive this, has to knock that down, has to jump up here. ... That's how a game works. So cooking dinner, going to Lamaze class, there's no way to figure that into a game at this point. Maybe somebody else can do it and maybe somebody will, but that wasn't really what this game was about. It was supposed to be a story about a kid who wants to be a gangster -- a punk who wants to be a gangster -- and so that's what we did.'"
What is this ... ja..pan?
Is it a cooking utensil?
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
In a show like the Soprano's cooking or Lamaze would be an action characters perform for either some hidden meaning or to give the characters something to do while the story is advanced via other means (like dialogue). In a game, you're either totally involved in a cooking or Lamaze mini-game, or its carried out in a non-interactive way. So, for the interactive cooking segment, the narative (if any) has to come to a stop while you focus on the task at hand. Another character could talk to you while you cook, but most people will only be able to focus on cooking or listening, or do both poorly. Not to mention the outrage your typical gamer would have at having to cook or go to Lamaze with his pregnant mistress in a GTA or Soprano's game. Whereas most viewers probably aren't bothered when Carmela is making something to eat for Tony.