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Turning Classic Literary Works Into Games
Adventure Classic Gaming is running an interview with Chris Tolworthy, an indie game designer who is working on a project to make video games out of various literary classics. His decision to develop these kinds of games was sparked by a desire to reach out to gamers who want more "serious" subject matter, as well as finding an audience among people you would find in a book store, rather than a game store. Tolworthy has already released one game, an adaptation of Les Misérables, and has almost finished Dante's Divine Comedy. After that is done, he'll move on to other works, including Theogeny, by Hesiod, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, aiming for two or three releases a year. He said, "I try to keep as close as possible to the original text. When I create a game I simply go through the book and adapt it chapter by chapter. As far as possible all my puzzles are based on ideas in the original book. So my Dante's Inferno is a lot closer to the book than EA Games' Dante's Inferno that changes Dante into a warrior with a giant scythe! Although I stick closely to the story, I would find it boring to only give the straight text, so my games always give a different twist. For example, I show Les Miserables from the point of view of a minor character who dies early on. In my Divine Comedy I show other points of view as well as Dante's, and they don't see things the same way. Really, what I'm doing is what theater directors do when they put a Shakespeare play into a modern setting. It's the exact same story, but presented in a new way."
Kinda ruins the game, already knowing the ending and major plot-devices, doesn't it?
Anyway, it'd be great to see games dominate the popular iconographic imagery of literary classics in the same way that films have. Will Frankenstein be perceived as a beautiful artifice once again, I wonder...?
Meta will eat itself
Now apart from the obvious point of "errr so we know where this is going" which just means its a directed rather than open-ended game this is really just like using the standard film adaptation approach and applying it to games.
Its not that it is really new, Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did something similar many moons ago. Playing on throw away lines to drive the puzzles (tea and no tea) in some cases but generally following the plot of the book.
Really not a new idea either in concept or application.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
There is "Outlook" game, based on Kafka's novel "The Trial".
839*929
Navigate your way through the maze of 18th century social etiquette!
Avoid Mrs Bennett's attempt to ensnare you with unsuitable gentlemen!
And of course, there's always the zombie version:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_and_Zombies
Back in the days of adventure games, there was a bit of focus on the older gamers as well as the younger players. So you could have games with a lot of material that WOULD appeal to the crowd Chris Tolworthy is targeting. The problem is that in those days, you didn't see enough marketing to try to draw in that sort of customer.
Take a look at Gabriel Knight 3, which came out well before Da vinci Code even was written(1999 for GK3, 2003 for Da Vinci Code). Yes, the 3D engine wasn't very good, and there were things that could have been done better, but the writing was very good, the puzzles were pretty solid, and if it were to get a face lift(using a new 3D engine), it would appeal to those who prefer books to most games.
After the death of Sierra and Interplay, there has been a shortage of publishers willing to back games targeted at an older audience. It seems like the focus is the teen market, and if you are older than 25 years old and prefer something other than a first person shooter, your choices are more and more limited.
If every movie were rated PG, with the content of a PG movie, it wouldn't be long before the majority of adults would just stop watching movies. People grow up, and want things that THEY find entertaining. If the movie industry can have a wide variety of movie types, from the really bad formula action adventure movies, to the highly artistic types, to romance, comedy, and drama, then why has the computer and console game industries focused primarily on first person shooters that only appeal to one type of game player?
Or even 1984! Have Stanley run around finding his ever elusive razor blades. The best part is you can have a legitimate hot coffee moment in the woods followed by a "shot the hidden microphone" mini game.
A video game of The Old Man and the Sea would suck even worse than the book.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Adapting stories from other media for videogames isn't a new idea. It's just that films have been the usual source, perhaps because they're culturally/commercially closer, especially if you compare the AAA game title to the blockbuster Hollywood film. Films also come with a built-in visual style to adapt, which helps with the recognition. The practice has become prominent enough that the only major general study of adaptation between mediums that I know of actually spends a decent amount of time discussing videogame adaptations of films, film adaptations of videogames, and so on (usually videogames get ignored in these sorts of media-study analyses).
But... they're mostly not that good. I think this could be said even if we try to look at things sympathetically. The aforementioned book argues that adaptations often get a bad critical rap, because there's a certain mystique around "the original", and assumption that a mere adaptation is always a bastardization of the original that can't possibly capture it. But let's accept that argument, and treat adaptations as interesting and legitimate in their own right, trying not to start out with an assumption that all adaptations are bad. Even then, can you really say that adapting films has been a successful way to make videogames? The only ones that come out even reasonably okay imo are sort of "adaptation light"--- where you borrow some visual elements and general setting/characters from the film, but otherwise mostly ignore it. This works best in big-universe films, like Star Wars, where you're not really adapting an actual film so much as a set of ideas.
Will this all fare better for literature? I can see adapting the general setting of a book as plausible. In fact, that's been done successfully in a few interactive fictions, which share with books the text medium (perhaps like graphical videogames share the visual medium with film). I've played some good Lovecraft-mythos IFs, for example, like Anchorhead (this book on IF discusses the issue of IFs being adapted from literature a bit further). But adapting the book itself? Perhaps as the storyline for a linear RPG-style game? Or something more fundamental than that?
I guess what I'm saying with all this in a roundabout way might be something like: yes, interesting idea, but how? Not asking that as a purely skeptical question; I think there may be ways it'd work. There might even be multiple different kind of adaptations that would work. But I think there are a lot of pitfalls. In particular, a sure pitfall is making "this game is an adaptation of 'real literature'" be the selling point for the game.
Proposing to adapt literature to videogames is the starting point, and you need a vision beyond that for why or how. Why is it interesting to adapt literature to a videogame? Why aren't you just writing a novel on the one hand, or making a non-adaptation videogame on the other? I think there might be good answers for why, but I don't see them here, at least not yet--- I don't think the mere idea of making games tackle "serious" subject matter is enough of an answer.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
An even better subject for a Steinbeck game would be "Grapes of Wrath". It could play well as both a historical learning game, and as a current events social commentary game.
Methinks the biggest problem with translating a book to a game is: with a book, the main characters usually make some grand mistakes (very specific ones) and then spend the rest of the tale trying to recover, while with a game the emphasis is NOT making mistakes - any mistakes. Readers want to see characters fail and overcome; players ARE the characters, and don't want the hit on their ego. We're fascinated by characters in books, but rarely would want to _be_ that character.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I mean, I am genuinely puzzled. I know the Commedia fairly well, and I've read most of it in the original. And I simply cannot imagine how you turn it into a game.
Unless of course the author has merely nicked the characters?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
All of these great literary works were never intended to be interactive... as in "something that changes the outcome of the story based entirely on the audience itself".
These writers didn't leave much in the way of "what if..." contingencies involving their characters and plots. If they had, there never would've been a market for all those "choose your own adventure" books they used to hock on us during school book drives when we were still growing up.
That said, wouldn't a series of adult-themed "choose your own adventure" style books be kind of interesting? But, instead of simple "turn to page x" instructions, you'd have to solve various puzzles to know where to go next. Oh, and maybe a mechanism to slice off fingers for wimps who can't commit to their choices...
8==8 Bones 8==8
[ In the Barn ; 34 points ]
The air in the main barn is stuffy, almost claustrophobic,
despite the large size. Beams of late-afternoon sunlight
angle down, with flecks of hay and dust suspended in the
stagnant air. A barn door leads out.
There is a broken puppy here.
There is a broken Candy here.
> out
[ Curley's Ranch ; 34 points ]
> go through gate
[ Entrance to Curley's Ranch ; 35 points ]
> go down path
[ By the Pond ; 36 points ]
You see a crying Lenny here.
> ask about the rabbits
Lenny sits down and tries to explain about the rabbit farm
of his dreams again, calming him somewhat.
> shoot lenny
THE END
36 points
[
this youtube video is spot on and makes about 99% of the points that apply to this discussion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jdG2LHair0
Ultimately I hope you'll all forgive my skepticism. The classics are required reading in most high schools for a reason - there is some degree of cultural significance to the works. Still, written classics have the problem of being written stories designed to be passively consumed by the viewer, while video games require a world in which the audience participates. Linear stories don't work extremely well for this. If what I do doesn't "matter", why would I bother doing it? I remember playing "Deadly Tide" a few years back, and it sucked because it was basically a rail shooter. There was no real point to it except to get through the game without dying and take down as many enemies as possible in the process. I was bored with it in about half an hour. Conversely, take Mass Effect, a game where choices you make throughout the game will always have some sort of affect on what happens. I played through that game twice, and am working on a third.
If one were to make a video grame out of "Pride and Prejudice" for example, it would take some serious ingenuity to figure out a way of designing it such that the game stays true to the book and gives the player something to do besides just running around and talking to everyone (which essentially makes it an interactive movie, and very minimally so at that), has the player participating in the story whereby they have some sort of effect on the outcome, yet can stay true to the book. If it stays too true to the book then everything is predetermined and it doesn't make for much of a game, and if it doesn't then there is little point in tying it to a piece of classic literature.
I can't wait for the game of Pride & Prejudice
Might it be the first dating sim in quite a while to become a hit on this side of the Pacific Ocean?
If every movie were rated PG, with the content of a PG movie, it wouldn't be long before the majority of adults would just stop watching movies.
You mean like Hollywood under the Hays Code?