I saw 2001 on a big screen in Sydney in either 2001 or 2002. It was one of the best cinematic experiences of my life. (I'd already seen it on video).
There were no ads before hand, no "lets all go to the lobby to get snacks crap". You came in and sat down. The lighting was subdued. There was really faint ambient music. Eventually the lights went out. The movie started. The whole thing was dazzling on what was one of the larger screens I've seen in a cinema. I took a girl along who'd never seen it before - she was blown away, and she was a film student at the time.
2001 is one of my favourite films of all time, and one of the best films ever made, IMO. The word "genius" gets used a lot, but Kubrick and Clarke both live up to that title...
Sounds like Goldeneye.... the archives level maybe. Trip an alarm and endless NPCs spawn in coming for you.... you could kill an entire battalion of soldiers and they'd keep coming. That was 1996? It was silly then and I'm not sure its any different now.
In any case, I've kind of gone off excessively scripted FPS games after playing a lot of BF2 online... people are just more random than the computer.
Re:Storytelling Ability Is the Primary Requirement
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If I had points I'd give you some for your generally great post.
However, I thought the 5 act structure was imposed on Shakespeare's plays by later publishers. The excellent book by Mark Rose, Shakespearean Design, reveals a more sophisticated structure in the plays that is obscured by the (somewhat arbirtrary) 5 act demarcation. I'd go into an example, but I don't have the book next to me...
I think its the finest book I've ever read about Shakespeare and also on dramaturgy and dramatic structures... about the best thing that I came across when writing my thesis on Macbeth. I recommend it highly and the few people who I know have read it (as in my copy of it) have praised it highly as well - its available second hand on Amazon...
The Lord of the Rings was always intended as a single complete story, it was published in 3 parts for convenience, not because Tolkien wrote up to the Sundering of the Fellowship and then the publisher said "lets put that out and see how it plays with the readers and then you can do sequels".
The notion that 3 parts=trilogy is flawed.
And technically its 6 books anyway.....plus appendices.
I'm not sure if your post is serious or not so I'm taking it as if it was.
First time commenter.... I had to create an account just so I could comment because some of the factual inaccuracies bug me in the article.
No, its not the waffling about approaching "realism" whatever that means. (Paying bills is what comes to mind - I don't think that will make a fun game).
It's the stuff about multiplayer.
The history is wrong for the PC.
The original single-player Duke Nukem side scrollers pre-date Doom and Doom 2, but in the context of the authors discussion on multiplayer they presumably are referring to Duke Nukem 3D, which was released, according to the Wikipedia, on the 29th of January 1996.
Doom was December 1993, and Doom 2 (which was my first real taste of multiplayer gaming) on September 30, 1994. (again, go look at the Wikipedia).
I lost entire nights to Doom 2 because we had an older friend who worked at a university and he had hidden the game on the network and you could play from the computer labs - but only at night so no one would know. Good times, good times.
There is no discussion in the article, though, of the different successes of these franchises. Doom has been turned into a movie (!!??!) and is up to an official 3rd sequel (and several re-packagings of the first two), while Duke Nukem is....well..... a successful money spinning franchise? Not quite.
The original Doom engine was used for other games too (Hexen etc), which is an interesting spin-off of franchising - ie licensing what was used to build the original game to create a new franchise. No mention of this in the article.
Unreal/Unreal Tournament is another example of this - licensing the technology from a successful franchise.
Theres an interesting article to be written about this (maybe I'll have a shot myself once I get off my high horse) but its not covered in this one.
And what about the Warcraft franchise, which has very successfully crossed genres from Real-Time-Strategy to a MMORPG game....
And the idea that on the console you had to wait until X-Box Live in 2002 for multiplayer to come to life is a bit misleading. Online console gaming, yes. Multi-player fun, no.
Sega Mega Drive (Australian name for all you overseas folks) had Micro Machines, which was insanely fun for four people.
N64 had two awesomely fun 4 player games. Mario Kart (also on other Nintendo consoles - yes, a successful franchise) and Goldeneye. That's in 1997.
Now, admittedly you all have to be in the same room, but as I tended to play with my two flatmates that was pretty easy. And I knew who I was playing against, and could trash talk them constantly. And then again later at the bar. And then on the way home. And then through the re-match they demanded becuase I wouldn't shut up.
Now that I'm older I play online with a PC. Times change, you get responsibilities, get over it.
The authors don't know whether they're writing an article about franchises, or whether they want to discuss their own limited experience of multi-player video games, and how important multi-player mode is to gaming these days. Yes, and it has been for awhile. They go on a lot about console obsolesence too, which is a different discussion to franchises. Its not as if I could play Doom 3 on my old 486DX with its whopping 4mb of RAM either, regardless of whatever superior gameplay Doom 3 offers. RIP 486.
You could also mention Civilization, numerous RPG's (Ultima, Might and Magic, D&D, Final Fantasy), Mario and Sonic and other spin-offs, etc etc - all as successful franchises.
More seriously, why do franchises fail like some movie franchises (I'm looking at you Alien 3), can a franchise be resurrected, can franchises survive their original creators/moving to a different studio/company etc etc.
I've spouted off enough already, but as the guys in the article have revealed their limitations and bias, so I'm not worried about revealing mine./climbs off his high horse.
First comment!!
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I saw 2001 on a big screen in Sydney in either 2001 or 2002. It was one of the best cinematic experiences of my life. (I'd already seen it on video).
There were no ads before hand, no "lets all go to the lobby to get snacks crap". You came in and sat down. The lighting was subdued. There was really faint ambient music. Eventually the lights went out. The movie started. The whole thing was dazzling on what was one of the larger screens I've seen in a cinema. I took a girl along who'd never seen it before - she was blown away, and she was a film student at the time.
2001 is one of my favourite films of all time, and one of the best films ever made, IMO. The word "genius" gets used a lot, but Kubrick and Clarke both live up to that title...
Sounds like Goldeneye.... the archives level maybe. Trip an alarm and endless NPCs spawn in coming for you.... you could kill an entire battalion of soldiers and they'd keep coming. That was 1996? It was silly then and I'm not sure its any different now.
In any case, I've kind of gone off excessively scripted FPS games after playing a lot of BF2 online... people are just more random than the computer.
If I had points I'd give you some for your generally great post. However, I thought the 5 act structure was imposed on Shakespeare's plays by later publishers. The excellent book by Mark Rose, Shakespearean Design, reveals a more sophisticated structure in the plays that is obscured by the (somewhat arbirtrary) 5 act demarcation. I'd go into an example, but I don't have the book next to me... I think its the finest book I've ever read about Shakespeare and also on dramaturgy and dramatic structures... about the best thing that I came across when writing my thesis on Macbeth. I recommend it highly and the few people who I know have read it (as in my copy of it) have praised it highly as well - its available second hand on Amazon...
Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
p /0671741926/sr=8-1/qid=1169177193/ref=pd_bbs_1/103 -6417068-1378226?ie=UTF8&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/Mote-Gods-Eye-Larry-Niven/d
One of the more thought provoking sci-fi books I've read.
The Lord of the Rings was always intended as a single complete story, it was published in 3 parts for convenience, not because Tolkien wrote up to the Sundering of the Fellowship and then the publisher said "lets put that out and see how it plays with the readers and then you can do sequels".
The notion that 3 parts=trilogy is flawed.
And technically its 6 books anyway.....plus appendices.
I'm not sure if your post is serious or not so I'm taking it as if it was.
ahhhh... mental note, use the preview button and format your post so its readable..... *blushes*
First time commenter.... I had to create an account just so I could comment because some of the factual inaccuracies bug me in the article. No, its not the waffling about approaching "realism" whatever that means. (Paying bills is what comes to mind - I don't think that will make a fun game). It's the stuff about multiplayer. The history is wrong for the PC. The original single-player Duke Nukem side scrollers pre-date Doom and Doom 2, but in the context of the authors discussion on multiplayer they presumably are referring to Duke Nukem 3D, which was released, according to the Wikipedia, on the 29th of January 1996. Doom was December 1993, and Doom 2 (which was my first real taste of multiplayer gaming) on September 30, 1994. (again, go look at the Wikipedia). I lost entire nights to Doom 2 because we had an older friend who worked at a university and he had hidden the game on the network and you could play from the computer labs - but only at night so no one would know. Good times, good times. There is no discussion in the article, though, of the different successes of these franchises. Doom has been turned into a movie (!!??!) and is up to an official 3rd sequel (and several re-packagings of the first two), while Duke Nukem is ....well..... a successful money spinning franchise? Not quite.
The original Doom engine was used for other games too (Hexen etc), which is an interesting spin-off of franchising - ie licensing what was used to build the original game to create a new franchise. No mention of this in the article.
Unreal/Unreal Tournament is another example of this - licensing the technology from a successful franchise.
Theres an interesting article to be written about this (maybe I'll have a shot myself once I get off my high horse) but its not covered in this one.
And what about the Warcraft franchise, which has very successfully crossed genres from Real-Time-Strategy to a MMORPG game....
And the idea that on the console you had to wait until X-Box Live in 2002 for multiplayer to come to life is a bit misleading. Online console gaming, yes. Multi-player fun, no.
Sega Mega Drive (Australian name for all you overseas folks) had Micro Machines, which was insanely fun for four people.
N64 had two awesomely fun 4 player games. Mario Kart (also on other Nintendo consoles - yes, a successful franchise) and Goldeneye. That's in 1997.
Now, admittedly you all have to be in the same room, but as I tended to play with my two flatmates that was pretty easy. And I knew who I was playing against, and could trash talk them constantly. And then again later at the bar. And then on the way home. And then through the re-match they demanded becuase I wouldn't shut up.
Now that I'm older I play online with a PC. Times change, you get responsibilities, get over it.
The authors don't know whether they're writing an article about franchises, or whether they want to discuss their own limited experience of multi-player video games, and how important multi-player mode is to gaming these days. Yes, and it has been for awhile. They go on a lot about console obsolesence too, which is a different discussion to franchises. Its not as if I could play Doom 3 on my old 486DX with its whopping 4mb of RAM either, regardless of whatever superior gameplay Doom 3 offers. RIP 486.
You could also mention Civilization, numerous RPG's (Ultima, Might and Magic, D&D, Final Fantasy), Mario and Sonic and other spin-offs, etc etc - all as successful franchises.
More seriously, why do franchises fail like some movie franchises (I'm looking at you Alien 3), can a franchise be resurrected, can franchises survive their original creators/moving to a different studio/company etc etc.
I've spouted off enough already, but as the guys in the article have revealed their limitations and bias, so I'm not worried about revealing mine. /climbs off his high horse.
First comment!!