Jim Sterling / James "Stephanie" Sterling / James Stanton/Sexton & in memoriam TotalBiscuit (John Bain) - One Gaming Lolcow Thread

Another 1k lost on previous Sunday
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AngryTreeRat said:
to just stop the player from being a spree killer so that they can have the moral high ground at certain story points without anyone on the internet being able to point out the dissonance between the writing and their actions.
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I want the video essay-ists who drug up “ludonarrative dissonance” to be stoned to death.
 
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UnbirthOfANation said:
I think the big takeaway from me with all these show adaptations of games are they weren't made for fans.
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You are correct.

I know we are not meant to discuss personal anecdotes here but I think its relevant. When I studied film at uni we had modules on various aspects of the film industry and one of our lecturers had a background in adaptations, specifically on videogame to film adaptations. Quite a few of us in class asked here why so many were bad or didnt really stick to the game story. She said in short that when a media gets a film adaptation (not just a game but a comic book, novel, or even a tv series) the main focus is to make it appeal to the "normies" aka general audience. When asked why as many of us had the same thought, why adapt an IP if you are going to erase what made it unique? She said for brand/franchise exposure and to make the most money.

She explained, from the companies point of view (the example she used specifically here was Capcom as thats who she worked with) they see these films (she was talking about the Resident Evil movies) as just one big advertisement, quality not being of concern and explaining that in fact the worse they tend to be the better, because then the creators dont feel the need to acknowledge it in the games canon and its considered a separate entity altogether (although Capcom really liked that lazer room from the first movie they decided to stick it in RE4 eh?). This was some time ago, before Netflix was about and after seeing the RE series which, fuck me was awful and really seems to hammer this point home.

Again we asked what about the fans then? She explained to most of these companies who hand over IP's to be made into movies, the companies/producers making them dont see the fanbase as a big enough demographic to make the money back on which is why the producers change things to make it appeal to the "normies." Fans are not a consideration in most of these productions which are made by outside studios. I believe its kind of akin to what Netflix does-they cancel shows and then make new ones not because they care about existing viewers but because they want to hook in new ones (and eventually disappoint them too once they've gotten money out of them).


Oliver Onions said:
That's true, but I think there also comes a point where if you're going to tell a story completely removed from the games, just come up with a new IP entirely.
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This was also addressed in the module we did. We also asked this, why adapt something and then just ignore everything that made it unique and great? Why not just do a new IP?
Again, money. She explained that in the media business especially, launching a new IP not only takes time and money but new media has to fight already established media for attention which is the big reason why they decide to go this route. This is the safer, but lazier way of doing it-taking an existing IP and changing it to the point you can do your own spinoff that may in time become its own creation.

People easily forget that Mario started in in the Donkey Kong game and got his own spinoff that became a hit and then became its own franchise. Another example is the movie the Cloverfield paradox, which had a different name because it wasn't written to be part of the Coverfield story but they had problems selling the movie so added a scene and changed a name a voila! They sold it.

Pretty sure most agree with you, I would rather these things be new IP's than be tacked onto great already established media that has a loyal fanbase, sadly the people at the top don't see it that way (and I say that with hesitation because I know not all companies view their products like this)

Anyway sorry for the tl:dr post but thought this was the least I can add. I wish I remember more of the lecture it was interesting.
 
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While most things do boil down to money, it still doesn't explain the particular absurdities associated with video game adaptations.

Let's take Resident Evil again. In Apocalypse, they inexplicably make Nicholai into a good guy. What purpose does this serve other than pissing fans off? There's no shortage of other UBCS operatives they could have used. It doesn't appeal to normies because they don't know who he is. There is a mythical middle ground between making something appeal to the masses and making shit that seems to constantly evade them.
 
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HMESTK said:
I want the video essay-ists who drug up “ludonarrative dissonance” to be stoned to death.
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From a game development standpoint ludonarrative dissonance is an interesting problem to solve. As it demands that we harmonize the writing tone of the written narrative with that of the tone of gameplay and mechanics. Attempts to combat it should actually open up freedom and create a more dynamic story or even encourage gameplay systems that better resemble the tone of the narrative rather than developing mechanics in isolation of the story. If it is on the minds of developers and writers it would encourage developers to consider how the different pieces go together to create a certain tone in the game compared to the story they are narrating to the players during cutscenes and heavily scripted sequences.

It is a discussion worth having, especially in development, writing, and design circles, but it really isn't one worth having in review and consumer circles. It is a discussion that is closer in discussing correct usage of foreshadowing when writing than anything. Yet as is apt to happen the hack developers won't address the issue by putting in the work, they will just try to make a situation where people won't mention it and hide from it.
Mr Pancakes said:
SNIP
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This mentality also exists in the video game sphere when creating game adaptations. What's interesting is the in how we are supposed to address it however. Since we have more or less moved on beyond the full-on shovelware era of making a game that roughly follows the story beats of a movie with random sequences just thrown in there for the sake of gameplay, we instead have very lengthy discussions in game development of adaptations about how important it is to create a product that can exist in the world that the movie sold someone on, but where a story that is more suitable to the considerations of a video game story can be sold.

These days the ideal in how to adapt a book, movie, or TV series into a video game is actually not to adapt the events of the media we are adapting, but rather to create a new set of events that can happen within the world of that media while a huge emphasis is placed on faithfulness to the source to capture the installed userbase. To use the insanely expensive catalog of Lord of the Rings for example, there are a trilogy of games for that movie franchise that what you could call the direct video game adaptation of the movies. There is also the Third Age video game which also recounts the events of the movies. I am being very deliberate in pointing out the fact that these are adaptations of the movie and not the books, as that is very much what is happening here as there are already differences in which media is being adapted. However, those more direct adaptions are now considered something to be avoided when making a video game. Instead, the current ideal is to make something more similar to War in the North, which is a game that takes place in another part of this setting telling a story of something that is happening within the world, and which you can see how it connects to the larger narrative, but isn't a direct adaptation of anything that happened in the movies. Other Lord of the Rings media that are considered closer to the current ideal would also include things like the Shadow of series, which has some lore issues if you are getting really deep into Tolkien, but is mostly safe if you restrict yourself to the Lord of the Rings Cinematic Universe as it now would probably be called.

A lot of this has happened due to a maturation of video games as of media, and a recognization that video games being interactive presents unique narrative opportunities as much as it presents unique narrative challenges. The bar has also consistently been raised over the years in ways where to meet the visual expectations of larger audiences you can no longer put out anything cheap. This further encourages the development of media that can stand on their own within the medium independently of the source and as more than simple merchandise to another piece of media. The amounts of money being juggled in the games industry have really caused a shift in the financial balance with Hollywood and Hollywood really is only now noticing and trying to catch up.
 
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AngryTreeRat said:
but rather to create a new set of events that can happen within the world of that media while a huge emphasis is placed on faithfulness to the source to capture the installed userbase.
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In better world with better writers, fanbase would have love this. Unfortunately, writing teams are infested with retards, who replacing race and sex of already established characters and insert faggotry as well:
Witcher, due to Cavill playing Geralt from both books and games, replacing Triss and Yennifer to poojeetas and Fringillia to nigress,
recent one with resident evil with Wesker.
New failout kerfuffle with them nuking Shady Sands and shitting over everything before F3. These are ones I personally care about. There's plenty more of that
I would love to see something good, that comes out of game adaptations, but only stuff that's bearable is fans' stuff
 
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There Is Light At The End said:
In better world with better writers, fanbase would have love this. Unfortunately, writing teams are infested with retards, who replacing race and sex of already established characters and insert faggotry as well:
Witcher, due to Cavill playing Geralt from both books and games, replacing Triss and Yennifer to poojeetas and Fringillia to nigress,
recent one with resident evil with Wesker.
New failout kerfuffle with them nuking Shady Sands and shitting over everything before F3. These are ones I personally care about. There's plenty more of that
I would love to see something good, that comes out of game adaptations, but only stuff that's bearable is fans' stuff
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Don't forget The Watch, with gender-bent Vetinari, race- and age-bent Sybil, and even height-bent dwarves. Summarized by the chief soyboy fantasy writer, Neil Gaiman (also a personal friend of Pratchett) with an analogy: "It’s not Batman if he’s now a news reporter in a yellow trenchcoat with a pet bat."
 
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Diesel Boogaloo said:
Don't forget The Watch, with gender-bent Vetinari, race- and age-bent Sybil, and even height-bent dwarves. Summarized by the chief soyboy fantasy writer, Neil Gaiman (also a personal friend of Pratchett) with an analogy: "It’s not Batman if he’s now a news reporter in a yellow trenchcoat with a pet bat."
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Wait, he said that? When?
 
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