RE: [Fwd: Gamasutra article]

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@3DProgrammer.com>]

> Brandon, while I too have many misgivings about that essay, I
> think that you
> are too pessimistic about the tastes of the general public. In particular,
> we have an ideal test case from this summer's release of Shrek and Final
> Fantasy. Here we have two movies with many similarities and one huge
> difference. The similarities lie in the use of computer graphics
> to tell an
> animated tale. The difference lies in the priorities: Shrek put
> its emphasis
> on telling a good tale, and Final Fantasy put its efforts into
> state-of-the-art graphics. The box office results were decisive: a good
> story beats topnotch graphics hands down.

How do you figure that Shrek *doesn't* feature topnotch graphics?  It simply
has different graphics than Final Fantasy.  Shrek went for "playful" and
Final Fantasy went for "Anime Space Marines."  I don't think the
differential of success has anything to do with the graphics.  It has to do
with who the stories were targetted at.

Looking at http://www.shrek.com/ and judging only by the visual artwork,
isn't it clear that "Shrek" screams "Disneyesque family entertainment" in
the Toy Story mode, possibly but not necessarily with an adult edge?  I
actually like the website art, it says the movie might have something of
interest to me.  But the movie poster left me flat and I scrupulously
avoided seeing it.  I thought it was probably another schlocky animated
come-on.  That said, I've liked both Toy Stories when I saw them later, I
guess I'm just not a first-run Toy Story kind of consumer.  But tons of
people are, it's a market with quite a beaten path.

In contrast, Final Fantasy is for computer geeks.  I saw it, mainly because
a gaming friend of mine said "Hey let's go see Final Fantasy!", but I didn't
say "No let's not" either.  I thought it was significantly better than I was
expecting it to be.  The plot actually was good, to a sci-fi geek that is.
And that's the rub.  "Final Fantasy" is written for the hardcore geek gamer
market, and I'm actually quite shocked that for having done that, it didn't
suck.  Their story universe is actually intelligent if you accept its
premises.  I remember the pacing to be decent.

> My problem with the essay is that its recommendations were followed
> scrupulously by Final Fantasy -- and look at the trashy results.

Following basic dramatic advice doesn't win you cultural relevance.  If you
appeal to the sensibilities of hardcore gamers only, then that's who's going
to buy your product.  I think that's the bottom line of why Shrek made money
and Final Fantasy didn't, if the sales are as you claim.

So, I'm saying, if you know you're writing for the hardcore gamer market,
why waste your time with a whole slew of dramatic production values that
will add great expense to your title, will become a liability if they aren't
handled with exquisite talent, and won't boost your sales one bit?  The
article's handwaving at an economic motive is silly.  There *is* no economic
motive, unless you're just trying to talk up your manager into doing
something interesting for a change.  But the gaming industry already has
suffered its disasters of adventure title budgets spiralling out of control,
and nobody wants to make those things much anymore.  Too much work for too
few geeks.  One might have a *creative* motive for producing such work, to
create a magnum opus.  But to say that the games industry needs to increase
all these dramatic production values because, well, we've increased all the
*other* production values, so we just gotta keep on making our titles more
and more production heavy until something sticks??!? ...that's fiscal
madness.

Deer Hunter achieved popular relevance.  Deer Hunter looked like crap, and
there wasn't any story to it.  Deer Hunter took 12 weeks to make.  I forget
the budget, it was tiny by current game industry standards.  And, it should
be noted, Deer Hunter did not set out to do what it actually did.  They
didn't know they were going to have a One Hit Wonder.

I think the article's tack, that "drama needs to be so subtle and complex,
so that we can make money" is fundamentally misguided.  If you wanna make
money, figure out the stories that people wanna hear.


Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.