Re: Content

[Bob <mantic@mbo.net>]

> > In my mind it is a stretch to view the
> > 'game' medium as a competitor with other forms of storytelling.
> 
> Competitor?  Yes.  They're entertainment products.  So many dollars spent
> during one's free time and all of that.

	Having worked in several different publishing markets I haven't seen
any significant competition between them. When I write for a magazine I
do seek to get into the most prestigious mag I can, but I do not worry
about competing with novels or movies that month. My work as a novelist
may help me get into that magazine, but a flood of the same sort of
material on the bookstand at the same time isn't likely to affect the
magazine sales. A glut of similar magazines, however...


>  But in the storytelling dept., the competition from games is still weak.
> I believe it is possible to do better, but I don't personally have the
> budget for it yet.  We're almost to a sufficient real-time 3D visual
> quality stage, but production time is still enormous.  I think we need an
> easier/cheaper modeling and animation technology.  Meanwhile I'm attempting
> to apply all principles of storytelling that I can.  There's a lot you can
> do with just 2D and audio in a 4X wargame.

	Like film and comics the IF medium does need artists to be effective.
Although a lot of efforts continue to focus on text, this is not likely
to become the prominent form. Text on a computer screen is the most
commonly sited cause of CVS
<http://www.visionrx.com/library/enc/enc_cvs.asp> and some people find
that reading from the computer screen interferes with comprehension.
Also, overlooking the machine's specialized facility with multimedia is
as much a mistake, in my opinion, as disregarding it's generic data
processing power. But ease of use and expense of modelling and animation
technology is not so great a barrier (3ds Max and Maya are not the only
options).

	A more likely impediment is the renaissance programmer trying to do
away with (or at least do without) specialized artists, or recreating
the base presentation and production technology. There are free and open
source 3d engines available, and skilled amateur artists abound in the
communities surrounding popular games. But rare is the programmer humble
enough to share his vision in this way.


								--Bob