Orson Scott Card Talks Ender's Game: The Game

[teh_v]

What I'd love to see is a game based more on Card's shadow series. The later books where bean and the other genius of the battle academy attempt to take over the world. I think it could be done as an RTS style game where you would take the role of a battle academy student leading his nation army in battle against other nations and then you could have a large conquer the world map kinda like romance of the three kingdom between battle were you do diplomacy and strategic deployments of your troops. Card has said in interview before that the romance of the three kingdoms was one of his favorite games of all time.

 

[Grampy_bone]

Dead Space did zero G maneuvering alright. Ender's Game would just need to expand on that, since the suits don't have gravity boots and they move along walls by crawling. Just make it an FPS with a toggle between grab and bounce, then it automatically pushes off in whatever direction their aiming.

Doing the Shoot Through Legs trick seems like it would be more difficult however...

 

[Keane Ng]

I should probably read some of these books, shouldn't I?

 

[A.Balthazor]

The Battle School in general is crying out for gameplay ala Bully.

It would be pretty controversial, but it would also be very much in line with the 'train the most ruthless and efficient kids possible' idea of the Battle School.

I'm not sure the Battle Room has enough gameplay to make an entire game out of it, although using a team based-approach online I suppose people might play it quite a bit. Allow enough flexibility in terms of tactics and it could be interesting.

Make the Battle Room part of a Bully-type game and take it online with persistent characters and it might take off.

 

[WingedFortress]

Holy crap! That would be amazing. I remember talking to a friend of mine about pretty much the same idea, and how awesome it would be. I'd love to see this happen, assuming it will actually be good.

 

[ccesarano]

I'd rather have Zone of the Enders 3. Though this does sound a bit interesting.

READ A BOOK!

READ A BOOK!

READ A MOTHERFUCKING BOOK!

I should probably read some of these books, shouldn't I?

Yes and no. Ender's Game is a lot better when you are a younger and more bitter teenager and such, and when you grow up it's kind of like "oh hey, that's not bad". Speaker for the Dead, the first book of the sequel trilogy (a sequel of three parts! How epic!) is also pretty good, but you may as well stop there. Xenocide and Children of the Mind are complete ass. I haven't read Ender's Shadow or Shadow of the Hedgemon, but I have heard they are pretty good as well.


As for the news story: I imagine we should be expecting this about the same time as the movie [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game#Film].

 

[brabz]

I love the entire Ender/Ender's Shadow sagas. If this game is even half of what my expectations for it are, I'll be happy.

It's funny because I actually posted a fairly well thought out way it could be executed on this forum in July.

My Post

Spoiler

Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card

Have the gameplay develop from a series of tactical and zero-g, fully realized 3-D battleroom training exercises, to real battleroom matches, to being commander of Dragon army with squad based commands issued.

Cut to a vicious scene of killing Bonzo(really rub it in the face of the ESRB with child murder), then a final battle 2 vs. 1 "enemy gate is down" moment to finish Battle School.

Cut scene to Val's visit to convince Ender to continue on:

New training in commanding a huge armada of ships in "simulations" against the Bugger threat. Introduction of the MD device...put's all other "ultimate" weapons to shame.

Obviously you'd play as Ender, but maybe take control of Bean to twine in the Shadow series as well. With the right voice acting and graphics, I think it'd be absolutely phenomenal.

Proof
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.63683#549107

 

[Lord Beautiful]

I'd rather have Zone of the Enders 3. Though this does sound a bit interesting.

READ A BOOK!

READ A BOOK!

READ A MOTHERFUCKING BOOK!

I've read numerous of books, Skippy, but as it turns out, Ender's Game wasn't one of them. However, I hear they're good, so I acknowledge this as interesting. Thanks for insulting my intelligence.

 

[HobbesMkii]

Well, I'm glad that Orson Scott Card is smart enough to not want a movie tie-in as a game. A lot of authors would just sell the rights and let it go at that. Which is often a mixed bag. But that's what the movie/game industry is really used to. So I don't know how they'll react to an author with an idea (or two). I'm still wary about the movie version. There have been plenty of books I thought would be great movies that turned out to be chock full of suck when they were. And, of course, there are the adaptations I know will be chock full of suck (like Watchmen and The Spirit). And the game versions are generally worse (though I do recall that story about the Speed Racer game being better than the movie).

Ender's Game (and Ender's Game: The Game) could likewise suffer from that same "suckiness" if placed in the wrong hands (and all us gamers know what there are plenty of wrong hands, both in Hollywood and the Games Industry). But Orson is a smart guy (although he's absolutely out of his element when he opens his trap to talk about politics) so maybe he had conditions when he sold the rights to the games.

 

[Avatar Roku]

I never read Ender's Game, but I did read Ender's Shadow and I quite enjoyed it.

But Jesus, I didn't think so many people liked that Ender book! I have my doubts that it would work, it works just as often as a movie adaptation of a book which isn't very many times. Book to video game doesn't seem like the exception.

Thing is, Shadow doesn't touch as much on what this game would be about, i.e The mind Game and Battleroom. It touches on them a little, but not enough to get a feel for it.

 

[Chickenlittle]

I heard about this a while ago. I also saw a disappointing 3D picture. However, I'm sure that the graphics will have improved enough by now, and hopefully the gameplay won't be ridiculously bad.

I'm curious to see how he adapts his ideas to fit them into the game.

 

[Easykill]

A bit of your optimism has rubbed off on me, but... can this really work? I do not want an abomination of one of my favourite books, and I do not want a decent but different popular adaptation that will forever replace what the general public thinks of when you say Ender's Game.

 

[Brokkr]

The Gate is Down. I'm looking forward to seeing if they will do the zero G sections well or not.

 

[Geoffrey42]

Last I heard, Chair has been hired to make the game. Chair made that underwater-class-based shmup-ish thing that was given away for free to appease the dirty Live masses after the Great Outages of '07.

When I first heard about Card+Chair(who apparently are made up of developers that previously worked in the studio responsible for Advent Rising? This is purely out of memory, I'm not cross-referencing before speaking right now, sorry, it's late)+Battle Room, all I could think was that they'd take a similar approach, and do it in zero-G, instead of underwater.

All that thought did was make me very sad...

 

[teh_v]

Well, I'm glad that Orson Scott Card is smart enough to not want a movie tie-in as a game. A lot of authors would just sell the rights and let it go at that. Which is often a mixed bag. But that's what the movie/game industry is really used to. So I don't know how they'll react to an author with an idea (or two). I'm still wary about the movie version. There have been plenty of books I thought would be great movies that turned out to be chock full of suck when they were. And, of course, there are the adaptations I know will be chock full of suck (like Watchmen and The Spirit). And the game versions are generally worse (though I do recall that story about the Speed Racer game being better than the movie).

Ender's Game (and Ender's Game: The Game) could likewise suffer from that same "suckiness" if placed in the wrong hands (and all us gamers know what there are plenty of wrong hands, both in Hollywood and the Games Industry). But Orson is a smart guy (although he's absolutely out of his element when he opens his trap to talk about politics) so maybe he had conditions when he sold the rights to the games.

That's because Orson Scott Card is a gamer. He's been playing game since at least the NES days. I imagine he wouldn't ok any game that he wouldn't play. He does have experience with making games too. He did write the story for Advent Rising. It was an ok game and I liked the dialog and story. Just wish the controls had been better. Also I think he still retains the right to the anything Ender game related. If he refused to sell the rights to Hollywood I don't think he's going to sell the right to a game developer and walk away. I bet you he still has creative control and could pull the plug if he didn't like the product.

Also, the Watchmen movie sucking, I don't think that's going to happen. *crosses my finger and prays til the 7*