Videogames vs. The Movies
- Thread starter MovieBob
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When you see a movie your paying $15 for about two hours, and if you want to experience it again you need to pay another $15. With games, once you pay your $70 - $100, you can enjoy it for hndreds of hours. Games are (usually) better value for money. Ofcourse, most games are better written than most of Hollywood's movies, so there is better entertainment there too.
iuts Funny that Indy and Star Wars are mentioned as being rip-offs of serials from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, when that is exactly what George Lucas' vision was. he wanted to bring back the film serial o fhis childhood to the then modern film era. (then he drank his own Kool-aid but that is for another discussion)
despite the clunkiness about halfway through, there is a good point about both industries being so heavily reliant on sequels and remakes. Lucas' aforementioned success led to the development of "planned Trilogies" ala the Matrix where they start off strong and flop horribly, and remakes that are being produced so soon after the last start of a franchise (like Spiderman) that you got to wonder who is the one doing the exploiting, the creator, or Hollywood Studios.
Same thing with video games. when the biggest stories of the year are Call of Duties latest entry in an annualized franchise, and the possibility that the first game 343 is gonna produce after being given the Halo reigns is a Halo 1 Redux, something is wrong. at least the last Splatterhouse game came out 18 years ago before a reboot.
despite the clunkiness about halfway through, there is a good point about both industries being so heavily reliant on sequels and remakes. Lucas' aforementioned success led to the development of "planned Trilogies" ala the Matrix where they start off strong and flop horribly, and remakes that are being produced so soon after the last start of a franchise (like Spiderman) that you got to wonder who is the one doing the exploiting, the creator, or Hollywood Studios.
Same thing with video games. when the biggest stories of the year are Call of Duties latest entry in an annualized franchise, and the possibility that the first game 343 is gonna produce after being given the Halo reigns is a Halo 1 Redux, something is wrong. at least the last Splatterhouse game came out 18 years ago before a reboot.
Bob has got a point about the originality argument. Study any classic literature and you see reoccurring stories fairly often. Star Wars plays out like a Greek tragedy and in fact George Lucas has said as much. It's hard to come up with an original idea in our age of information saturation via the interwebs but its not hard to change the settings and characters. This is what both movies and video games excel at. You could redo "The sum of all fears" in an intergalactic space setting and make it pretty awesome.
My point is that its kinda pointless to argue about whom thought of an idea first. Id much rather talk about who did it better. People accuse Shakespeare of plagiarism but I don't think half of the plays he "stole" would be remembered today if he hadn't done them better then everyone else.
My point is that its kinda pointless to argue about whom thought of an idea first. Id much rather talk about who did it better. People accuse Shakespeare of plagiarism but I don't think half of the plays he "stole" would be remembered today if he hadn't done them better then everyone else.
I agree with you, Bob. Mildly, bitterly, agree with you. Even those wraps about my beloved indie scene and I agree with you, despite half of me wanting to jump out of my body and bash you around the head with a giant hammer.
Well done Bob, for making me feel utterly and completely worthless inside.
Well done Bob, for making me feel utterly and completely worthless inside.
The whole article felt disjointed Bob... you go on about how the movie industries is struggling, that they don't really know what to blame and give us some possible options (up to this point, interesting) and than you break off in a tangent about how games aren't original either... ok... so?
So what if the videogames aren't any more original? They do provide a lot more entertainment for the money and because you can spend dozens of hours with the cast of the game, they usually also end up telling much deeper story (See pretty much any rpg) than your average movie. A night at movie with all it entails is easily 20$, possibly more if you hit the restaurant before (And yes it counts, you wouldn't have gone to said restaurant if you had stayed home) - all of that for one measly evening of entertainment... you can turn around, take the same money and buy Mass Effect 2 or FFXIII which should keep you busy for well over 50 hours...
Not to mention that while things aren't perfect, at least the gaming industry is embracing digital distribution - I never really considered myself a pc gamer, until I got Steam and than I started buying a lot more of 'em... to the point where it feels kinda backward to have to go to the store and pick up a copy of an xbox or ps3 game...
Meanwhile, the movie industry is still firmly stuck in the past... aside from some hardcore fans and the movie industry itself - nobody gives a damn about the red carpet premier anymore. Most people would rather watch a movie in their home theater rather than go to an overcrowded and overpriced multiplex to sit in a room with sticky floors and a 7 years old kicking the back of your seat.
In my humble opinion, what's slowly 'killing' the movie industries isn't only one thing, but a whole slew of them... and it all comes down to their refusal to change. Unlike like what Hollywood seems to think, going to the movie isn't a glamourous event - it's something you do when you're bored and you got nothing to do that one night.
So what if the videogames aren't any more original? They do provide a lot more entertainment for the money and because you can spend dozens of hours with the cast of the game, they usually also end up telling much deeper story (See pretty much any rpg) than your average movie. A night at movie with all it entails is easily 20$, possibly more if you hit the restaurant before (And yes it counts, you wouldn't have gone to said restaurant if you had stayed home) - all of that for one measly evening of entertainment... you can turn around, take the same money and buy Mass Effect 2 or FFXIII which should keep you busy for well over 50 hours...
Not to mention that while things aren't perfect, at least the gaming industry is embracing digital distribution - I never really considered myself a pc gamer, until I got Steam and than I started buying a lot more of 'em... to the point where it feels kinda backward to have to go to the store and pick up a copy of an xbox or ps3 game...
Meanwhile, the movie industry is still firmly stuck in the past... aside from some hardcore fans and the movie industry itself - nobody gives a damn about the red carpet premier anymore. Most people would rather watch a movie in their home theater rather than go to an overcrowded and overpriced multiplex to sit in a room with sticky floors and a 7 years old kicking the back of your seat.
In my humble opinion, what's slowly 'killing' the movie industries isn't only one thing, but a whole slew of them... and it all comes down to their refusal to change. Unlike like what Hollywood seems to think, going to the movie isn't a glamourous event - it's something you do when you're bored and you got nothing to do that one night.
Is anyone else getting a feeling these written articles are getting overly negative? I mean, yeah games and movies are getting more formulaic in their approach to storytelling, but as we have seen from games like Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect 2 (I thought 1 was quite a unique story, the second seemed more by the numbers) if you wrap a great game around a generic story you still come out with a compelling narrative.
The games industry doesn't need to be innovative in story writing, let the film industry worry about that, and let the game industry concentrate on telling those stories in a more innovative way.
The games industry doesn't need to be innovative in story writing, let the film industry worry about that, and let the game industry concentrate on telling those stories in a more innovative way.
While it's true that the video game industry suffers more than it's share of "me-tooism" and falls into many of the same traps as the movie industry with regard to wanting to plow big budgets into so-called "sure things" (i.e. games that look and play just like what was popular six months ago), it's worth noting that video games are clearly still an evolving and expanding medium. Every time things look truly dismal and we think all we're going to see forever after is "Doom" clones or "Devil May Cry" clones for the rest of eternity, suddenly someone finds an entirely new genre or sub-genre. And then we're all playing music games or action-RPGs for the next three years, but still. Given the large amounts of capital at risk in making a AAA-game these days, I think we still have to give their creators a little credit for continuing to move forward.
Conversely, movies. Now, I still like movies a lot, but I think most of us- critics included- just hope that any given movie will be a decent exercise of its particular genre going in, not hoping for or expecting any kind of real shake-up. We're still occasionally impressed (American Beauty, Pulp Fiction and Waking Life all come to mind), but those experiences are few and far between.
And frankly, the movie industry is cutting its own throat in a lot of ways. Even putting aside the production line of sequels, TV remakes, brain-dead CGIriffic explode-a-thons, inept comedies, formula "date movie" romcoms, and last-minute moves to 3D. Going to the movies was once, long ago, a magical experience, even one that was supposed to be seen as similar to a night at a ballet or opera or live theater. Now we're gouged at the door, pay $5.00 for $0.25 worth of soda, get blasted with ads too loud to talk to our friends for having the grace to show up ten minutes early, and then are subjected to up to several minutes more ads, not counting trailers, before the movie we paid such an exorbitant sum to watch actually comes on. I'm waiting for the day when they to try to interrupt movies mid-way through with more ads- that's probably the day I'm going to go after a projectionist with a baseball bat. If we're lucky the theater management actually gives a shit and we won't have to deal with inadequately lit projection, one stuttering speaker on the sound system, and a theater the size of a shoebox.
Many aspects of both the movie and video game industry are guilty, in their desperate pursuit of receipts, of treating their customers less like people and more like cattle: they don't worry about what the stupid beasts want as they move down the chute towards becoming their profits, they just want to make sure they get there as efficiently and cost-effectively as they can. But I feel less victimized when I can pop the disk out of my drive at any time and say "well, I'm never buying from that company again" than I do when I'm obligated to sit through a two-hour experience that I despise to feel like I'm getting "my money's worth". It may, in truth, be a fairly modest distinction, but when so many aspects of the experience are rigged right out of the gate to suck, it makes the actual product not being worth the bother all the more worse. In that light, is it any wonder that so many people choose to watch DVDs on their plasma TVs at home, or even (heaven forbid) torrent them, watch five minutes, and then throw them away?
Conversely, movies. Now, I still like movies a lot, but I think most of us- critics included- just hope that any given movie will be a decent exercise of its particular genre going in, not hoping for or expecting any kind of real shake-up. We're still occasionally impressed (American Beauty, Pulp Fiction and Waking Life all come to mind), but those experiences are few and far between.
And frankly, the movie industry is cutting its own throat in a lot of ways. Even putting aside the production line of sequels, TV remakes, brain-dead CGIriffic explode-a-thons, inept comedies, formula "date movie" romcoms, and last-minute moves to 3D. Going to the movies was once, long ago, a magical experience, even one that was supposed to be seen as similar to a night at a ballet or opera or live theater. Now we're gouged at the door, pay $5.00 for $0.25 worth of soda, get blasted with ads too loud to talk to our friends for having the grace to show up ten minutes early, and then are subjected to up to several minutes more ads, not counting trailers, before the movie we paid such an exorbitant sum to watch actually comes on. I'm waiting for the day when they to try to interrupt movies mid-way through with more ads- that's probably the day I'm going to go after a projectionist with a baseball bat. If we're lucky the theater management actually gives a shit and we won't have to deal with inadequately lit projection, one stuttering speaker on the sound system, and a theater the size of a shoebox.
Many aspects of both the movie and video game industry are guilty, in their desperate pursuit of receipts, of treating their customers less like people and more like cattle: they don't worry about what the stupid beasts want as they move down the chute towards becoming their profits, they just want to make sure they get there as efficiently and cost-effectively as they can. But I feel less victimized when I can pop the disk out of my drive at any time and say "well, I'm never buying from that company again" than I do when I'm obligated to sit through a two-hour experience that I despise to feel like I'm getting "my money's worth". It may, in truth, be a fairly modest distinction, but when so many aspects of the experience are rigged right out of the gate to suck, it makes the actual product not being worth the bother all the more worse. In that light, is it any wonder that so many people choose to watch DVDs on their plasma TVs at home, or even (heaven forbid) torrent them, watch five minutes, and then throw them away?
I can't help but feel extremely...trolled after reading that. It's like you set off to just anger fanboys, and I came away slightly annoyed, because I normally enjoy your weekly articles.
There was a lot of "he said, she said" in that article with no links to back it up. Just, "Oh you know that GAMES INDUSTRY, so crazy and always sayin' stuff." Really? Who said that stuff? Both industries make awful things, then again what industry doesn't? The more I think about it, the more it seems like you just kinda started writing things and didn't really have a decent topic to write about.
There was a lot of "he said, she said" in that article with no links to back it up. Just, "Oh you know that GAMES INDUSTRY, so crazy and always sayin' stuff." Really? Who said that stuff? Both industries make awful things, then again what industry doesn't? The more I think about it, the more it seems like you just kinda started writing things and didn't really have a decent topic to write about.
OK so video games are ripping off movies... thats just because movies got there first because of the technology. We can't be blamed if our technology took longer to develop.
I think we should take this a stage further and see how movies rip off books because the books were there first...
Its like comparing humans to sharks as killing machines. Sharks have been around longer so naturally some of the work that humans do will look similar too what sharks do... i.e. the implementation of sharp stuff and alot of force.
I guess when you think about it, the crux of my point is... "The Simpsons did it!"
I think we should take this a stage further and see how movies rip off books because the books were there first...
Its like comparing humans to sharks as killing machines. Sharks have been around longer so naturally some of the work that humans do will look similar too what sharks do... i.e. the implementation of sharp stuff and alot of force.
I guess when you think about it, the crux of my point is... "The Simpsons did it!"
What were the words you used Bob? "Mall Crawling, little akiyabara wannabe piss ants who, when they're not setting up base camp in the fucking manga aisle at Barnes and Noble just love nothing more than to explain to you how there's nothing anyone can do in the art or entertainment world that wasn't already done a million times better in some nine hundred episode anime that even japan didn't give a shit about. It's the arrogance that gets me you know?" Whats that Bob? Are you insinuating that all western games are garbage compared to their eastern counterparts?
At least that video recognizes the irony but being self aware doesn't give you a free reign to act like a dick.
At least that video recognizes the irony but being self aware doesn't give you a free reign to act like a dick.