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| 12 APR 2003 at 7:42pm |
| Deleted User | Games are NOT films.
It's true! Look I can prove it. Games you can interact with. Films you can watch.
But they use the same sort of visual language. Without experienced direction, even a good game like Giants: Citizen Kabuto suffers from confusing plot points through misused cutscenes. Adventures are the same way - in fact, they are more in tune to the filmic medium through the fact we spend more time watching what's going on, and the plot is just as important.
But why do developers insist on getting it wrong? The problem is that games are not films. No-one makes that connection, not even within the industry. A game artist is someone who can use a 3D package - he won't have the same training as a production designer. A production designer with 10 years of film experience, or even 2, is going to be better at creating an overall vision of an interactive project through his or her visual knowledge and skill.
Games developers do not recognise this. A cutscene or an intro has to work in order for the player to be involved in what's going on. Too often I've witnessed line crosses, awful wooden animation, bad voice acting and terrible direction... It's easy to think that creating something like this is simple, but it's not. That's my job - the director can't take everything on, so it gets handed to me. In animation, everyone has there place. In animé, they even have people who specialise in animating cars and, odder still, water!
Developers take too much on. As games get more realistic and easier to create, they're going to have to rely on already developed techniques in visual representation which have been around for over a hundred years... When they stop at playing film director and give it to someone who knows what they're doing, perhaps we'll see the beginning of something truly special.
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| 13 APR 2003 at 5:14pm |
dimidimidimiSchattenjger
Posts : 1784
Joined: 10 OCT 2002
Status : Online | I always saw adventures as interactive films...that is why I was attracted to them in the first place. My two first adventures were Indiana Jones & Last Crusade and Zak McKracken. Well I had never seen a film being translated so well into a game before (Indy) ...
PDF adventure magazine - The Inventory&&http://www.justadventure.com/TheInventory/TheInventory.shtm&&&&What would you give to know the truth?&&http://www.brokensaints.com
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| 13 APR 2003 at 5:18pm |
| Deleted User | Thanks, Dimi... for replying! I thought I might've scared ppl off...
I find adventure games really have to rely on cinematic narrative to really grab me. The best ones do this, as you've noted.
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| 13 APR 2003 at 5:47pm |
jujigatameSchattenjger
Posts : 1976
Joined: 14 FEB 2003
Status : Online | Games based on actual films usually suck. I mean, the player already knows everything that's gonna happen!
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| 13 APR 2003 at 6:41pm |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By monkeybone (12 APR 2003 7:41pm)
Without experienced direction, even a good game like Giants: Citizen Kabuto suffers from confusing plot points through misused cutscenes.
That is the second time I see you mention Giants for the "badly directed cutscenes". What the heck are you talking about? The Giants scenario is made to be full of holes and nonsense. The cutscenes in the same way are just there to be funny, not meant to be films either.
I agree for the rest .
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| 13 APR 2003 at 7:20pm |
| Deleted User | Giants is a good example - it's funny! Sure! But it could be better... perhaps my mind is better at noticing these things, I dunno, but Giants had some shoddy direction and it's script was haphazard. The acting was great though.
BTW If you are going to use cutscenes, then you are going to be stuck with filmic language whether you like it or not. Visual cues are the same not matter what the medium.
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| 13 APR 2003 at 7:28pm |
jujigatameSchattenjger
Posts : 1976
Joined: 14 FEB 2003
Status : Online | I thought Giants was supposed to be zany and ridiculous.
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| 13 APR 2003 at 7:51pm |
| Deleted User | It is, but then so are the cartoons that I work on. The fact is, the direction didn't work on a basic level meaning that zany and ridiculous is really what it is. Believe me, I wouldn't hand in a storyboard that worked the way those cutscenes worked - I'd be out of a job.
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| 16 APR 2003 at 2:43am |
jalexSchattenjger
Posts : 2503
Joined: 5 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | I agree. I have a real high end video card but I enjoy a good 2d game with a good story just as much as and fancy 3d game. They have come a log way but to me the 3d charactors still look a little like puppets. One ov my favorite games was and still is Tex Murphy Pandora Directive because of this. It had RMV and a good story with multiple endings that made it very interactive.
Jim
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| 20 APR 2003 at 6:54pm |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By monkeybone (13 APR 2003 7:51pm)
Believe me, I wouldn't hand in a storyboard that worked the way those cutscenes worked - I'd be out of a job.
Maybe an example of one of those bad cutscences would make your point?
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| 1 MAY 2003 at 11:34am |
Steve IncePrivate Detective
Posts : 571
Joined: 7 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By monkeybone (12 APR 2003 7:41pm)
Games are NOT films.
Developers take too much on. As games get more realistic and easier to create, they're going to have to rely on already developed techniques in visual representation which have been around for over a hundred years... When they stop at playing film director and give it to someone who knows what they're doing, perhaps we'll see the beginning of something truly special.
Which is why we at Revolution bring in experts to help with specialist areas.
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| 1 MAY 2003 at 12:14pm |
| Deleted User | Well, Steve, you're lucky. Your the only Developer I know offhand that actually does that - I've tried getting into the industry through various (although not nefarious ways) but it appears for some odd reason that to be an artist I have to know all about texturing and 3D modelling.
I can't do that, but I can learn very quickly if needed, but whether I'd want to or not is a different matter. My skills lie in visual direction, but it would appear that most games companies wouldn't know that this is something they lack in it's entirety.
It's one thing knowing a software package. It's another thing using it properly to achieve something that's worthwile. The lady in charge of staffing at Dreamworks pictures is getting sick of people applying who can use packages, when really she's looking for someone with an inherent understadning of what makes good animation...
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| 1 MAY 2003 at 4:30pm |
Steve IncePrivate Detective
Posts : 571
Joined: 7 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Which is why we always find it so difficult to find quality people. We are actually using an animation house in Australia to fill most of our animation needs.
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| 1 MAY 2003 at 6:02pm |
MichalNGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 7058
Joined: 14 SEP 2003
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Steve Ince (1 MAY 2003 4:30pm)
Which is why we always find it so difficult to find quality people. We are actually using an animation house in Australia to fill most of our animation needs.
Who did the animation on the first Broken Sword game? I'm asking because it was (and still is) one of the visually most appealing games of any genre I've ever seen.
Damn, my Broken Sword CDs are 5,000 miles away just when I feel like replaying the game
I forgot my sig.
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| 2 MAY 2003 at 6:50am |
| Deleted User | Steve, don't take the money out of the country! The UK industry has some of the best animators... and is really suffering because of cheaper Korean animation companies.
I know a lot of extremely talented people who should be directing their own movies, or at least doing the jobs they're meant to but can't.
One was an animator on Roger Rabbit - he's storyboarding alongside me at the moment as there's no work. Another, one of the most talented animators in the advertising industry (if not the most talented), had trouble finding work in four months and is now looking again. A good friend of mine who's just finishing off a project is worried he won't find anything... a director of Rocko's Modern Life. The lead animator of The Iron Giant was even struggling (I mention no names), although I heard he's doing pretty well.
Whilst the film industry and computer games industry are pretty much alright at the moment (despite it being difficult for a lot in the physical SFX industry right now) the animation industry is suffering. There's just no money here right now - the money I'm on is coming directly from Germany!
The only things I know right now that're happening are pretty cool, but there's not enough. But it's pretty cool. I'd go into more detail, but I'm under oath...
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| 12 MAY 2003 at 7:16am |
Steve IncePrivate Detective
Posts : 571
Joined: 7 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | The first two BS games were a combination of in-house animation and out-of-house paper and pencil animation.
We'd like to keep the animation in this country, but the animation houses that we approached either couldn't do it in the budget or they weren't of the quality that we demanded. Many top film/TV animation houses just don't appreciate the requirements for games.
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| 1 JUN 2003 at 7:11pm |
cesarbittarIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 32
Joined: 21 OCT 2002
Status : Offline | Someone mentioned here that some cutscenes in Giant were meant to be funny. I haven't played that game, But I agree that adventures must use cinematics to advance the plot. Doing a cutscene just to be "funny" is really wrong. As in the film industry, every scene has a meaning'(they help advancing the plot, they give insights on the characters, they work around an idea, etc), they are not there just to be funny (at least not in good movies), and that's where the hard part comes. How do you advance the plot in a funny way?
I'm majoring in film and already have some experience in the industry. My fort is scripts. There are many cutscenes in King's Quest IX, for example, but all of them are there with a reason. I haven't revised the script yet, but if I find one that really doesn't do anything to the plot, I'll take it out.
However, I must tell you guys, that having written both scripts now, (being KQ9's my first game script), I must say the approach is really different. The one thing where a script in a movie format, and a script in a game format crashes, is that a game needs playability. In a movie, you would skip most of the process of getting the sacred key of the mystic forest, to help the pace. If you do this in a game, you take half of the fun away.
But cutscenes wise, yes. I read Ken Williams interview and I couldn't agree more. What adventure games need is a plot, character insight/development, these elements that you find in a movie (with the wonderful factor of "more time than a movie" on your side)
I've heard people telling me: "Make sure you make those cutscenes skipables, some people don't like to see them", and though yes, we'll have the option, I've thought, "why?". The answer is simple: because in other games these cutscenes say nothing, they are just there to act as eye-candy. You don't go to the movies expecting them to fast-forard the movie into the action part (and I bet you don't even do that when you can control it at home).
Well, sorry for the long post, but this is a very interesting and important issue that always gets me going
César Bittar
Project Director
Unofficial King's Quest IX
http://www.kq9.org
cesar.bittar@kq9.org
Cesar Bittar
CEO
Phoenix Online
http://www.postudios.com
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| 9 JUL 2003 at 5:15am |
jalexSchattenjger
Posts : 2503
Joined: 5 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | I agree on the cut scenes but in parts where you have to replay a section of a game they can be annoying and that really the only reason you might want to skip them. They are definatly needed to hold the game togeather.
Jim
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