Zen Of Design

The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Category: TV and Movies (Page 3 of 5)

Snakes In A Plane Update

March 26, 2006 /

Also, CNN came out with an update about Snakes In A Plane while we were gone. Behold the power of the internet:

The Samuel L. Jackson thriller “Snakes on a Plane,” which wrapped last September in Vancouver, went back before the cameras this month for five days of additional shooting in Los Angeles.

In this case, it wasn’t the usual reshoot, hastily assembled to fix a nagging story problem. Instead, distributor New Line Cinema decided to create new scenes that would take the movie from PG-13 into R-rated territory [to respond to the movie’s Internet fanaticism].
…
The audio bit [from a fan-made trailer] uses a Jackson sound-alike shouting, “I want these mother——- snakes off the mother——- plane!” Soon, the growing legion of fans added their voices as they demanded that that phrase also appear in the movie… [In the reshoot] they shot a scene where Jackson does utter the line that fans have demanded.

You genuinely have no idea how much better this makes me feel about the world.

Double Standard in Questionable Content

March 26, 2006 /

While I was gone, a Desperate Housewives game was announced! Here’s the amusing part:

Not only can you tap into the delicious secrets held by your naughty neighbors — including Bree, Lynette, Gabrielle, Edie and Susan — but shortly after settling into this cushy suburban neighborhood you’ll also discover you were in a car accident 20 years ago and have been living with amnesia ever since. The goal of the game is to interact with the characters to unlock a few dark secrets of your own.“As fans of the show would expect, the game is loaded with gossip, betrayal, murder and sex — you know, all the things women like,” says Mary Schuyler, the producer of the title at Buena Vista Games… (The game will be rated for ages 13 and up.)

Emphasis mine. Remember, kids, sex and murder is only bad for kids if gang-bangers are doing it! If it involves suburbanites, even Disney can get involved!

Elephant Hunting

February 23, 2006 /

I saw ‘Elephant’ last night. It was, in a word, pretty horrible. I normally like Gus Van Zant, despite the fact that his movies tend to have a certain artsy arrogance to them that normally I can’t stand. I really don’t know what movie these people watched.

One of the ballsy decisions that Gus makes is to use real high school students instead of professional actors. In a result that can only be described as utterly shocking, it turns out that average high school students can’t act. Continue reading

Tracking Jack Muthafuckin’ Bauer

January 24, 2006 /

Somebody has finally found a cool and interesting use of Google Maps besides “Look, There’s My House!” Behold Jacktracker, a googlemaps addendum which shows Jack’s movement through LA during this season of 24.

Note: not only is Jack Bauer so badass he can kill 12 people before lunch armed with a set of tweezers, he is apparently capable of travelling the congested highways around LA at roughly 180 Miles Per Hour.

“Reimagining” a Brand in Games

November 28, 2005 /

Here’s the other thing I thought as I read the Superman Movie Saga. In it, they talk in length about the ‘reimagining’ of the brand. Considered topics include: making his costume not blue and red. Not letting him fly. Making his powers mostly from gadgets. Making Krypton not explode. Making Lex Luthor a Kryptonian. Things that, even though I’m only a casual fan of the Superman license, rub me wrong to the core. The movie producers, on the other hand, seemed insistent that such a ‘reimagining’ was necessary to reinvigorate the Superman license.

The thing that struck me- has any game ever so radically tried to reinvent a character or franchise from another media genre? I mean, sometimes we have to limit what you can do for feasibility, but if we were making a game based on Batman Begins, we wouldn’t start by saying, “He’s too dark. We should try to lighten this up.”

Would we? Am I missing obvious counterexamples?
Original comments thread is here.

CSI: Miami Takes Anti-Gaming Plotlines To New Lows

November 22, 2005 /

At some point, my dearly beloved fiancee got addicted to procedural crime shows like CSI, and as a result, I watch a lot of them too. The only one that’s really actually good is CSI:Original Vegas Flava – during the rest of them, I tend to play Magic: Online or otherwise surf around for blogworthy material.

In the last couple of years, a veritable subgenre of the crime procedural has arisen, where Killer Gamers are the culprits! Virtually all of the shows have done one, and virtually all of them show no awareness for gamers, gaming or the game industry. SVU had kids reenacting Grand Theft Auto scenes. Criminal Intent had people programming bots to play a game to provide them an alibi. CSI: New York had possibly the best one, involving an overworked game designer going nuts and killing someone in an episode that looked to be inspired more by ea_spouse than Jack Thompson. Even Killer Instinct, a show so bad it will be lucky to hit 10 episodes, has already managed to sneak a gaming episode in. Continue reading

Sequelitis vs. Building Brands

November 20, 2005 /

The rant last week about sequels brings to the forefront a natural problem with sequels. On one hand, in today’s risk-averse development environments, it’s easy to retreat to your licenses as a safe bet, but doing so so often has the potential to burn out those licenses. Companies need to develop new IPs to survive.

On the other hand, the true value in gaming of developing IP is so you have something to build on for the future. Sequels pay the bills more reliably than untested blue sky IP. Until you drive them into the dirt, that is.

So what proportion of a company’s wealth should be devoted to building sequels? I don’t know, but I know that right now, we’re making too many of them. Jason Della Rocca points to very casual research that reports that only 12% of the games we make are not sequels or license-based product. For movies, that number is 77%.

The other interesting balance when working with licenses and building sequels is wondering how far to stray from the source material. If a sequel is exactly like it’s predecessor, then it runs the risk of generating very little excitement (see again the crickets chirping any time you mention Soul Caliber III). On the other hand, you run into very dangerous waters if you mess too much with the formula. Read, if you will, this horrifying and hilarious account of the desperate attempts to get the newest Superman movie off the ground. Included are attempts to make Superman not fly and use gadgets (to rip off Batman), making him use kung-fu (to rip off the Matrix) or making him dump kryptonite into mount doom (I’m only slightly stretching that one). I hadn’t really followed this story since Kevin Smith ran running and screaming from the whole thing.

The Golden Rule of IP is to treat the IP like it’s gold, or soon it won’t be worth gold. That means not throwing out what the IP at it’s core means, and not churning out cheap sequels to milk it fast. Given our media, which has the concept of the expansion pack, doing so is only short-sighted.

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