Exposition - The Price of Interaction

Shortly after tackling the subject of game-to-film adaptations, I began to ponder something. If you were to compare my collection of films and videogames you'd find them approximately equal in number. And yet, if you were to calculate the difference in their initial retail value, you would probably find the games weighing in at least two, more likely even three times the cost of the films. Now I'll admit that my knowledge of the finance and production side of the film industry is very limited, and more so for game development, but even so, I cannot reconcile myself with the notion that this should be the case. As we shall see, none of the vague inferences that can be treated with a degree of certainty offer any compelling evidence in defence of such a pronounced discrepancy. To my mind it is simply a matter of evaluating the issue according to three simple points of comparison.

Investment

If we use my personal library as an example, we've established that the ratio of games to films is fairly balanced, while the initial retail value of the former is probably close to three times that of the latter, based on the fact that the price of a premium game title is generally three times that of your standard two-disc DVD at their time of release. If we were to add up the budgets invested in each title and then compare the two forms of media, however, I have no doubt that the discrepancy would be reversed, perhaps to the same order of magnitude, or even more, in favour of film. Whether it is due to a genuine lack of availability, or simply the product of lesser consumer interest, information regarding the size of a typical game budget is far less accessible than that of film, which is often the subject of widespread promotional use. Allowing for the inevitable exceptions, however, I find it difficult to imagine that the typical game budget would be on par with the sixty-five million dollar figure generally attributed to the average Hollywood production, let alone in excess of it. This is not even taking into account the matter of mammoth, blockbuster-aspiring budgets which inevitably become must-haves for your average movie enthusiast. Glancing over my own collection, the likes of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Kingdom of Heaven, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy would have to come fairly close to balancing out my entire game library entirely on their own, as far as representing investment value is concerned. Adding further weight to this argument is the fact that the price of a typical two-disc DVD release fluctuates very little, despite the actual film budget, and quite often in adverse proportion to it. When you consider the initial cinema release, the point becomes still more pronounced, for it costs no more to see the latest big-budget extravaganza than it does to attend a small independent feature. Insofar as investment value is concerned then, there seems no reason why games should cost any more than your average DVD, let alone nearly triple the amount.

Expenditure

Comparing raw budget data is all well and good, but it's only fair to point out that the development of interactive media is very different from that of film, and thus incurs some unique expenses. One of the most frequently cited by game developers is the cost of development kits. With the industry dominated by three key players – Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo – the purportedly steep cost of the proprietary software required to make games for their respective consoles is largely unavoidable. In addition to this is the necessity of licensing and tailoring existing game engines to suit each specific project, or else incurring the additional time required to make your own from scratch. Then there is the fact that development time is often a good third to a half longer than that of your typical film, if not several times more. All of this must be taken into consideration, and yet, when we really do so, these differences amount to very little. Yes, game development involves a number of costs and considerations peculiar to itself, but then so does film. The time from pre-production to final release may be longer, but even the largest game developments involve far smaller crews than your typical film production. The cost of proprietary software may be an unavoidable expense, but this has its equivalent in the film industry too, including everything from the physical film and camera equipment, to proprietary editing software and the necessity of distributing through private cinema companies. The cost of subsequent distribution can be dismissed outright, as both games and film use exactly the same media, be it DVD, Blu-ray, or digital. Indeed, the game industry is generally able to avoid some of the more significant dents in a typical film budget, such as the cost of first-billing actors, the necessity of location fees, and the astronomical price of insurance at every level of filming. As such, the extent to which the game industry bewails its tenuous profitability on the basis of its unique expenses is a little hard to swallow.

Duration

When you consider that the average film runs for about two hours, being able to play a game for up to ten to fifteen hours for only three times the price suddenly seems more reasonable. The way that games are marketed demonstrates that the industry is aware of the power of this suggestion, and the hope that, while games are not cheap, the consumer nevertheless feels they are getting good value. When you apply even a little critical though to this principle, however, it is immediately exposed as a fraud. In order to illustrate my point I would like to turn your attention to the image below. There we see three forms of media dealing with the same license: a film, a television series, and a game all based on the popular Terminator franchise. Despite widespread criticism of the game for its short length, someone intending to buy the upcoming Terminator: Salvation DVD might still justify the full retail price of the game with the assurance that they are getting at least two-and-a-half times the duration of the film out of it, meaning that they cost roughly the same to experience per hour. First of all, this ignores the obvious fact that most people do not buy a DVD when they only intend to watch a film once. Secondly, how do we apply this measure of value to the television series, which extends to roughly twice the length of the game, and five times the length of the film? Surely if the measure of value is duration, then longer films should be more expensive, or else priced according to the number of times someone is likely to watch it. The principle is even less convincing when it comes to games, for there is no consistent ratio between the amount of effort and expenditure that is invested in a title and the amount of time it is likely to be played by the consumer. If this were true, the cost of something as simple as Tetris, with no real limit to the experience, should be more expensive than the Terminator: Salvation game. For that matter, how could one compare a sandbox game, where you are simply presented with a set of tools and then allowed to entertain yourself, to another where meticulous effort has gone into crafting a story of more limited duration?

For an outsider, with little real knowledge of the game industry, it is difficult to pinpoint where the profit from the exorbitant cost of games is going. However, with Sony openly admitting to the fact that it incurs a loss with every Playstation 3 console it produces, and Microsoft able to absorb the cost of an endemic failure rate in its Xbox 360, it is certain that the profit margins carved out of software sales must be playing a significant role in keeping their operations viable. The seemingly endless cycle of acquisition, merging, and disbanding of game development studios, despite the continued profits of large publishing companies is also conspicuous, even where specific titles have performed admirably on the market. And while the developers may deserve our sympathy for having much of the risk and little of the reward for each project passed squarely onto them, it is the consumer who ultimately pays. Indeed, the only point of difference that appears to have any real merit in the price discrepancy between games and film is the size of the market. Though they are cheaper to make, games simply don't have the same market share as the lucrative film industry, so in order to derive similar margins, the price is set universally high. In effect, people who buy games are paying a subsidy to the industry on behalf of all those who don't, which has the subsequent affect of discouraging new consumers. Still, if everyone woke up tomorrow a certified gamer would anyone seriously expect the price of games to fall accordingly? There is simply no incentive to lower prices when so many are prepared to pay.

Screen/Play - Pastiche & Production

 << Continuing from Screen/Play: Imparting Narrative

 

In the first part of this examination we looked at the fundamental difference between the film and videogame mediums in terms of how they impart narrative. To reiterate briefly, while the more developed videogame storylines certainly emulate the narrative model generally adopted in film, the interactive dimension necessarily relegates this to secondary status. The focus is thus a system of progression rather than development. To use an analogy, the film experience might be thought of as a snowball rolling down a hillside: the further it progresses, the more substance it accumulates, leaving the audience free to observe the subtleties of this growth because it is self-propelling. Videogames, on the other hand, are more akin to pushing a snowball against the same incline; while it still accumulates more material as it progresses, our attention is split between the act of observing and the act of propelling things forward. As such, the inherent difficulty in translating one medium to the other arises through the need to compress an experience characterised by two separate, but parallel activities into another that involves only one. Indeed, the quintessential videogame experience is characterised just as much by the incremental mechanics of the gameplay as it is by the overarching storyline, while the two rarely have any definite basis in the other.

So the dissemination of narrative is one of the areas in which the mediums of film and videogames are fundamentally dissimilar. This is an important step, but there is much more to the issue of game-to-film adaptation than simply observing their differences. After all, there are similar discrepancies between film and literature, and yet some of the most widely acclaimed films drew their origins from the written word. Clearly there are other mitigating factors involved – ones that only arise during the process of translation itself – and it is these we shall be examining in this second instalment.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery

The tradition of paying homage to those whom you hold in a position of great respect is one as old as history itself. In the creative fields – such as literature, theatre, and art – this natural tendency has often been enshrined in various cultures as a rite of passage, even verging onto a sacred act. Think of H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, or Charles Baudelaire, and the debt each freely admitted to the works of Edgar Alan Poe. Think of Dante, Shakespeare, or Milton, and the extent to which each looked to Ovid for inspiration. Think of H.R. Giger, Salvador Dali, or de Chirico, and ponder how their various styles could have evolved without the likes of Hieronymus Bosch as their predecessor. And while the act of emulation has to be more delicately considered in this age of copyright and the legal ramifications of intellectual theft, there is still a healthy acknowledgement of one's influences in the various media. For better or worse, the practice of paying homage has simply become more subtle.

A simple stage production, with 9,000 extras

When it comes to the introduction of any new medium, the practice of borrowing from those which are already well established is not only inevitable, but a necessary stage in the evolution of new ideas, procedures, and future conventions. Indeed, one need only reflect upon the productions of the great studio era in order to appreciate the influence exerted by theatre conventions during the early evolution of film. From Cecil B. DeMille and the early epics, through to Howard Hawks and the great blockbusters of the fifties, everything from script and editing technique to the actors and their exaggerated performing style bear the marks of theatrical convention. When technology gives rise to any new medium, it is only to be expected that the initial forays into that expanded horizon are going to be tentative, and usually have one hand firmly on what is both familiar and known to be successful. It wasn't until the rise of naturalistic filming techniques from the seventies onward that film truly grew into a medium that stood apart from theatre, and fully embraced its unique advantages.

While it does not absolve developers of the burden of pursuing originality, it is nevertheless crucial to remember that the videogame medium is still in a nascent phase. Just as the early film industry looked to the stage for inspiration, augmenting its proven strengths with the unique potential of film to capture the grand spectacles of nature and whole armies of extras, so videogames have looked to the film industry in turn, augmenting those proven strengths with its own unique potential. In fact, to a great extent the current game industry remains fundamentally reliant on its film counterpart, not only as a source of inspiration, but more intrinsically as a system of landmarks in an effort to reach an existing market. Laying aside the hybrid phenomenon of movie-game tie-ins, it must be said that individual games tend to be marketed as much to film audiences as they are to existing gamers. The allure of being able to enter your favourite movie and interact with its various elements is a demand which the game industry has become expert in catering to.

Gun - A scenic tour of every Western cliché

The relatively small genre of videogame Westerns is a perfect example. With only a handful of titles currently using this setting – most notably Outlaws, Red Dead Revolver, Gun, and the Call of Juarez series – it already seems that the prevailing approach is simply to pack in as many clichés from the vast catalogue of film Westerns as the premise can reasonably contain. There is nothing wrong with this, as the interactive aspect of the gameplay itself offers sufficient novelty for the experience to seem fresh. Where it would become an issue, however, is if the decision were made to take one of these titles and adapt it back into a film. The good old run-and-gun Western may be a relative newcomer on the unspoilt videogame prairie, but in the twenty-five odd years since the release of Pale Rider, the wagon-train of the film industry has moved on to new horizons. Recent films, such as The Assassination of Jesse James, Appaloosa, and the television series Deadwood mark a new trend in the Western film genre, with a strong focus on the psychology of those who lived in that time and place. The videogame industry, on the other hand, is still well-and-truly entrenched in the world of swaggering gunfighters, great train robberies, and ruthless gold-mining tycoons. And while it may be great fun to play out the iconic moments of the old Western films, one would have to question the validity of adapting these staples back into their original medium.

For those who want to experience the events of Alien

Often it isn't so much a matter of whether something that works for a game will work on film or not, but whether something that works for a game has already been done on film. Take the recent Dead Space, for example, which has been almost unanimously well-received. Even in the first interviews the development team were unabashed about their desire to create an experience that emulated the best elements of films such as Alien, The Thing, and Event Horizon. Perfectly respectable choices when it comes to shaping the course of an homage, and ones for whom there is already an attentive and discerning following, and thus a market. With the first stirrings of a film adaptation beginning to circulate, however, one cannot help but wonder what the point would be. A videogame that synthesises aspects of Alien, The Thing, and Event Horizon is commendable, but when it comes to film why not simply watch the originals? What wisdom is there in turning the films which inspired and aided in gaining your success into full-blown competitors? There is nothing wrong with games being derivative, but as long as they continue to be so we have to question whether there is a legitimate place for film adaptations, let alone a prerogative.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade

There are three crucial ingredients necessary to follow this advice: the first is obviously the lemon itself; the second is sugar or some other form of sweetener, the third is the knowledge required to process and combine these ingredients. The same is also true of videogame adaptations, with the source material very often akin to a lemon, the amount of finance helping to make it more palatable, and the calibre of the creative team determining whether the venture is a success or a bitter failure. Because, when it really comes down to it, regardless of whether we might wish for the game industry to mature beyond its big guns and bigger breasts mentality, the responsibility for bad game adaptations rests squarely on the film industry side. For all but the biggest players in the videogame industry, the level of finance required to embark upon a feature film project is nothing but a pipe dream, and so far even those who do have the resources have shown enough good sense to stick with what they know. This may change in the future, with Blizzard long rumoured to have been considering the prospect of backing its own Warcraft franchise on the big screen, but for now the clear and present danger comes from the ranks of film investors who greedily eye-off the last sales figures whenever they happen to peer over the fence into videogame territory and sniff an established market. The same is true of any adaptation, whether it be from literature, television, or graphic novel. success is presumed to breed success, disregarding the fact that translating each different medium poses unique challenges.
 

Warcraft - Just a matter of time

In theory, there is no reason why any game-to-film adaptation cannot be a success, both critically and financially. More often than not, however, there is some critical mistake made in the simple lemon-sugar-knowledge recipe, with varying results. The bizarre Super Mario Bros. film, for example, can only be described as an instance of attempting to make lemonade from an aubergine. No amount of money or creativity could have made that recipe palatable, becoming an abject lesson in matching the subject matter with a suitable medium. The animated series based on the same license shows the modest success that even the most outlandish game premise can attain, provided that it plays to the strengths inherent in the source material. Far more common, however, we see perfectly good lemons go to waste, lacking either the sugar or know-how – often both – to make the most out of them. The prospect of a Legacy of Kain film directed by Uwe Boll is just one of many instances where a horrible injustice looms on the horizon. A Legacy of Kain television series with a creative force like that of The Tudors behind it, however, is another prospect entirely.

Of course, the chances of a Legacy of Kain project garnering the budget and creative input required to truly do it justice is virtually nil. Indeed, we have yet to see any of the top-tier directors helm a project based on a videogame license, with Christophe Gans currently standing tallest after going out on a limb with the Silent Hill adaptation. Setting a respectable, but by no means enthralling standard we also have the workhorse of the genre, Paul W. S. Anderson, who proved that much can be done with a modest budget and a little flair with the passable Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil films. At the other end of the spectrum we find the likes of Uwe Boll, whose only remarkable quality is the unbelievable tenacity he shows in being able to secure one woeful project after another. The problem, it would seem, is that the film industry has slipped into a vicious cycle of diminishing returns when it comes to game adaptations. Once a given project fails to gain the critical and financial success it may have promised, the next is given access to still-fewer resources, making it even less likely to instill a positive reception. As each subsequent project inevitably fails to buck the trend, it is interpreted not as a reflection on the level of investment and talent involved, but as confirmation that game properties are inherently unsuitable for adaptation, and on the cycle goes.

A welcome addition

With such a stigma now attached to the very notion of game-based films, it is not surprising that the better directors and investors in the film industry are unwilling to risk either their reputation or money on such ventures. And yet this is not a universal truth. The prolific Japanese anime industry, for instance, has a respectable catalogue of game adaptations, often featuring some of the foremost directors, studios, and other creative talents. Insofar as the west is concerned, however, it is unlikely that the trend will change until a film of the same calibre as Sin City, 300, or The Dark Knight turns the prevailing attitude on its head, as each of those did for the comic-based film. The only question is, how many respectable game properties will go to waste on poor productions before this polar shift occurs?

Screen/Play - Imparting Narrative

Perhaps the steady promotion of the term 'graphic novel' had something to do with it, perhaps a genuine maturation of the medium itself, or perhaps it all comes down to generational succession, but whatever the cause, it is undeniable that the past ten years have seen a fundamental shift in the attitude toward comic book adaptations. With a growing catalogue of entries whose diversity encompasses the likes of From Hell and V for Vendetta at one extreme, Sin City and 300 somewhere in the middle, and The Dark Knight and Iron Man at the other, it seems that the entire spectrum from revisionist to classic superhero material has finally attained credence with the mainstream audience. No longer the sole province of PG-13 summer movie fare, comic book adaptations frequently set new records in terms of revenue, and elicit acknowledgement from even the most recalcitrant film critics.

When you consider that the roots of the modern comic book were laid down during the pulp era of the 1930s, however, the recent success of film adaptations is clearly nowhere near as sudden or effortless as it may otherwise appear. The fact that we even entertain the idea of comic-based films having themes and dealing with real issues at the present time is really the product of a seventy-odd year campaign to gain serious recognition, one characterised by much trial and even more error. And if we may now safely claim that the comic book film is nearing the end of its turbulent adolescence, to show the first brief glimpses of real maturity, then it can also be rightly said to have simply passed the baton on to its younger sibling: the still-fledging medium of videogames. At nearly a half-century younger than the earliest comic books, it is perhaps no surprise that game-based films have yet to garner much in the way of critical approval, nor have the vast majority shown sufficient merit to warrant it, despite some financial success.

So are we destined to endure another thirty years before videogame adaptations start to find their feet, as we did with with comic-based films? Does the videogame medium present qualities which might either accelerate or delay the point of mainstream acceptance? Where have current adaptations gone right and/or wrong during their transition to the screen? In this series of articles I intend to examine some of the fundamental factors involved.

Films develop, games progress

Despite their apparent similarity, one of the fundamental differences between the film and videogame mediums lie in the way their narrative unfolds. This has much to do with the fact that the earliest videogames were entirely devoid of all but the most cursory semblance of a storyline, assuming they made any pretence at all. Pong and its antecedents were obviously simulations of existing recreational games, and thus required no premise at all. Later games often featured a premise that could be reduced to a single line – rarely imparted, even through text, within the game itself – and exhibited none of the subsequent development which might be deemed an actual plot. Space Invaders, for example, established your raison d'etre as the only defence against an alien offensive and simply left you to accomplish that task. This template would continue well into the early '90s, including such staples as Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog, with a paragraph in the game manual often providing the sole indication of an underlying story.

Great fun, but no real pathos

This trend was due partly to technological limitations, of course, at a time when full-motion cutscenes and recorded dialogue were considered a tremendous luxury, but it was also a product of what was considered a redundancy. The player's ability to enjoy Space Invaders is not at all dependent upon whether or not they heed what little semblance of a plot it conveys, nor is their progress inhibited should they choose to ignore it. Indeed, while the aesthetic dimension of gaming has advanced tremendously up to the present day, the core dynamics of gameplay have necessarily remained largely unchanged. The fundamental experience still boils down to a matter of learning what the inherent rules may be within the closed boundaries of the game and how best to exploit them in order to progress. It is the same fundamental process we encounter in sports, board and card games, and any other abstract activity defined by arbitrary rules. And just as there is no reason to think that a tennis match would necessarily be enhanced by the presence of an underlying storyline, there is no reason why videogames cannot be enjoyed solely as a form of interactive, skill-based entertainment. The fact that games generally are married with traditional storytelling does not, however, automatically ease their transition onto the screen.

Typical narrative structure

The graph above shows a typical visualisation of the dynamics within traditional storytelling, and is equally applicable to literature, theatre, and film. At its simplest, the development of plot is this fashion can generally be reduced to a mere three propositions, for example: the cat sat on the mat; a dog entered the room and scared it; the cat hissed and the dog ran away. All but the most rudimentary games of the past forty years impart something equivalent to this, albeit with one crucial qualification. Space Invaders, for instance, can be summarised as follows: aliens launch an invasion; a single tank retaliates; the alien forces are defeated. The crucial difference is that the final clause, and therefore the actual development of the story, depends entirely upon the player's ability to progress through the game. Our attention to the storyline is relegated to the status of a secondary concern next to our ability to apprehend the skills needed to successfully negotiate the gameplay. As such, there are really two dynamics at work in the modern game experience.

Obviously Space Invaders can only illustrate a point so far, and in order to fully explain this point I'd like to turn your attention to the more recent Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. For those of you unfamiliar with the Prince of Persia series, The Sands of Time drew great acclaim among videogame critics for its combination of interesting gameplay mechanics and engaging narrative. What made the former unique was the ability to manipulate time in various ways, combined with an increasingly spectacular array of gymnastic abilities required of the protagonist. Death-defying leaps, running along walls, and vaulting over multiple opponents were all enhanced by the ability to slow down, freeze, or even rewind gameplay itself. Not only were these conceits justified through the narrative – where they were established as the effects of several enchanted artefacts – but the storytelling itself actually managed to imbue the mechanics with a level of dramatic significance. In short, the game itself was presented under the guise of a tale being narrated by the protagonist to another character, with failure resulting in a hasty exclamation of “No, no, no, that isn't how it happened. Let me begin again...”. The interactive, branching nature of the gameplay was thus incorporated into the narrative itself, preserving the player's immersion within the continuity of the storyline without hampering the interactive experience.

Gameplay progression

In many ways, The Sands of Time represents a perfect candidate for a big-screen adaptation, and it is no surprise that this is currently taking place. While the nature of the game makes it particularly conducive to translation onto film, however, this is still no guarantee of success. The problem is that all videogames contain a fundamental dualism. There is no question that the vast majority now impart something very close to the classic model of narrative development, but the means of revealing this aspect continues to be dependant upon a system of geometric progression, which we generally refer to as gameplay. This is what we see in the graph above, where the stepped line representing gameplay imparts the shadow of a classic story arc through their intersection at various points. Overall, the majority of the typical game experience consists of incremental repetition. This is not a bad thing, in fact it is the hallmark of the most well-constructed games, and probably encountered this concept before, under the misleading guise of the term 'difficulty curve': you learn action X; the game offers a few instances of increasing difficulty where X is required; you progress. You learn action Y, the game offers a few instances of increasing difficulty where Y is required, you progress. By increments, the end of the game would see you performing increasingly complex variations: XX, XY, YX, XYX, XYZ and so on. This is necessary in order for the player to be able to progress, but it does not make for compelling viewing. Indeed, what makes up the majority of the gameplay experience is the kind of incremental repetition that is generally conflated to form a montage in film.

The underlying issue, then, is whether it is the gameplay or narrative that is defined as the quintessential characteristic of the videogame experience: that presumably being the element worthy of adaptation in the first place. In most cases the answer lies in finding the appropriate balance between the two. For, just as it would lose something of its defining characteristics if The Sands of Time did not contain a few scenes of wall-running, acrobatic fighting, and time manipulation, it would be a tedious experience if it featured little else.

Continued in Screen/Play: Pastiche & Production >>