The play’s the thing.

This is my contribution to the Blogs Of The Round Table for September 2008. The topic this month is the transition of intellectual property from the big screen to the little screen. I’ve chosen to look at the restrictive nature of focusing on characters over themes. The core of my examination is that, in experiential terms the character you portray is secondary to the role you play and the emotions it evokes.

 

When I was growing up I really wanted to be Batman. I was rather specific though, I didn’t want to be Bruce Wayne. Well maybe I little, but I wanted to be the masked vigilante with the belt full of gadgets a lot more. And besides, I was young, I didn’t really understand the appeal of being a billionaire playboy.

When I got a little older I wanted to be a Colonial Marine. I wanted to be just like Hicks and Apone, from Aliens. I didn’t want to be Corporal Dwayne Hicks but I certainly wouldn’t have minded serving with him.

In a similar vein I, like I’d imagine a lot of boys in their teens, wanted to be James Bond. I grew up in the era of Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan but I didn’t wanted to be their Bond; I enjoyed GoldenEye but I didn’t really want to be in that film. It was the idea, the nature, the character of James Bond that I fantasied about, not any individual actor’s take on Bond, or any specific storyline. I wanted to be my own version of Bond in my own story.

Growing up watching films, I would always go off and pretend I was in those films. Often I wouldn’t pretend I was the characters from those film, I would instead pretend I was interacting with those characters. Searching abandoned bases on distant planets with Hicks and Apone, saving the world as a 00 agent. That always felt like an important distinction. The character wasn’t where the specific appeal lay, the role they played, and the world they inhabited was.

Watching films now I’m often struck with a desire to play specific games afterwards, but it’s rarely the “game of the film” even when one does exist. After re-watching The Godfather recently I had a yearning to play Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven and not The Godfather game; the emotions I wanted to experience were more important than the specifics of the plot. The Godfather is about family, loyalty and betrayal, the official game doesn’t deal with these themes particularly well, the unofficial game does.

An offer he couldn't refuse.

Given the nature of the film industry this focus on character over role, and visuals over themes is understandable. When a successful film is translated to the digital medium a lot of the development budget is spent on securing the facial likeness and vocal talents of the lead actors. Actors are the explicitly visible face of the film industry. Games are a visual medium, so the obvious elements to focus on when making a transition to another visual medium are actors, sets, and action sequences.

Games are visual medium, but the core foundation of a game is the ability to play. There needs to be room to play with the character and the story as much as the game mechanics. I understand why this would present problems for film studios who want to maintain control of their intellectual properties, but freedom to play with a character doesn’t necessarily lead to abuse of that character.

James Bond is a character that has survived portrayal by six different actors (Excluding Radio Plays and other media), each providing their own take on Ian Fleming’s iconic character. Bond seems like an ideal character for a video game, as like each actor, each player could develop their own interpretation of the character. Yet the majority of James Bond games focus heavily on the specific actor playing the character, or a specific film storyline.

Playing The Operative: No One Lives Forever made me feel more like a secret agent any of the James Bond games. Its focus was on the role as much as on the character; it’s important that you are playing Cate Archer, as the game deals with issues of gender role and sexism, but you still have freedom to make it your own version of Cate Archer, not a studio defined version. There is room within the definition of the character for the player to fill in the details, there is room for interpretation, for play.

Narrative games are about playing a role, and that is harder to do when a character is heavily defined, as is often the case when they have been transplanted from another medium; it’s important to have room to play with a character.

In short: “The play’s the thing.”

Please visit the Round Table’s Main Hall for links to all entries.

Tags: Aliens, From Russia With Love, GoldenEye, Ian Fleming, Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, Pierce Brosnan, The Godfather, The Operative: No One Lives Forever, Timothy Dalton