I just wanted to squeeze out a quick rant before I head off to work.

Last night, I saw some English theatre. Now, in a country where the theatre industry is subsidised for several pounds per audience member (as opposed to the couple of cents per audience member back home), I was expecting great things. I was expecting my love of theatre to be rejuvenated from the heady days of my playwrighting past. I guess I wasn’t disappointed - technically, it did tick most boxes…if theatre has any boxes to tick in the first place.

Lots of old people with programmes, thick coats and sensible shoes? Not quite. In fact, there were far more younger people than the gracious elderly, including a band of young American tourists (who probably got lost on their way to the debut gig of American rock band The Mousetrap).

Tight, stuffy theatre? You bet your arse it was. The seats were about as comfortable as a broken bus seat for a professional basketball player. I’m also certain that, in the unlikely event of a fire, we would all have been in some serious excrement.

Actual production and acting values? Well, Agatha Christie’s play is apparently timeless - so timeless, in fact, that it has been running for 56 consecutive years and still manages to gather an audience every time. I figure the actors would know it all back to front and might even take their characters home with them (especially the exuberant and somewhat camp Christopher Wren character). The acting wasn’t too bad, and given the thick clichés of a whodunnit, the English banter that whips along at a cracking pace and the obligatory twist at the end, it handled itself fairly well. (No, it wasn’t the butler.)

So it wasn’t all too bad, even if I did catch myself doing a little eyebrow-raising at times. But I have to say that I prefer entertainment of the interactive kind.

In an opinion article that has triggered some heated responses, games designer Adam Maxwell has argued the points of hiring games designers over writers.

After reading through the article, I was initially shocked, even a little nauseated. Games don’t need writers? So, games writers are essentially dead weights to game development teams in terms of hiring costs and overall skill sets? And, instead of hiring experienced writers, we should hire more games designers in the hopes that one of them happens to write novellas and radio plays in their spare time?

I immediately wondered what recreational drugs he had access to, and whether or not I was also able to procure said drugs.

But then I had a think about it, and from a business perspective, it makes a little more sense. I think his mindset is in the early stages of the design phase, where ideas need to be collated and processed. Ultimately, as he says, the design forms the basis of the game and dictates the objectives of the person playing it. For it to be a truly spectacular hit, expectations need to be exceeded and limitations redefined in the finalised design. Designers need to dust off lessons learned and try to fabricate new ones in the process.

A writer, in the meantime, needs to think up some memorable characters, an unusual or engrossing setting, and a plot that affords plenty of (inter)action. The beauty of this is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be unique. Think how many assassin / agent / hitman style plots we’ve got out there. Think about how many space operas we have, or mercenaries, or fantasy worlds that draw on historical influences in eastern and western cultures. And not to mention that the addition of giant norgs will hold the gamer’s attention if all else fails.

I think what people are reacting to in the article is the title. It sounds like he’s saying that “writers have no place in games, ever, and that they should just leave plots, dialogue and the rest of the dressing to games designers, because they’re in the best position to make those decisions since they’re doing the actual game and all; plus writing is a piss easy job so we may as well cut out the middleman”.
I believe it’s more like “writers are nice to have and they can really bring a game to life by giving purpose and sense to a player’s actions in the game world, as well as holding a gamer’s attention, but in the grand scheme of things a game’s design is a few rungs higher up the ladder, and as a result more emphasis should be placed on hiring quality games designers over a legion of bushy-tailed writers”.

That’s what I wanted to see, anyway. If Adam was actually leaning more towards the former comment, then he either has a serious grudge against his early years in the industry, or I have a reason to feel sorry for the poor bastard.

Any RTS gamer or Korean national worth their salt will be more than familiar with Blizzard’s Starcraft, the holiest of strategic holies. Intricately balanced with unique races and a compelling backstory - it’s got a lot of things going for it. So many things, in fact, that it’s still being featured as a 1v1 tournament in the World Cyber Games. Television shows are dedicated to players showing off their strategies, and DVDs show compilations of unrelenting macro and tight base management. Experts at the game are given nicknames by their legions of fans, names such as “Emperor” and “Genius Terran”.

So, it should be no surprise that Starcraft II will have some big shoes to fill.

It would be somewhat sacrilegious if Blizzard decided to build it all up from scratch. Judging from the quite detailed preview videos showing Terran and Protoss gameplay, it looks to be a few licks of paint, a nifty physics model and a few extra units and structures. It doesn’t seem like much of a “sequel”; more like a glorified expansion pack.

But it would be short-sighted to simply draw the line there. Surely there must be even more unit balancing, more depth and progression of a single-player epic in the same vein as Warcraft III, and of course the all important Battle.net.

It looks to be something completely unique and different, and yet when you look at it, it doesn’t feel like it’s much of a departure from the original. It’s still an elaborate game of paper-scissors-rock that is played on multiple levels and several times at once.

So Blizzard, ever toying with the gaming public’s patience, have been drip feeding media to the ravenous fans. I’m not all that much of a fan and the hype is even getting to me.

Once the Zerg gameplay video comes out and we start to see some real-time interaction in the form of a video demo or a (highly exclusive) public beta (that will get leaked faster than a submarine with a screen door), there’s only one way to go from there.

And I’m hoping it’s not a certain someone saying, “When it’s done.”

I haven’t done an actual update in a while, so I suppose it’d be good to get one in before I knock off for tonight.

I’m currently doing a short stint with a Government consultancy - they’re mainly involved in infrastructure and signage. Whatever keeps me out of trouble, give me money to spend and adds more words on my CV goes alright with me

The people at work are hilarious. I haven’t had belly laughs this hard since fucking ages. I dunno if I just get turned on by British humour or what, but it’s a crack up. Awesome place to work.

What else…my sister’s fiancée is over here visiting for a while, so they’ve been mooching it up while I’m firmly in the role of third leg. Although work is helping to get out of their hair and letting them spend some quality time together.

Other than that, it’s actually getting to the point where I’m hitting a routine. It’s good and bad, and eventually I’ll start looking for distractions.

In a recent edition of Edge (an eloquently written publication that borders on the pompous, but at least I don’t feel like I’ve been shunted in with the LCD, like with the other gaming rags out there), there’s an article that talks about the adaptation of video games to movies. I think I may have written something about this before, so there’s not much point reiterating the arguments I’ve already made.

However, the Edge article does make the interesting point that video games and movies are not necessarily the same thing. Some commentators said that books and movies recount or present events to you, whereas games require active participation: the user is responsible for the outcome of the plot.

Now, we’re a long, long way from truly dynamic plots (unless you’re a MMORPG player, in which case you play a part in making your own story to the extent of the game world’s limits); games are still moving in a linear, predetermined fashion. “Multiple endings” is an underwhelming statement. I’m reminded of endings like Kane & Lynch - one which yields an extra level, and the other which is a simple cutscene. The “right” and “wrong” endings of Half Life 1. The “good” and “bad” endings of games like Jedi Academy, where you end up killing more enemies with one option over the other.

Perhaps in a sense MMORPGs manage to overcome the problem of being unable to deviate from the limitations of a core story by letting the players make it for themselves. The Elder Scrolls series also promoted open-endedness by providing a core quest but allowing (encouraging?) the player to get sidetracked. Deviating from the side quests would dump you in the deep end, wandering in a giant, open world with a broken bow and the clothes on your back.

Perhaps that’s why video game movies seldom work: most of the enjoyment of games comes from actions that aren’t particularly engaging when you’re not in the driver’s seat. Hack at enemies, then loot the corpses. Shoot at enemies, duck behind cover, reload, repeat, and then advance to the next group. And truth be told, the core storylines behind games are pretty dull. There’s no chance for any character development or exposition amidst the flying bullets and flaming wreckage. Gamers don’t buy games to watch hours to cutscenes interspersed with gameplay.

It would also be difficult to appeal to a wide audience, while catering for the fans, I would be mortified if Mark Wahlberg in the upcoming Max Payne movie spends more time doing a broken heart routine to some well endowed Mona Sax than diving through windows in bullet time with Berettas akimbo. On the other hand, I’d imagine fans of Kane & Lynch would be disappointed if the producers spent more time on the inner intricacies of Kane’s psyche than devoting sufficient time to ventilate officers of the law.

The things that made games movies successful in the past will probably not have the same effect on the well-informed public of today. The ones that are in the pipeline now don’t really scream a lot of potential to me (The Sims in particular sounds like it’s going straight to DVD, unless it’s like 21 Grams, but with brighter colours).

If we’re going to see good games movies, they will have to have quality writing (and acting!) backed by proven IPs and base storylines - not just rehashes of cool scenes.

And I still want my Homeworld movie.

I have recently discovered the joy and beauty of Dark Side of the Moon. Apparently, it syncs up with The Wizard of Oz disturbingly well. I think it’s just amazing coincidence.

I once did the same thing. Download an episode of the anime series Last Exile. On top of that, get a copy of Paul Oakenfold’s Ready Steady Go. Play them both at the same time. zOMG CONSPIARCEIS

Anyway, toke up a fat doobie and watch the video; you’ll enjoy yourself thoroughly (if you don’t freak out first).

You know that article on sequels I was meant to write?

Well, someone beat me to it, so you can take a look at that instead.

Unfortunately I wasn’t all that satisfied with what I had written so far…and I was pretty sceptical about putting it up in the first place. It looked like it was just stating the (painfully) obvious. Cliff was saying that we should love and respect sequels, and definitely give them a fighting chance. I, on the other hand, would say that everyone would want a second chance to make a strong first impression. Unfortunately, the games industry ain’t so forgiving, and neither are its customers.

I don’t think sequels are chances to right wrongs, but they’re more of a chance to expand on what has already been proven to be successful. Unless you insist on making terrible game movie sequels.