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Working with IP

Eric Heimburg over at Elder Game has a great post about working with an existing intellectual property, squeezing it into an interactive format. The post interested me because in addition to video games blogging, I am an aspiring screenwriter. As such, I've been making my way through essential screenwriting books, like William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie did I Tell, the latter of which discusses adaptations at length. Adaptations, in this case, are film scripts which derive their subject matter from (usually) bestselling novels. But video game adaptations are different:

A movie might take a tiny IP based on a book and literally reinvent it for a completely new audience. A video game cannot do that. Video games must take an already-mainstream IP and play off of it to make something that appeals to existing fans of the IP. Don’t ever forget that, because it means two things:

You must use an already-successful IP or you aren’t getting much out of using an IP, and

You cannot reinvent the IP to suit a different audience; you must work with the IP’s existing audience.

Dante’s Inferno and the Lit-Based Game

The announcements at Spike’s Videogame Awards weren’t exactly shockers. Gears of War 2 downloadable content? That’s like telling someone they’re going to get a pickle with their burger. Then again, a game based on Dante’s Inferno developed by EA Redwood (Dead Space) is a little out of leftfield. Games based on literature are not common. Better examples, like Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure, are even rarer. (It’s actually debatable whether or not Hitchhiker’s should even count as an adaptation considering it was more of cross-medium narrative Adams retold for a decade in the first place.) More often than not, when a work of literature crosses into games, it either becomes something else entirely like the Call of Cthulu games or it’s a tragic mess like Universal Interactive’s Fellowship of the Ring. The linearity of fiction – and epic poetry for that matter – does not suit even the most linear game types. Yes, Signor Alighieri’s poetry is outwardly suited for game adaptation. The man’s vision of Hell is broken into levels, each one filled with, as Cole pointed out, plenty of enemy types. But sociopolitical commentary isn’t something you can convey through bludgeoning demons with blunt crucifixes.

I’m a strong believer, as I’ve mentioned here on 61FPS before, that most everything doesn’t need to be turned into something else.

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.

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