A movie that makes you go "Oh, this is structured like a video game! :D" and another movie that makes you go "Oh… this is structured like a video game :/"
@mcc what about novels? you’ve got your literal influences like Borges, but also Raven Tower (Leckie) and Piranesi (Clarke) came across to me as some of the best “interactive fiction” that happened to be in book form
@chrisamaphone@mcc The problem is that when you start looking at novels which are really interactive fiction, it turns out that Piers Anthony is the lifetime world champion.
@zarfeblong@mcc
i confess i haven’t read any. i gather from your assertion of this as a “problem” that it isn’t worth starting? (though i have a pretty high tolerance for problematic literature if i’m trying to get something specific out of it, so i’d be curious what you’d recommend to understand this point)
@chrisamaphone@zarfeblong He actually has one novel set in a video game (Killobyte) which has some legit fascinating ideas about game design (mixed in hodgepodge with ones which would never work)
@chrisamaphone@zarfeblong … It also has a very cavalier approach to the idea of an underage girl having sex with a much older man, which at the time I read it seemed perfectly fine, like, ah yes, I am a 15 year old who wants to have sex, it stands to reason the 15 year old protagonist would also want to have sex, but in retrospect I'm like… hmm what exactly was I putting into my brain there and was it a good idea
@chrisamaphone@mcc Oh, the “problem” is that while he’s enthusiastic at writing about puzzles, games, and logic, he’s terrible at writing about people. And doesn’t really have a sense that some tropes are problematic. Or creepy.
The first few of the “Incarnations of Immortality” series will give you a sense of the stuff while still being readable in a beach-fluff way. Later he got worse.
@chrisamaphone@mcc His early SF books were packed with “here’s a cool thing I found in Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games column!” Unfiltered.
Much later, Legend Entertainment made a graphical adventure game based on the Xanth series. But I’d soured on the whole idea by then so I never went in to find out if it incorporated his puzzle style.
@zarfeblong@chrisamaphone One of the later Xanth books the action comes to an almost complete halt so he can write a little discourse on the Prisoner's Dilemma problem, and then the book just ends, and then there's an afterword where he goes on at length about "did you like the Prisoner's Dilemma bit? i got it from a TV program. let me tell you about this TV program I watched—" I guess this is what you wind up doing when u write 2-3 novels a year for 40 years
@mcc@zarfeblong@chrisamaphone I had a conversation with a friend earlier this weekend about Piers Anthony re “how come his name never really comes up” and I’m just going to suggest that multiple discussions of the man in as many days is more attention than I, someone with 40+ Xanth books under my belt, feel the universe needs to be giving to his work at this particular time. 😬 Middle grade writing level full of concepts not at all appropriate for middle grade kids.
@courtney@mcc@zarfeblong@chrisamaphone yeeaaaah I'm checking in as a "teenage and tween me basically inhaled the Xanth and Phase/Proton and Incarnations books" and I agree that, while interesting for the times, it hasn't aged well.
Though I do think Phase/Proton remains one of the more interesting treatments of mirror worlds? And well. SIGH. It's interesting! But also! Sigh
I don't know if he's Heinlein self-insert-womanizer creepy, exactly, (I also loved Heinlein sigh) but he's his own brand of that.
I feel like we'll find him increasingly creepy from here on out and eventually be deemed creepy exactly like Heinlein just in a 90's way instead of a 70's way.
@chrisamaphone Raven Tower feels to me most like a Greg Egan novel in that it's fundamentally about someone solving a mystery. Like the main thing the protagonist does in Raven Tower is actually do science. I get the game comparison but I don't think you find many games actually pulling that off, unless it's a Zachtronics game.
… hmm, wait. Now I gotta sit and try to figure out if there's an implied line between Greg Egan and Zachtronics games.
@mcc I had the second reaction for the King of Thorns manga, because reading that was seriously like watching someone play an early-2000 shooter, down to the the settings feeling like level design.
@GreenSkyOverMe@mcc Would love to know this too — I don’t think I’ve ever “:D”ed at a movie for being like a video game, but I’m sure I’m missing stuff.
Movies that feel like they're structured like a video game, and it feels good: Source Code (2011), Swiss Army Man (2016)
Movies that feel like they're structured like a video game and it feels real bad: Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker, Ahsoka eps. 1 and 2 (I enjoyed them but the structure was annoying)
Jones said in an interview certain shots in Source Code were specifically trying to mimic things the camera in GTA3 could do
@jason@mcc You might like the Japanese movie "River", which is currently touring in movie festivals. A movie about a 2 minutes time loop, but all the actors are aware of the loop (unlike Groundhog Day where only 1 person is aware)
All filmed in long shots of exactly 2m00s, no cuts! The camera often follows behind the main actress, making it feel videogame-y.
It's an excellent movie, funny and smart! I want to watch it again when it releases!
@mcc@gaurav@GreenSkyOverMe There was a text adventure called "Vicious Cycles" entered into IFComp in 2001 that had such a similar premise to Source Code (find a bomb on a train while stuck in a time loop!) that I seriously wonder if they knew about it
while i was watching it i couldn't help but think stuff like:
"ok, this part is a short cut-scene... and there they just handed control over to the player..."
"[mentally superimposes new quest title]"
"weapon/armor upgrade!"
"ofc he always wears a helmet; that's how the developers pander to the players (so they can imagine themselves wearing the helmet). Plus they save a little on the animation budget."
@mcc@gaurav@GreenSkyOverMe I've always felt like Back to the Future and its sequels had a very adventure-game vibe. Lots of puzzle-solving using objects found in the environment. Lots of examining of inventory items.
@mcc I'm 100% convinced that the sled scene in Grand Budapest Hotel was Andersen making fun of other directors and their movies for catering to video-game tie-ins.
Add comment