Literature & Gaming

I absolutely love video games. But what I love even more than video games is books. I saw this article on Kotaku earlier today and it got me thinking; what would happen to video games if they begin to incorporate literature?

Now, this may seem like the worst idea in the world (ex: reading = school, school = bad). But you, my friend, are wrong. Do you remember the classic 2007 video game Bioshock? Did you enjoy it? I'm gonna take a stab that your favorite parts of the game were the unique world of Rapture, the dynamic characters, and thick plot. Well, Bioshock was based off of a book. Atlas Shrugged to be exact. Maybe you can recall a few other great video games such as Metro 2033, Dante's Inferno, Alice: Madness Returns, Lord of the Rings, The Witcher, Tom Clancy Rainbow 6 to name a few. All based off books.

By now, I'm hoping that you're rethinking you're first reaction to books being adapted to video games. There are so many amazing books in the world, both old and new, that are just begging to be turned into video games. I've compiled a list of a few that I would love to play...

 1984 by George Orwell
This is my favorite book of all time, so obviously I would love to play it. I'm not quite sure how this would translate to video games, but the whole dystopian world of the novel would be a really interesting setting for a game. War is Peace.

Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I think a really cool sherlock holmes game would be awesome. Think LA Noire in that time period. I would love hunting for clues, consulting with Watson, and fighting bad guys. They'd also have to through in a pipe for Holmes.

The Road by Cormack McCarthey
Or another equally emotional post-apocolyptic novel. I am not too interested in post-apocolyptic settings (like Fallout), but the emotional quality of this book really drew me in. I would love to see more games focus on an emotional connection, that was genuine rather than cheesy and forced. I know it sounds impossible, but I think this could be really cool. Imagine your character taking an incredibly long and frustrating journey south in a post-apocolyptic world, filled with cannabals, nuclear waste, and dangerous animals. Than add in the element of protecting your son. Beautiful.

Those are just a few of the great books that could be converted/adapted to the video game medium. I'm a little biased with my choices because I'm a huge sci-fi (especially dystopian worlds) fan. I don't think that video games could be a direct port of a book, but I do feel that the worlds and characters of novels could easily be incorporated into an interactive medium. I'm super interested in the similarities and differences between literature and video games, and actually plan on writing my undergraduate dissertation on that topic. If you ever wanna talk books, send me a line.


As Always,
LadySnip3r

PS. What books would you love to play?

Morbid Party 5

Last night my childhood friend Rebecca came over and we decided to take out the gamecube for oldtimes sake. Now when we were little, we used to play Mario Party 5 for HOURS. I mean literally, hours. We would stay up much too late for children - button mashing, star stealing, and mini-game winning. We were obsessed.

Fast forward about 10 years and you've got two adults swearing at each other, at the characters, and at the game in general. Mario Party is arguably the easiest game to rage on (Apart from Sonic the Hedgehog - but we'll get to that in another post...)

I had a much different feeling while playing through it as an adult. I quickly realized that the characters are essentially playing for their life! It's a modern Lord of the Flies! These cute little characters are cheating, stealing, and racing the way to the top in order to save themselves. Just take a look at the end of the game...

One character wins (and is saved), the rest just fall into a pit of nothingness. I might be taking this too far, but I began to though about the mechanics of the game and the morbid nature of the gameplay. First of all, let's look at the mini-games. Basically all 4 of the characters compete; either all against each other, two vs. two, or one vs. three. Winner gets some coins, loser gets nothing. But look carefully at the end screen of the mini-games. Fifty percent of the time the loser can be seen almost being killed! Whether by rocks, falling to their doom, or just disappearing. Their lives are on the line!
The game also encourages players to cheat, steal, and basically do just about anything to get another star. All those capsules, hidden blocks, duels just aide in the massacre. Don't even get me started about Bowser or Donkey Kong.

This is right before Boo falls to his uh, death. I'm not really sure how that works when you're a ghost...

I'm convinced the stars are the ones behind it. They've trapped the characters in some dream world for them to duke it out. I might just be paranoid, but this game is all about survival of the fittest.

"The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering."
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Well, I hope you all have a Happy Easter and a lovely long weekend. I'll be doing a Portal 2 review for the next post, so be sure to check back in (or just subscribe and make life easier).

As Always,

LadySnip3r 

PS. Have you ever played a game as a kid that you ended up having a totally different feeling playing through it as an adult? Comment and tell me about it.