The videogame industry likes to boast of revenues that rival or surpass that of the film industry, but at the same time, game developers not only compete with film for the attention and dollars of their target demographics, but also imitate the blockbuster logic and development patterns of the film industry, as well as hiring film industry talent for interactive game studios. If digital culture emphasizes interactivity more than other audiovisual formations do, what are the consequences?
This group project will have you team up to research, present, and debate the most salient aspects of interactive entertainment. Documenting each of the three steps will earn your group academic credit in this class. Each step will take place partly in the 85C discussion sections and partly in between meetings. Each 85C discussion section will be divided into two groups for this project. Group 1 will research, present, and debate cinematic adaptations of games; group 2 will inversely research, present, and debate game adaptations of cinematic franchises.
Group 1 will consider (three or more) films based on a videogame:
to what extent do the films use (or deviate from) the game plot?
are their central characters essentially the same as those in the ludic model?
do the films successfully use key elements of the game in terms of sound, lighting, style, etc?
what seems to be gained or lost in the process of adaptation?
Group 2 will consider (three or more) games based on a film:
does the game have a clear narrative? what tasks must the player complete to succeed?
do the games have a central character you recognized from the cinematic model?
do these gameworlds resemble that of the films (consider lighting, sound, color, style, etc)?
what seems to be gained or lost in the process of adaptation?
The debates will try to hash out which seems to work better: game to film conversion, or film to game adaptation? What diegesis delivers more: a unified or a heterogeneous lore, a self-contained or an unbounded world? Do you argue in favor of a single narrative or of episodic construction, do you prefer identification with and cathexis onto a character, or distance from and commentary on characters? What criteria do cultural commentators seem to rely on in evaluating whether adaptations succeed in either direction? Always consider what you learned in class about action/adventure/strategy games, about interactivity, violence, sound, and animation in games, etc
Each group will use the week five discussion section to start researching the resources provided, and to prepare a persuasive presentation for the following week (but you will probably want to continue doing some of this work between meetings). Each ten-minute presentation in the week six discussion section will be debated with the other group; to make this possible, presentations need to be both very succinct and very well informed. Your group’s grade on this assignment depends on your preparation, presentation, and discussion performances, so make sure all members of your group contribute in ways the TA can recognize.
After your presentations and debates, each student needs to upload a brief document (use DOC or PDF format to upload to Canvas) that states your name and student ID#, picks one representative quote (a different one for each group member!) from one of the assigned readings (not from the listicles below but from the weekly assigned readings related to these topics), followed by one sentence explaining that quote in your own words, and one or two sentences providing your argument or spin on this quote and its importance.
Sample Solution
