Written by Sifan, 2021 Cohort
At the recent Boot Camp, we discussed everyone’s favorite game, and I introduced the masterpiece in my heart – What Remains of Edit Finch, which has won the 2017 best game narrative award.
This is a single-player game that tells a series of strange stories of a family in Washington state. The player – Edith will enter the Finch family’s mansion to investigate the family history and try to find out why she is the last living person in the family. The whole process is like watching a movie. The player will experience a strange journey in a magic scene full of novel ideas. The immersive experience the game brought me was quite moving impressively.
I described the game in class as less of a game and more of an interactive movie, what I meant was playing this game made me feel like I was experiencing a real story in a movie. Aida emphasized that it is a game rather than a movie. May I have caused a little confusion? It comes to me as a question, what are the differences or boundaries between interactive movies and interactive games? What will be the future development trend of these two forms?
At the same time this week, Jason assigned us to watch an interactive sitcom – Wizard School Dropout. It surprised and confused me at the same time.
I really like this interactive form of TV episode viewing. The long story is divided into some short sections, which correspond with the fragmented information lifestyle of modern young people, and can engage the attention of the audience constantly. It lets the viewers really participate in the story and experience stronger immersion. The whole program can not only determine the fate of the protagonist through choices, but it can also provide an interactive game experience, which amazed me. The audience can even see the protagonist’s wealth value, magic value, and other data changed by the audience’s different options at the end of each episode. Moreover, on the marketing side, even its additional advertisements are interactive. In the beginning, I didn’t even realize that it was an advertisement. I was even very happy to participate in the interactive experience of the advertising. Despite all those game-like features, it’s still considered an American sitcom.
Generally, “interactive movie” is a type of game. The mechanism is playing different video clips according to the player’s operation. The operation of this kind is relatively simple, and the feedback is for playing inoperable video or live animations. One game that suits the definition of “interactive film” is Dragon’s Lair, which came out in 1983. Many works came out in the early 1990s, but such “interactive films” have been greatly ignored in recent years. For example, the Act issued by Chillingo.
The other kind of “interactive movie” is mainly a film, supplemented by simple operable elements. Similar to the “fate choice” mode in “Death Comes 3”. It allows viewers to make choices when playing a specific plot, and then go to different plots. The most famous one for me is Netflix’s latest “Black Mirror: Pandas Nicky” in 2018.
With the development of technology, more and more games have appeared on the market in recent years, trying to blur the boundary between “game” and “movie”. Still, they are considered to be games by most people, with the use of some movie techniques in the game. For example, Quantitative Dream’s Rainstorm, Extraordinary Twins, and Detroit: Become Human, which are pretty popular in the Chinese market.
Thus, will the graphics of future games get closer and closer to film and television works? Will future games contain more and more animation clips? The answers I give are both clear.
Will interactive movies be the inevitable direction of film and game development? For this one, I’m not very certain. Personally, I like both genres. Meanwhile, there are some successful attempts in both fields. I hope we can explore more undefined immersive digital media works and find more possibilities of digital media in the future.