Backstory (was RE: [MUD-Dev] New poll)

[Zak Jarvis]

> From: Dave Rickey [daver at mythicgames.com]
> Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2000 10:30 AM

> From: Zak Jarvis <zak at voidmonster.com>
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>

> >Films probably need 15-20 more years to start to come into
> >their own, and it'll be a largely technological issue. Though
> >I think there is also an aspect here of audiences accepting
> >the form. I'm fairly certain that the average length of a
> >movie has been fairly steadily rising.

>     Only recently.  Throughout the 70's and 80's, the average length of
> feature films dropped, under pressure from theatre operators and network
> television it fell to 80-some minutes.  In the nineties it
> started to come back, and I believe now it is somewhere around 100
> minutes, with little resistance to films that are a full two hours or
more.
> Part of that may be Cable having become the major after-market channel,
> HBO and such have more time to fill than they can find movies to show,
> and don't have the incentives to show a feature film in 2 hours with
> 40 minutes of commercials.

Yes, you're quite right. I try to forget that the 70's and 80's happened.
;)

Seriously though, the other factor there is going to be the rise of the
enormous multiplex theater in malls and whatnot, and home video where
length is less an issue. Digital film distribution will likely skew things
further once it passes through the initial technical limitations. I mean to
theaters and not directly to consumers though, as I see the theater
experience remaining important for as long as I'd care to predict.

> >Games are going to need 30-40 more years, again for
> >technological issues, but also so the form will be understood
> >well enough that it can be properly exploited.
> >
> >As far as games and storytelling goes, we're not far removed
> >from writing in cuneiform on clay tablets. We've got papyrus or perhaps
> >bamboo strips. We're not even close to western-style movable type, and
it's
> >going to be YEARS before we get a Tristram Shandy.

>     I'll agree with that, our technology, our understanding, and our
> audience all have not yet gained enough sophistication.  UO, EQ
> and AC may seem primitive as story-telling experiences, but for most
> of the people playing them it is the first example of it they've
> ever seen in this medium.

After my last spate of posts, I'm glad to be agreed with somewhere. ;)

One of the problems we have as game designers is that no matter how
sophisticated or progressive our ideas, if our audience isn't up to it, and
the hardware can't support it, all the smarts in the world don't make a
damn bit of difference.

-Zak Jarvis
 http://www.voidmonster.com





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