Wouldn't it be great if Gaiman wrote the game's plot, and Amano designed the characters? I hope this message reaches the right ears to somehow make the proposed project take shape during my life. Please Neil, think about it.

That would be interesting, indeed, but a game needs more than a good story and nice design. It needs an interesting gameplay as well, and the story is often a biproduct of gameplay design.

It would be nice to see some surprising turns of Neil Gaiman's work. What, he's done children's books, comics, graphical novels, novels and written some stuff for movies. I think he's very up to try new things, but video games might not be what he has in mind first off.

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The girl who is a boy who wished he was a girl.

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Originally posted by Mana:
That would be interesting, indeed, but a game needs more than a good story and nice design. It needs an interesting gameplay as well, and the story is often a biproduct of gameplay design.

It would be nice to see some surprising turns of Neil Gaiman's work. What, he's done children's books, comics, graphical novels, novels and written some stuff for movies. I think he's very up to try new things, but video games might not be what he has in mind first off.

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The girl who is a boy who wished he was a girl.

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You forgot -- he's written songs (both lyrics and music) too . . .

Maure.

______________________________
eurydice underground: a miscellany
Obfuscations and Inconsequentials: a journal

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Originally posted by Maure:

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Originally posted by Mana:
That would be interesting, indeed, but a game needs more than a good story and nice design. It needs an interesting gameplay as well, and the story is often a biproduct of gameplay design.

It would be nice to see some surprising turns of Neil Gaiman's work. What, he's done children's books, comics, graphical novels, novels and written some stuff for movies. I think he's very up to try new things, but video games might not be what he has in mind first off.

- - - -
The girl who is a boy who wished he was a girl.

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You forgot -- he's written songs (both lyrics and music) too . . .

Maure.

______________________________
http://www.eurydiceunderground.com: a miscellany
http://www.xanga.com/maure: a journal

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And news articles hehe

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The girl who is a boy who wished he was a girl.

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Originally posted by problematicTROUSERs:
Wouldn't it be great if Gaiman wrote the game's plot...

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Plotting is hardly one of his strenghts, is it? Usually mystery writers or crime writers are much better at plotting.

- Michael

When you play an videogame the plot doesnt need to be a mystery or a crime. It can be anything, examples ranging from American McGee's "Alice" to the beloved Mario. What I mean by Neil writing a plot would be more so filling in the lives of the characters that Yoshitaka draws. And just because you dont think he writes good "plots" doesnt mean he hasn't done it already. I thought American Gods had an excellent "plot", but thats just me, some might also point to Sandman, but I wont go there. As videogame's graphics move on and evolve so should their story lines, and who better than Neil to take that iniative.

i'm sure neil gaiman is able to make a really good plot!

I had this thought recently while playing Final Fantasy...I'm not an expert on video games but does anyone know if a published author has ever written the plot for a game before? I've never heard of it happening but it seems like a nice idea to me, as long as, as Mana pointed out, the actual gameplay is as effective as the story.

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Originally posted by black annis:
does anyone know if a published author has ever written the plot for a game before?

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Douglas Adams. Text game for Hitchhiker's guide.

oh of course! I'd forgotten about that, and there was Starship Titanic as well. Theres a Discworld game around too isn't there?

yes, there are at least 2 Discworld games for playstation, but those were adapted from books, and though Adams did do the Starship Titanic game & book plot (?), he didn't write the book (Terry Jones did I believe). So they are a bit different I suppose

Clive Barker did a game recently, think it was called "Undying". Pretty good and pretty creepy, what little I've played of it. Actually Neil has worked on a game with Rantz Hosely (who introduced him to Tori by leaving her demo tape with him at a convention) to some degree, although that was a long time ago and I have no idea whats become of it.

Ivory

Just to spice things up...
I was just researching the Peace & Love Corporation (which Neil was a part of) for my website, and was looking through Neil's intro to Kim Newman's The Original Dr Shade and came across this:
"It's more fun to look back on the things we didn't do: I remember plotting a computer game, the object of which was to find out who you were before your head exploded. We did it on spec for a man who claimed to have invented the Swear Box."

Now, I can't really see Amano designing that, but it would be fun to play....

Douglas Adams also did the text game "Bureaucracy" for Infocom. Like other old Infocom games it's available for free online download as "abandonware" these days.

"In my opinion the best parody game ever made, Bureaucracy is a hilarious game written by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy creator Douglas Adams. The plot is simple enough: you have just moved to a new town and must get your bank to acknowledge your change of address form before embarking on your all-expense paid trip to Paris.

That the game is something special is obvious when you open the box-- freebies, which are Infocom's hallmark, are among the best you'll ever see: everything from the Popular Paranoia magazine to four copies of Beezer Card application will make you laugh out loud even before you install the game. Once you do, you'll be treated to a rollercoaster ride of a plot that contains more twists and turns than Adams' zany novels, seeing your on-screen alter ego suffer Bureaucratic mishaps that range from missed flight connections to surly waitresses.

The puzzles are as difficult as any other Infocom game (it was written by the same guy who invented the Babel Fish puzzle, after all), but they do follow some logic no matter how twisted it may be (how you dispose of the stew on the airplane is one good example). There are many well-developed characters who represent some of the most annoying people you meet in real-life, from the delivery man to Random Q. Hacker. Bureaucracy, quite rightly, has become the standard by which almost all tongue-in-cheek games about real life are measured, and has been imitated many times but seldom equalled."

http://free-game-downloads.freewishes.com/abandonware/pc/adventure/games_b/bureaucracy.html

http://www.latz.org/infocom/

- Michael

[This message was edited by mtxx on January 28, 2003 at 02:05 PM.]

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Originally posted by Mana:
That would be interesting, indeed, but a game needs more than a good story and nice design. It needs an interesting gameplay as well, and the story is often a biproduct of gameplay design.

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Assuming we're talking Squaresoft games, the gameplay is usually secondary to the art. And the gameplay is usually pretty good, too... but people don't remember that. They remember the art, and the stories, and the characters (I <3 Aeris)....

When Winter comes and singing ends;
when darkness falls at last;
When broken is the barren bough, and light and labour past;
I'll look for thee, and wait for thee, unil we meet again;
Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain.

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Originally posted by GMZoe:
yes, there are at least 2 Discworld games for playstation, but those were adapted from books, and though Adams did do the Starship Titanic game & book plot (?), he didn't write the book (Terry Jones did I believe). So they are a bit different I suppose

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www.the-underdogs.org It has the Discworld games, and the Hitchhiker's games, and one written by William Gibson, and a Callahan's Crosstime Saloon game, and many others...

Oh, and Warren Ellis did the script for some computer game... "Hostile Waters: Anterus Rising," i think

When Winter comes and singing ends;
when darkness falls at last;
When broken is the barren bough, and light and labour past;
I'll look for thee, and wait for thee, unil we meet again;
Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain.

There's these Rainbow 6 games that Tom Clancy's been involved in, too.

And it should be pointed out that while most games -that have a plot- has one that's been slapped together afterwards, the Final Fantasy games start as stories, with characters, art, interface, gameplay and such added on afterwards. (Sometimes the story is changed later in the development, though.)

I'd very much like to see a similar RPG with story by Neil and art by Yoshitaka-san. ^_^