Sounds like you need to do some research into game history. There was a big movement where Hollywood tried to move into video games using FMV and actors and their talent to write stories, thinking they understood the medium.

What they didnt get is that people dont play games to sit and watch, or even to just look forward to the next cut scene and story plot. The most successful game thats attempted this has been the Final Fantasy series, but that is based on a fairly decent gameplay model (which is most of what youre doing), and has a long history (ie. they are on FF 8) so they have a lot of word of mouth and previous players backing up sales and to stir things up.

Id suggest you look into a lot of the failed FMV games in the past before trying to follow up on an idea like this (even though no one would budget it as well...)

-Geoff

This sort of thing is rather popular in Japan. Or rather, has been rather popular ever since the cd became the standard media for content delivery.

Prior to that, of course, the memory necessary for high end content would have required dozens and dozens of floppys.

That having been said, everyone will say that such a game cannot possibly succeed in America, Europe or pretty much anywhere else.

But then again, I remember people in the game industry saying the same things about Myst....

$0.02

Yup, and for proof that Myst can be duplicated by just following the same formulas, you can look at all the other successful Myst like clones, because a lot of them were made.

Oh wait, but they flopped miserably...

Often the lessons you learn from big hits like that arent just "this genre works, make things like it", but come in the form of things like "this concept was accessable to many people and came at the right time". Seeing as how Myst came at the exact time as the CDROM was becoming standard and it was bundled with tons of CDROM packages, and used to show off multimedia computers on show rooms, you cant claim that its success is TOTALLY to its "movie media" type nature.

-Geoff

Anyone remember that whole congressional hearing about the violence in that one movie/game where you were an alien (or something) killing girls at a slumber party? What was that game called? They had it for Sega CD then for PC. Opposition for Mortal Kombat had peaked around the same time.

I think the game Jim is talking about is Nite Trap, it was for the short-lived Sega CD

I believe it was Nightcrawler or something along those lines.

Yep, it was called Night Trap or Nite Trap...I think I still have the cd hanging around somewhere. There is always an exception to the rule and if there has to be an exception for fmv games being bad...I guess, it would be Night Trap....though, I can''t remember if it was a good game or if I just wanted to get to the part I heard about where the monsters attack the girl in the bathroom .

>you cant claim that its success is TOTALLY to its "movie media" type nature.

I never claimed any such thing. Merely pointed out that such a heavy emphasis on non-interactive content does not preclude success.

Quick question - how much meaningful interaction is there in Shenmue? (e.g. actions with game-world consequences)

$0.02

well just thought about this. if i made it in dvd where you could choose whether you play interactive. or you just watch the movie. think that would get people to buy it.

failuer to plan is like planning to fail

Bad idea IMHO. A few reasons:

a) A normal movie takes long enough to create. An interactive one would take even longer.
b) prohibitivly expensive.
c) FMV games are generally scorned by the public and press.
d) I always thought it was a bad idea to take a story and try to make a game out of it. Generally you end up with half baked ideas and a boring game.
e) I could keep going on and on

The point I'm trying to make is that this has been tried over and over and over and over and it has rarely ever succeded. IMHO, it's simply a Bad Idea.

--TheGoop
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If cities were built like software is built, the first woodpecker to come along would level civilization

Edited by - TheGoop on 3/28/00 9:33:08 AM