How about contributing instead of bitching...


LotF and similar scenarios are, on the surface, amazingly limited. Then again, The Sims is almost exactly the same game in a different context: ie social harmony among NPCs.

Personally, The Sims is child-freindly voyeurism subject to similar disgraceful attributes as soap operas. Watching soaps or plaging The Sims is an act of masochism.

So why do people watch/buy them in their millions?

A strictly literal adaptation of LotF would be Populus meets The Sims, a serious adaptation would be too intellectual for the mainstream, a mainstream adaptation would be ruined by silly Creatures-style discoveries or other cheap designs.

Forget it, but a Sim Civilisation hasn''t been done for caveman times onwards, the civilisation development games all start with some civilisation in place. I think building one from scratch would be wonderful if done right, but to do it properly would be largely for hardcore sim life fans.

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quote: Original post by Kugels
I have to read that book.

But I don''t see what a book can do that a computer game can''t.

It is not that a computer game can''t do the same thing, it just needs to be done in a different manner.

quote: Original post by walkingcarcass
No offence, mate, but that is a ridiculous comment. You might as well say plays and films are the same.

Sorry, I know you said no offence, but I feel a need to defend myself on this one.
Your analogy doesn''t work.
A book is just a subset of what a game can be. A film is not a subset of what a play can be, it is a SUPERset. A film can reproduce a play(well, not the ones that interact with the audience, but the vast majority of them). A game can essentially BE a book. Look at the old text adventures.

Granted, a lot of these things would not be fun when translated into a game, but don''t try to tell me that a medium which can display text can''t reproduce the effects of reading a book...
THAT seems rediculous to me.

If you want to prove me wrong, all you need to do is come up with a counterexample. Just name something a book can do that can''t be done in a computer game. I just need more convincing than a bad analogy gives.

walkingcarcass, you took my point away!

I was just going to say that in The Sims, all you really do is make a house, talk to people, and get a job (not counting the expansion packs). So, why do people find it so enjoyable? I think a game like this could offer so much more. When I mentioned a LotF game, I was thinking more of a cross between The Sims and Black and White. You have to constantly deal with organizing a society, managing island resources, attemping to get saved, etc... If there were multiple islands in the game (lets say you discover/get stranded on another island while trying to leave the first, for example), the game could have a surprising amount of variety. Imagine if the second island was bigger, and there were more kids/people stranded there. The governments could progress, and maybe you could eventually form a civilization. If there were females on the other island, the civilization could grow. Maybe this whole game could take place on a ring of islands, and over the course of 100 years or so, it could be a very well-developed civilization.

Can anyone else think of ways in which such a game could develop?

yahrr i m in it now! sorry, KaMiKaZ. apologies too for polluting your game design thread with this ego battle but here comes the next round...

okay, Kugels, i accept your challenge. first a couple of "facts"

1) early films were basically recorded plays. eventually they evolved into a completely different form which is only superficially similar. at this point the parent/child relationship has ceased to exist; neither is a subtype or supertype of each other, the ways they work are fundamentally diffenent

2) games started out as little toys, then -not so much evolved but matured- into the typical arcady beat-em-up/race type games. recently they have begun to evolve in a story-telling medium

computer games did not go off on a tangent from already existing games, in order to develop they have had to start from scratch, and, having nothing appropiate to evolve FROM, have had to steal methods from eg film and books.

writing is an art perfected over hundreds of years, pace and admosphere are expertly created by psychological means - inducing emotion by description. language has a voice of it''s own, even the speed of vowels can be manipulated for atmosphere.

computer games negate almost all this as the atmosphere is entirely audio-visual, the only time imagination is used is when our questions aren''t answered or we think things like "wouldn''t it be geat if i could drive that tank..."

the point being the means of delivery are so radically different it is IMPOSSIBLE to do in one what you can in the other, at best the overall effect is similar. this is why stories in games are so often weak, noone knows how to do it properly, certianly not me and neither do you. unless you''re a clever writer AND game designer whose figured out how to bridge the gap you have no place claiming one peg fits in the other''s hole.

quote: Granted, a lot of these things would not be fun when translated into a game, but don''t try to tell me that a medium which can display text can''t reproduce the effects of reading a book...

Books run into hundreds of pages, if you only have one sentance on screen, you can only have one sentance''s worth of information and emotion. Even if that sentance is as high a quality as a good book. Then you have to worry about pace, timing, context blah blah blah

If you can (or show me someone who can) condense David Copperfield or Harry Potter into a couple of thousand words for a game WITHOUT LOSING ANYTHING WHICH MAKES THEM GOOD BOOKS then i will submit defeat, bow loftily and mumble apologies.
THAT seems rediculous to me.

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A Problem Worthy of Attack
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hehe, all right here goes(maybe I should have started a new thread instead of hijacking this one...)

* "the ways they(film and plays) work are fundamentally different"
This is arguable, but doesn''t realy have much to do with my point anyway.

* "the means of delivery are so radically different it is IMPOSSIBLE to do in one what you can in the other, at best the overall effect is similar."
I might point to text adventures where the means of delivery are nearly identical. Anyway, one can point to examples where games have been well-paced, emotional, left things to your imaginaton, etc.

I agree that Harry Potter or something couldn''t be condensed much and still retain all its value, but why does it have to be condensed?

All right, lets see about a few of the specifics mentioned:
* pacing - This has been done. Timing of cutscenes, placement of enemies/events, etc.
* atmosphere - Grim Fandango, Half-Life, No One Lives Forever...
* language - Harder to come up with an example, but whenever a character talks there is a chance to use it. And I guess there is no reason that a game couldn''t have text descriptions of things appear, or narration.
* imagination - things don''t have to be audio-visual, but even if they are much can be done to make the player use imagination. Make it too dark to see, something happening off-screen, only sounds...hehe, how about the guy with the briefcase you saw all over the place in Half-Life?


we''ll probably just end up agreeing to disagree...

If you think about it, all games only allow you to interact at a physical level with the game world, in that you can move, shoot etc. There has yet to be a significant game where social interaction has been implemented to any level of realism. For example, imagine a game with goals like "persuade X to join your group", "make X suspicious of Y but be careful they don''t notice your lying". I can''t even comprehend how you would do such a game at the moment, but it would be a *massive* step forward in computer games and AI.

Kugels - yes a computer game can display text...even sorta simulate the reading of a book (everything but the tactile feeling of haveing a book in hand and physicaly turning the pages)...but this IS NOT THE POINT

a computer game can simulate much of the media of books, films, etc...but it cannot always reproduce the contex in which those other forms are most effective.

Lord of the Flies, at the surface level, seems to tell a story about a group of boys trapped alone on a small island...but this is only the surface level...virtualy everything in the book is a symbol for something outside the context of the imeadiant story...Through such symbolisam the surface story paints a much larger picture that deals with much bigger issues then the story itself seems to describe...In effect, the story (through the use of symbolisam) is a allegory or parable, describeing a complex idea or concept in "lay-mans terms".

Every medium (games, books, films, plays) has certain things that it can do that no other medium can...a cook book doesn''t directly translate into an effective film, play, or even game...just like a game like Tetris, can''t translate into a film, or book and still have the same net effect.

Books have the ellement of liesure...you can read them at your own pace. you can read a scentence, pause, and think about its deeper meenings...Films, Plays, and to some extent games are time basied...one moment after the other with no way to reflect on anything until after the film, play, game is completed....you can pause a game, even save it....but you can''t go back "three scentances", if you feel the need to re-read them for better understanding.

You can do this with video and DVDs...but symbolisam doesn''t work so will in the film medium...simply because the images seen on screen are not the same as those seen in your mind as you read...symbolisam works best in books because your mind is drawing the pictures...it works best because written language is really symbolic notation of larger ideas (meenings of words, etc..) which meens that in order to understand what is written, your mind is already working with symbols, generateing links to others, and generaly pieceing "the picture together" on it''s own...with films your mind has to tear the incomeing information down into such chunks before "symbolic links" can be found (which is partly why films that do have symbolisam are often slow, as they allow the viewer the time to stop and think of the meening of a particular situation).

Speaking of blood-thirsty kids on isolated islands... Has anyone seen the Japanese ultra-splatter movie Battle Royale?

sigh... I could go through that post and say how all those things have been done by games already...but I''m tired of arguing.

back to all I really ever wanted to say: I think you could make a very interesting game/simulation based on Lord of the Flies.