Zoned in

Videogames making strides to step beyond the gaming platforms

By Michael Lafferty

 

The key lies in what elements leave the videogame world, and what are left behind

 

Little surprise at the recent Comic-Con Convention in San Diego that several game publishers were in attendance. After all, they were there to show off licensed products and to hopefully lure in another wave of players from the fans that attended the convention.

 

Of course, NCsoft was there not only to show it's product but as a viable part of the comic book crowd. NCsoft’s City of Heroes has bucked a trend between motion picture properties and the videogame industry, and actually has tossed its cyber hat into a new ring by producing a comic book based on its massively multiplayer online world.

 

 

The comic is available to subscribers to the game, is distributed through Diamond Comic Distributors, produced by Blue King Studios and written by Rick Dakan, one of the original designers of CoH. The artwork is by Brandon McKinney (Switchblade Honey and Planet of the Capes) and colored by Moose Bauman (Action Comics and Green Lantern).

 

It is refreshing in a day when licensed products spill over into the videogame industry and is commonplace that the videogame industry is generating its own multi-media lore. Ragnar Tørnquist penned a novel (Prophet Without Honor) based in the realm of Anarchy Online. R.A. Salvatore is heading a project to bring Norrath to novel life through a series of published tales.

 

Warcraft has had novels by authors Christie Golden (Lord of the Clans) and Richard Knaak (Warcraft #1: Day of the Dragon). Knaak penned two Diablo novels (Diablo: The Kingdom of Shadow and Diable: The Legacy of Blood), and a third novel chronicled adventures in the Diablo realm – Mel Odom’s Diablo: The Black Road. And yes, Blizzard’s Diablo series has even received comic book treatment with Dark Horse Comics’ Diablo Comic: Tales of Sanctuary.

 

There have been many licensed products that recently have made the transition into the videogame genre, some with mixed results. From the Riddick universe came an outstanding title. Shrek yielded a first game that was not that well received, but the second game was a lot of fun to play. The Spider-Man films have gotten progressively better, as have the games derived from the movies. But counter that with Halle Berry’s latest motion picture, Catwoman. The games that have come out of that property have been receiving less than stellar reviews. The movie itself was ranked third in the box office standings on its opening weekend, but in Tuesday’s daily grosses (according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.), it has slipped to fourth place behind The Bourne Supremacy, I, Robot and Spider-Man 2.

 

There have been a couple of attempts to move the world of videogames to the big screen. While Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a stellar attempt at creating a full-length motion picture with computer-generated actors, the movie failed to spawn that new generation of motion pictures. Lara Croft’s attempt to escape the cyber world was not as stunning a success as the once-coveted franchise would have liked.

 

Once-coveted? Well, has the game franchise truly produced a must-have title since then? Todd McFarlane’s Spawn was a tremendous comic book, a so-so film, and the resulting games have been less than wonderful.

 

There have been countless examples where a major license has done well in the gaming world, but not as many cross-overs the other way. This is rather odd when you consider that the outpouring of talent and titles that takes place each year eclipses the motion picture and television industries and caters to a wider demographic range.

 

So what has made the difference in videogames breaking out of the gaming world and making a splash elsewhere? When a licensed product enters the videogame world, it is bringing in recognizable characters – after all, that is part of the license. You can’t make a SpongeBob SquarePants game without SpongeBob in it. WWE-licensed games have the recognizable wrestlers in it because they are what makes the WWE what it is.

 

But when you go back the other direction, you are dealing – essentially – with characters that are player-generated. Sam Fisher is a viable name in the gaming world, the star of the Tom Clancy Splinter Cell series would suffer in a big-screen treatment because he is so well-known by each individual game player. If you have 100,000 gamers well versed in the Splinter Cell games, you may well have 100,000 disagreements about how Sam would handle a certain situation. Therefore any motion picture starring Sam Fisher would have built-in critics before the first scene was shot.

 

It boils down to the fact that gamers build up images in their minds of what a character would be, and how they would react. Pre-fabricated characters, in licensed products, carry no such perceptions.

 

When the CoH comic book hit mailboxes, it was a delightful surprise. It was grounded in the lore of the game, but the central characters – Apex, War Witch and Horus – do not appear in the game and thus are not bound by preconceptions of the players. The novels that have launched build on the familiar but introduce characters with no preconceived notions about how they would react.

 

This is what the videogame market needs to do –simply because the worlds and back-lore found in these games are compelling and will appeal to those who may not otherwise be exposed save by adventuring to venues like Comic-Con, or perhaps reading about the adventures in the wondrous lands in novels.