Another lecture and another lecture..rer, Bill! An Australian, awesome! :)
Unfortunately he went off on too many tangents for me to keep up with and I'm not sure specifically what the lecture was about or the main point of it? He got into a flow at the end talking about games and film but the beginning I was a bit confused.
I was surprised at his opinion on the Truman show as I studied this show as part of GCSE and liked the movie :) although fair enough it has a kind of grim back story to it that this person's life is completely being controlled around them and using fear to not let him escape etc.
Picked up on other things he explained such as tromploy(sp?) which is a trick of the eye such as special effects or illusions and that modern superheroes no longer just have their power they have to upgrade themselves such as ironman.
I think one of the main points of the lecture was the revolution of movie making over time from perspective being discovered(during renaissance which was interesting to discover aswell as that it started the drive towards realism in painting which was then liberated my photography) to mastering the technique of editing as it didn't use to exist! Same scenes were repeated twice to show from different angles! Shocking to me! :) I'm used to modern big movies of course.
Directing action at camera led to interactivity, cross-cutting introduced, closeups introduced, two lines of action introduced which eventually converges(still used in big movies such as Inception).
An interesting ending debate he presented was about games, if they can master the narrative and gameplay. Something I've never considered particularly, well, yes I have noticed if a game lacks story or the gameplay is crap but never considered them as conflicting things. He gave the examples of space invaders as a strictly gameplay game and dragon's lair as narrative.
As he spoke of these I thought to my favourite series of Final Fantasy games, such as Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy VII both with big stories and popular games, however he also began to tell that cutscenes were introduced and act as a separate thing. The gameplay now gets in the way which thinking about it is true as I played through these games to complete the story mainly. But that is what I play an RPG for :) a good story and a good game.
Optional actions was then introduced so people could optionally choose and be more interactive about the story to improve the gameplay and interactivity. He used the example of heavy rain which allows u to enter commands during cutscenes. I'm surprised he didn't mention Fable as a side part of this as how u play influences ur character and the story which is interlinking gameplay and the story.
Even more so when he spoke of cutscenes I thought of half-life and how they merge gameplay and story really well. Although.....I can't say that from much experience as the game creeped me out and never played it! :D Played counter strike instead :D But! in half-life there are no cutscenes, instead the characters start talking to you and the story progresses around you. Such as I remember a scene in a room the character asks you to go into the teleporter and carries on chatting to you as you go in and they start to fire up the machine, then things start going wrong around you. It's all happening like a cutscene but you stay in the first person mode and then continue on with the gameplay.
A very interesting conflict to consider when playing games :)
Game makers main goal recently seems to be interactivity with games such as singstar, guitar hero, nintendo wii, all requiring movement to influence the game.
Bill finished (prematurely as he had gone overtime! :P) with statements on the power of film and the power of games.
Power of film - There is nothing we can do about it, what happens, happens!
Power of game - Interactivity, busy and your influence.
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