Pixar: Games quality is catching cinema

[Bodhesatva]

DTG said:

Bodhesatva said:

mrstickball said:
I think Pixar trying to tell games to be more movie-driven is stupid. I don't think a 2-hr Wall-E narrative is really going to cut it on a 30 hour game, no? Games are bigger, and better than movie ever could hope to be when it comes to character development, plot, and 1,000 other areas.

Pixar is just jealous that more and more people are staying home playing better games than the crap that's churned out that are most movie.

And if Pixar wants to attack the gaming industry, don't you think they themselves should be mandating more narrative in their games like Cars, and Toy Story? I mean, you can complain all you want, but your not making things any better for the gaming industry despite "having better narrative" in the movies you have.

 

Stick, where did this come from and did we read the same thing?

Rather than bring up every point I disagree with here, I'd just point out that Pixar isn't saying that games should be more like movies, they're saying they should be less like them; that is, games will not flourish as a vehicle for narrative, but instead are growing into their own, as a medium with extreme interactive potential (whereas movies are entirely based on narrative, and have no interactive potential at all). They specifically point out how well games are doing and how they're growing (where did you get the notion that they were complaining about games? The whole article is about them complementing games and how far they've come) to become their own medium, separate from movies.

Again, pretty much the only complaint they make is that games aren't suitable for narrative devices. Everything else they say is complimentary. I have no idea how you turned this blurb from Pixar into an insult, because it's certainly intended as a compliment.

“Not just a set-up that you jump in to, but a narrative story in which the player is an active participant. I’ve had this conversation with friends now for almost a decade on how you could actually do that with a video game.

“Unfortunately, although I think there would be a market for that, I don’t think the market would be large enough.”

bolded; keyword.

He like every other sane, educated person wishes for deeper narrative in video games.

 

 That isn't what that sentence means. Let me rephrase it for you:

"While there would be a market for that, unforunately, I don't think the market would be large enough."

A propos, for those who are familiar with the English language, the word "unforunately" in this sentence is an adverb without a direct antecedent. In such cases, we assume that the antecedent is referred to in the sentence even if it is not directly proceeding the adverb; the only possible object available is "available market," which is you.

Put more simply, it is much more likely that "unfortunately" applies to the market, not to the speaker himself. Meaning that it is unfortunate for the interested market that they are too much a minority to warrant significant economic investment for future development beyond what is already available.

Which certainly is a position that is validated by the data available on this site. Games driven by narrative a, on the whole, stagnant; there have been no new major single player focused experiences (say, over 5 million copies sold) since Grand Theft Auto III, save Assassin's Creed. Many of the most notable franchises in this style are shrinking (Final Fantasy and Metal Gear, for example, are approximately half the size they were just a decade ago, all while costs have continued to increase). Again, his position is certainly warranted; and it is unfortunate that you were unable to correctly understsand the assumed meaning. Correct attribution of adverbial and gerundive forms is challenging, however.