Interactive film

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Interactive movies (engl. Interactive movie ) form a computer game genre , in which the game scenes entirely from full motion video exist, either as a cartoon or as live action . The term is also used to denote games - mostly computer role-playing games - that place a heavy emphasis on cutscenes and plot at the expense of gameplay .

Origin and history

The genre emerged with the introduction of the laser disc and the associated playback devices, which were the first video playback devices to offer random access . Because a laser disc player could jump to any chapter on the disc at any time (instead of playing it back in a straight line from start to finish like the tape on a video cassette ), games with branching storylines could be constructed from video chapters, much like a game book depending on chosen decision is jumped from side to side.

Interactive films were thus filmed with real actors (later also rendered with 3D models ) and basically followed a set course of action. Alternative scenes were filmed in order to be triggered after wrong (or alternatively permitted) decisions by the player (for example "game over" scenes).

An early attempt to link video to computer games was Rollercoaster , written in BASIC for the Apple II by David Lubar on behalf of David H. Ahl , editor of Creative Computing magazine . It was a text adventure that could trigger the playback of excerpts from the movie roller coaster ( Rollercoaster , 1977) on a laser disc player . The program was written in 1981 and published in the January 1982 edition of Creative Computing. At the same time there was an article by Lubar, in which the development of the game was described, and an article by Ahl, who described Rollercoaster as the first combination of video and computer game and proposed a theory of video / computer interactivity.

The first commercial interactive movie game was the arcade game Dragon's Lair in the year 1983 , the basis of a full-motion - Animation of previously at Disney hired animator Don Bluth formed. In this game, the player could determine some of the main character's decisions. If she was in danger, it was up to the player to decide which move or action or combination to choose. If he made the wrong decision, he was shown a "lost a life" scene at a time until he found the right path that would allow him to see the rest of the story. There was only one successful storyline in Dragon's Lair ; the interactivity for the player was just guessing which decision the designers intended to be the right one. Despite this lack of interactivity, Dragon's Lair was very popular.

The hardware for these games consisted of a laser disc player connected to a processor , whose interface software assigned a chapter jump function to each of the buttons on the game controller at each decision point. Comparable to the instructions in a game book of the type “If you go to the left, read on on page 7. If you go to the right, continue on on page 8”, the controller for games like Dragon's Lair or Cliff Hanger was programmed to do this The next chapter in the story was chosen if the player pressed the correct button, or the death chapter if it was the wrong one. Since the laser disc players of the time were not robust enough for the constant use of arcades, they often had to be replaced. The laser discs with the movie scenes were ordinary laser discs with no special properties, apart from the order of the chapters, and could be played in any normal laser disc player. They are sought-after collectibles these days.

Several interactive film games based on laser discs used the Dragon's Lair format , although there were certain variations. Space Ace , produced the following year by the same company with the same animator, added branching paths to the formula, so that there were several "correct decisions" at certain points in the animation, and the player's decision influenced the arrangement of the later scenes. Since Dragon's Lair and Space Ace were extremely popular, they were followed by a flood of sequels and similar games, even though the animation was astronomically expensive. In order to reduce costs, several companies assembled scenes from animes , which were largely unknown to the American audience at the time, into games. This is how games like Cliff Hanger (with scenes from the Lupine III films The Castle of Cagliostro and Mystery of Mamo ) and Bega's Battle (with scenes from Armageddon ) were created.

In the early 1990s produced American Laser Games numerous live action - Lightgun -Laserdisc games that are very similar to the previous games were played, but a light gun used to influence the course ( Mad Dog McCree ) . Compared to the cartoon-like competitors, the cinematic clearly stood out and promised a new form of realism, which was not to come true, but which at this point failed to ignore weaknesses in play and staging.

When CD-ROM drives appeared in personal computers , real- life games with actors were considered very contemporary. The interactive films that were made during this period include the games Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective , Tex Murphy , Phantasmagoria or Gabriel Knight (which are viewed as adventures in contrast to Dragon's Lair ) . Braindead 13 and Star Wars: Rebel Assault appeared in the genre of action games . In the series offshoots Privateer 2 , Wing Commander 3 , Wing Commander 4 and Wing Commander: Prophecy, the space flight simulation Wing Commander , in particular, relied on real sets and cinematic cutscenes in addition to combat missions in order to stage the scenes and advance the plot.

Due to the limited storage capacity and the large amount of time and cost of production, only a few variants and alternative scenes were filmed for possible decisions by the player, which meant that the games tended to offer little freedom and variety in gameplay . Once they were played through, there was no motivation to play again.

For these reasons and due to the availability of much more flexible 3D graphics , interactive films were quickly forgotten. Their legacy is found in the form of the full-motion video cutscenes that have appeared in many computer games. It should also be noted that the specification of the DVD format in the late 1990s included the ability to play interactive games such as Dragon's Lair (or such games as bonus material on movie DVDs). Dragon's Lair was re-released on DVD. These days, games like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire are increasingly featured on DVDs for younger audiences.

The term “interactive film” was also used in the 2005 adventure Fahrenheit by Quantic Dream , which included Heavy Rain (2010), Beyond: Two Souls (2013) and Detroit: Become Human (2018). In these games, the plot and the experience of the story are in the foreground, while the puzzles play a subordinate role. In return, the actions of the player actively influence the narrative and the outcome of the game. By motion capture Quantic Dreams felt from Beyond: Two Souls its main characters live actors such. B. Ellen Page and William Dafoe . Beyond: Two Souls is, besides LA Noire and Late Shift, the only video game that was presented at a film festival.

Telltale Games followed a similar approach with his adventure production The Walking Dead , the concept of which was copied many times by the studio and transferred to other productions. It stipulated that the player had to make decisions in certain key scenes that had an impact on the narrative and partly also on the successors. At Telltale, too - in a mixture of interactive film and Choose Your Own Adventure - puzzles largely took a back seat in favor of the narrative. After the success of The Walking Dead , however, the studio failed to develop its concept further and left the further development to other competitors. Instead, Dontnod Entertainment released Life Is Strange, its own title in the interactive film genre, in 2015 . The positive response from the fan base led to the publication of the pre-story Life Is Strange: Before the Storm , the successor Life Is Strange 2 and the accompanying prologue The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit . Netflix released the interactive film Bandersnatch in 2018 .

literature

  • Bernard Perron: Chapter 22: Genre Profile: Interactive Movies . In: Mark JP Wolf (Ed.): The video game explosion: a history from PONG to Playstation and beyond . ABC-CLIO, 2008, ISBN 978-0-313-33868-7 , pp. 127-133 ( online view ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.polygon.com/red-dead-redemption/2018/10/25/18016616/mad-dog-mccree-gaming-western
  2. ↑ https://www.wired.com/2010/01/mad-dog-mccree-wii/
  3. ↑ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/09/21/telltale-games-reports-shutting-down/
  4. ↑ https://www.gamestar.de/videos/das-ende-von-telltale-wie-sich-ein-geniales-studio-selbst-ruinierte,97395.html