One-Liner: Power of the Medium

BY Michael Ubaldi  //  January 3, 2011

Whither the big screen?

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early four months ago, Adam Bogert suggested that video games might aspire literarily, and here Moon director Duncan Jones sees Blizzard's World of Warcraft as canon befitting cinema. "[It] could be the launch of computer games as good films," Jones enthused in an interview, confident of Blizzard's contractor, Sam Raimi. "It's what I was talking about — it's not worrying about how the game plays, it's about creating the world of the game and investing the audience in that world."

What size audience? Eleven million? Warcraft already enjoys one, and at no cost to its narrative served through an idiom of quests, dungeons, and head-to-head battlegrounds.

Returning to Mass Effect 2 this weekend for the first time in several months, I paused to consider the game's appeal — popularly hailed as "cinematic." Could the character of Commander Shepard step onto the big screen? Effortlessly. And even if BioWare's writing staff didn't boast screenplay credits, the caliber of its work would fool you, me and a film critic. But operative to the brand extension is the word "adaptation," and that means telescoping forty hours of the actual experience provided by the Mass Effect series — compelling NPC interaction, challenges of exploration, exciting shooter sequences — into a strictly visual procession no longer than one hundred eighty minutes. Doubt enters the question of whether the original content survives translation.

If BioWare or Blizzard — or other major developers — want more money, shouldn't they simply design and release another game?

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