As game genres go, interactive movies suck. Probably less popular than text adventures, interactive movies, which enjoyed a brief period of popularity on early laserdisc (and then early CD-ROM platforms) of home entertainment systems, were poorly made, poorly executed and ultimately unsatisfactory..
It's no surprise that no one makes them anymore.
Or is that it? Is technology more suitable now, with Blu-ray discs and portable media devices like the iPad? Could it be that those pretty awful games of the late '80s and early '90s were pioneering a form of gaming that the technology of the time wasn't suited to?
And is that technology available now?
One man who thinks so is Tim Follin, an independent audio producer who produced soundtracks for games like Bionic Commando, Ghouls and Ghosts, Solstice, Equinox, Plok, Rock 'n' Roll Racing, and others in the 1980s/90s before. to move to Compose for 32-bit consoles and now works in commercial TV production..
To bring the project to life, Tim has successfully gotten backing on Kickstarter (though far from being one of the top 5 most successful campaigns. 5 of the most successful Kickstarter projects. 5 of the most successful Kickstarter projects. Definitely Kickstarter has changed the world by allowing regular Joes to finance the development and production of creative projects they care about, while also helping creatives get around typical venture capitalists, expensive bank loans, or soul destruction. .. Read More) to bring together a group of excellent actors.
The idea of contradiction is simple. It is an interactive detective drama that you play on your tablet. However, unlike the usual multiple choice interactive gaming experience, Tim has designed the game so that the player is looking for a contradiction (hence the name) to help them solve the puzzle, rather than the branching format used in many adventure games, both on computers and in the old Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 1980s (a literary genre that has found new life on iOS. Love interactive fiction? Fill your iPad or iPhone with text &Adventures Do you like fiction?) Fill your iPad or iPhone with text &adventures Are you interested in interactive fiction or text adventures? Then you'll want to download these apps for your iPhone or iPad. Read more).
“The characters give you evidence that you can collect, which might include three or four points, and one of them will contradict another point they gave you by talking about something else. So you try to see where they are lying. When you combine two parts of conflicting statements, you get a sequence where they admit they basically lied, and why, and that gives you more information.”
It is this information that allows the player to proceed while uncovering the entire conspiracy surrounding the Atlas.
Here's the Kickstarter movie that helped raise the game's £3000 budget, in which Tim explains in more detail how the game works.
Interactive movies have had a somewhat dismal history. Also known as movie games, they were a key element of Laserdisc's first wave of home entertainment centers, which allowed for non-linear gameplay. This meant that a plot could be followed through the branching system Tim was talking about, as the player made a selection and jumped to the corresponding chapter on the disc.
The 1983 arcade game Dragon's Lair was one of the first popular examples of an interactive movie on Laserdisc, but despite strong production values (the characters were animated by former Disney artist Don Bluth) as Tim points out, “One of the problems was the search time. [With] Dragon's Lair, you press the button and nothing happens. So you watch some video.”
A sequel to Cinematronics' Dragon's Lair was Space Ace, with both games being released on home computers and consoles. Such was their popularity that they spawned a series of interactive games but with a drastically reduced investment, the developers used (then) the Anime movies and cut them up to form a game.
During the 1990s, the genre underwent a mini-renaissance with the advent of the CD-ROM and later DVD-ROM, thanks in part to devices such as the Panasonic/Sanyo 3DO, Philips CD-I, SEGA CD, Commodore CDTV, and the smallest friend. CD32. Notable additions include The X-Files:The Game on 7 CDs for Windows and PlayStation, but improvements in computer graphics and lack of direct interaction with the game lead to a decline.
So why does Tim think the time is right for a revival?
“It was originally an audio game,” says Tim, “We knew at the time that the ideal home would be a phone, but the iPhone hadn't been invented yet. It became a video thing to be played on the desktop. Once again the technology wasn't there so we left it for quite some time and I forgot about it.
“With the advent of the iPad, it seemed like something that would be ideal.”
You can see Tim's point, although the platform is not without its challenges. Over twenty years ago, Tim worked on various 8-bit platforms, producing music for various games, but since then he hasn't spent much time programming.. “I thought I'd have to learn programming all over again! I looked around and saw that people were now developing on HTML5, and it's flexible enough to run on a desktop in the Chrome browser and it works fine and looks great. The problem is when you come to run it on the iPad, it looks good, but the power is not there, there are problems with it.”
If HTML5 doesn't work, Tim has an experienced iPad developer lined up to "finish it" but he seems pretty happy with the game as is. "It's not far from completion, we'd like to shoot a little extra scene for the end."
By taking the traditional fork aspect of the interactive movie game out of the equation, Tim Follin has been able to focus on producing a more cohesive story. As with any strong adventure game, the script is very important. “It took me about a year to put a script together, writing as a hobby... the story I ended up with wasn't even my favorite, I had a few at the time.
“It's all based on the idea that people lie, so you have to have a web of lies, which was the hardest part from a writing standpoint. I worked backwards to create the story, and this was the only one that launched enough liars, with enough reasons to lie throughout the story..”
Contradiction stars Rupert Booth as the player character, a detective named Jenks, with Paul Darrow and John Guilor as Paul and Ryan Ran, the leading villains of Atlas, the cult-type training company. Melanie Gray, Magnus Sinding, Ellen Chivers, Stephen Mosley, Anarosa De Eizaguirre Butler, Daniel Alfieri and Chris Jackson also appear.
Here is the trailer:
With a small budget, Tim had hoped to use a very limited script that would be embellished when they came to shoot. “Originally, I just had a long document that described the scenes, and there was no real dialogue, and I thought maybe I should have actors who can improvise, but he can't do that, he just doesn't have the time, so I had to write something. ”
He notes that the script could be better, noting that "at worst, it's functional," but is saved by the quality of the actors..
Tim has talked a lot about the iPad, but this isn't the only platform he has in mind for Contradiction. There are various challenges, design and hardware, that you have to deal with. For example, with iPhone, "I'll have to change the interface since a lot of this is reading text on the screen." In the meantime, there is the Android question.
“The problem is that the technology is not there, but my wife's Hudl demo is hopeless. This is the problem, the video is very intensive to process... I'm not sure about the Samsung ones. Some androids let you play the video, but you can't put overlays on it.” Overlays are integral to progressing through the game, so Tim's concerns here are understandable, and this shortcoming is most likely the result of Android fragmentation. "It will probably have to be limited to larger tablets." Tim also plans to make the game available for Windows and Mac OS X.
Set for release in the second half of 2014, Contradiction features intriguing gameplay, a slightly sinister atmosphere, and some excellent performances from the actors. From what I've seen, there's enough here to revive the interactive movie genre!
Remember the previous waves of interactive movies? Do you remember them fondly or do you think it's a genre that should stay buried? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
(Interested in learning more? The recording of this interview was released as a podcast with Tim Follin and John Guilor.)
