Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and the Love all Things Tech. It is a Friday,
Speaker 1: so it's time for a classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: This episode originally published on August four, two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: It is titled the Full Motion Video Era Home Gaming.
Speaker 1: So last week we did a full motion video classic
Speaker 1: about arcade games. This one's about home video games. If
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with full motion video, these are games
Speaker 1: that incorporated live action video into the games themselves, to
Speaker 1: varying degrees of effectiveness and hilarity. So let's listen in
Speaker 1: on this classic episode. We're not covering every single imp
Speaker 1: title because oh no, certainly not they were. There were
Speaker 1: definitely a lot of them, and many of them honestly
Speaker 1: not worth our time, and some of them were you know,
Speaker 1: kind of never really heard or seen from again, like
Speaker 1: stuff that either got released but barely was was adopted
Speaker 1: at all. So we're just really concentrating on the really
Speaker 1: famous ones, particularly some that some of our listeners have
Speaker 1: asked about, including this one from sewer Shark sewer Shark. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: This this was for the three D O eventually a
Speaker 1: CD which had come out, I believe in that was
Speaker 1: what we decided. And uh, one of the earliest console
Speaker 1: games to use FMV, maybe the first one. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you're you're flying as a You're playing as a pilot
Speaker 1: who flies a ship that flies through sewers. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: set in a post apocalyptic future where everybody's moved underground,
Speaker 1: but there are rumors that there are some places above
Speaker 1: ground that could still be habitable, but the government is
Speaker 1: very much about, you know, keeping those rumor under under check.
Speaker 1: And you play a pilot who's trying to find um
Speaker 1: well one, trying to fight this kind of totalitarian government
Speaker 1: and to trying to get to the surface. And so
Speaker 1: you had all these sequences where you were flying through
Speaker 1: pipes and that was all full motion video stuff, and
Speaker 1: you really uh kind of had sprites on top of
Speaker 1: the video that represented monsters that you had to shoot.
Speaker 1: So it's so in a way it was kind of
Speaker 1: similar to that previous game where you had the vector
Speaker 1: graphics crosshairs on top of the yeah, cobra command, So
Speaker 1: it's similar to that in that sense, except this time
Speaker 1: they were sprites, not vector graphics and yep, and you
Speaker 1: also had lots of full motion video with your your
Speaker 1: your compatriots as well as the villain, and they were
Speaker 1: all ridiculous, over the top hammy actors kind of kind
Speaker 1: of awesome. Yeah, we're both actually big fans at that
Speaker 1: school of acting, I think. Yeah, I mean, if it's
Speaker 1: if it's done knowingly, it can be it can be
Speaker 1: a real blast, but even unknowingly it can be kind
Speaker 1: of a sort of a charming train wreck. Yes, yes, oh,
Speaker 1: I mean, and so much so that Sega decided to
Speaker 1: ship it along with their Sega CD system. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this was one of those games that actually was pretty popular,
Speaker 1: only in the sense that people who bought the Sega
Speaker 1: c D system also got a copy of Sewer Shark.
Speaker 1: A listeners DJ and Daniel, both on Facebook asked us
Speaker 1: to mention this one. Yeah, so thanks very thanks for
Speaker 1: reading in guys. Now here's another game that I played
Speaker 1: a little bit, The Seventh Guest, which was a kind
Speaker 1: of a mystery game. It had a lot of puzzles
Speaker 1: that were sort of missed like in nature, like, uh
Speaker 1: I remember one specific puzzle you're you are presented with
Speaker 1: a cake, and the cake has tombstones and skulls on it,
Speaker 1: and some pieces of the cake don't have either tombstones
Speaker 1: or skulls. And you have to remove five pieces of
Speaker 1: cake at a time. They have to be consecutive, they
Speaker 1: had to touch each other, and each time you remove them,
Speaker 1: you have to have two tombstones, two skulls, and one
Speaker 1: piece of plain cake. So you had to figure out
Speaker 1: exactly how did you remove those so that you would
Speaker 1: get all the cake removed, you wouldn't be stuck. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like those puzzles you would see where you'd
Speaker 1: have you know, uh, like in a do you know
Speaker 1: what you're just shaking your head over now, I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm just that sounds like the worst puzzle ever. I
Speaker 1: that that sounds like the kind of puzzle that I
Speaker 1: happened upon sometimes in video games and just go maybe
Speaker 1: I would like to go read a book. I I
Speaker 1: think of the puzzles that you would find in Uh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a regional reference for some of
Speaker 1: you guys out there. A cracker barrel, Yeah, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, the little wooden triangle where you have
Speaker 1: the pegs and you have to try and make the
Speaker 1: pegs jump each other until you're only left with one peg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like that. They had other puzzles to
Speaker 1: not just that one, but they also had all these
Speaker 1: live video segments where there were other it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be people who had attended a party at h
Speaker 1: this house years ago, and you are incounter ring the remnants.
Speaker 1: They're they're kind of psychological imprints. Okay. Yeah, so sort
Speaker 1: of like a murder mystery dinner party, except everyone is
Speaker 1: already dead. Yeah, and you're you're the one solving the mystery.
Speaker 1: Um and and the acting was pretty pretty spectacularly awful.
Speaker 1: If you have ever attended a like cringe worthy murder
Speaker 1: mystery dinner theater type thing, that's what this was in
Speaker 1: video game form. Uh. Still kind of charming, but definitely
Speaker 1: I'll show you some video after this podcast is over
Speaker 1: so you can appreciate it. But well, we'll try to.
Speaker 1: We'll try, by the way, to put video of as
Speaker 1: many of these as we can up on social media.
Speaker 1: The ones that are the ones that are socially acceptable.
Speaker 1: They sound they sound very charming. Yeah, this this next
Speaker 1: one not so much night trash. This one was also
Speaker 1: mentioned by a couple of our listeners on Facebook, Paul
Speaker 1: and Daniel, thank you guys for writing in about this one.
Speaker 1: It was it was a multi platform game. It was
Speaker 1: big enough that it was all over the places on Sega, C, D, three, D, O,
Speaker 1: Mac and PC. And it was a survival horror title,
Speaker 1: right yep. And it got got some attention from a
Speaker 1: little group called the United States Government. So this is
Speaker 1: right around the time when the US government was starting
Speaker 1: to get concerned about video games and the content inside them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what they were doing to our children. Um, which
Speaker 1: I I just dramatically overstated, because I think that it's
Speaker 1: a very dramatic overstatement that yeah, okay, I do believe
Speaker 1: in the rating system. And this is actually one of
Speaker 1: the games that helped create the ratiostom in a roundabout way,
Speaker 1: because people started saying, hey, uh, there's some slightly scandalous
Speaker 1: content on this. You're just selling it to any kid
Speaker 1: who walks in. That's kind of weird use, you know,
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat and Doom and stuff. We're Doom, Mortal Kombat
Speaker 1: and Night Trap. We're held up as examples of the
Speaker 1: won't someone please think of the children. We've got more
Speaker 1: to say about f MV games in the home gaming world.
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. So here's the thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: they the video game industry elected to create the s
Speaker 1: r B rating system because it meant that it kept
Speaker 1: the government out of doing it for them, because that
Speaker 1: was essentially what the government said was, you need to
Speaker 1: create a waiting or we will And they're like, well, whoa,
Speaker 1: we will totally do that because we don't want to
Speaker 1: have too much regulation in our industry because that hurts innovation,
Speaker 1: it hurts the developers. So here's the question. What exactly
Speaker 1: was going on with this game to make it so scandalous. Well,
Speaker 1: it was kind of creepy, you. Uh. The basis of
Speaker 1: the game was that there were these monsters called Augers
Speaker 1: that are kind of like vampires, right, and you are
Speaker 1: trying to capture them, and you're you're trying to view
Speaker 1: them remotely and secretly by using hidden cameras that are
Speaker 1: placed throughout a house. Coincidentally, that house is also playing
Speaker 1: host to a slumber party of young ladies, so a
Speaker 1: lot of the video involves you looking in on rooms
Speaker 1: that young ladies are in. There was no nudity in
Speaker 1: this game, by the way, the way it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it it got really pretty like Porky's
Speaker 1: esque really quickly. It wasn't. It wasn't that it didn't
Speaker 1: go that far. So there's no nudity in the game.
Speaker 1: But there were moments where you know, clearly it was
Speaker 1: trying to appeal to a more base level in people's nature.
Speaker 1: It was it was sexualized, and some parents realized that
Speaker 1: their kids had it, and then they had not really
Speaker 1: signed off on it. The yeah, I heard one of
Speaker 1: the game developers, uh defend this game by saying, look,
Speaker 1: you you're trying to save people here, that it's the
Speaker 1: option of the game is to after the bad guys,
Speaker 1: not to peep on people, and that you think, yeah,
Speaker 1: but the game mechanic is pretty much feeing on people.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I don't know how much you can
Speaker 1: defend it. But again, it wasn't like the most It
Speaker 1: seems tame in comparison now, especially when you look at
Speaker 1: the content that's in some games. You also have to
Speaker 1: keep in mind that by we're talking about folks who
Speaker 1: had been growing up with video games since the late
Speaker 1: seventies early eighties, and this is something we've seen in
Speaker 1: the industry overall, as gamers have aged, the content inside
Speaker 1: games has become more and more quote unquote mature. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and it makes sense because these are the people who
Speaker 1: are remaining customers of video games even as they get older.
Speaker 1: So I think that was also what we were seeing
Speaker 1: by by nine three, we're talking about a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were in their teenage years who had grown
Speaker 1: up playing video games like you know me, although at
Speaker 1: this point I was only going to be a teenager
Speaker 1: for a very short time. But there were some decidedly
Speaker 1: squeaky clean video games that included f m V out
Speaker 1: around that time. But let us not forget about missed
Speaker 1: a very popular game. It's incredibly popular game. It was
Speaker 1: the best selling PC game for nine years running. Um.
Speaker 1: It also came out and it wasn't a a heavily
Speaker 1: FMV based video game, but it did have that FMV element.
Speaker 1: It had some live action video that characters would interact
Speaker 1: with you through these these books that you would open
Speaker 1: and and you know, it was like talking through a portal,
Speaker 1: but the portal was a person person video. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and yeah it was. It was a darling in the market.
Speaker 1: It was a darling of reviewers. It is kind of
Speaker 1: credited with driving personal CD ROM sales and had sequels
Speaker 1: coming out for the next ten years plus. Uh. They
Speaker 1: started in with Riven and continued using fm V elements
Speaker 1: up through the fourth game in the series, Revelation, which
Speaker 1: was released all the way out in two thousand four.
Speaker 1: After two thousand four, I think that's when we started
Speaker 1: seeing graphics engines improving to the point where the luster
Speaker 1: was really taken off of f m V. It was
Speaker 1: a lot cheaper and easier and more beautiful to create
Speaker 1: animation for stuff like this. You would go with like
Speaker 1: a CG type thing that was procedurally generated. This, you know,
Speaker 1: depending upon the game, but you know, you could have
Speaker 1: games where you would have a CG scene and your
Speaker 1: character can move around and actually view it from different angles.
Speaker 1: Cut scenes are still largely fm V to some extent.
Speaker 1: But um but yeah, I agree that by that time
Speaker 1: we were starting to see the sophistication of the game
Speaker 1: engines themselves take over, where some of the less um
Speaker 1: appealing aspects of FMV were no longer a concern because
Speaker 1: you could you could work around it, you could do
Speaker 1: something else instead. Um You Missed was also one of
Speaker 1: those games that very quickly appealed to female gamers. Um
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why it was so popular and
Speaker 1: non gamers in general, people who wouldn't pick up normal
Speaker 1: video games because they were perhaps too fast paced or
Speaker 1: too violent, or too difficult on a learning curve kind
Speaker 1: of way to get used to the controls. Missed was
Speaker 1: it was a very basically controlled adventure, point and click
Speaker 1: sort of thing where all you had to do was
Speaker 1: was moved through an environment and solve puzzles, and it
Speaker 1: was a little bit less intimidating I think for your
Speaker 1: average human person. It was also really visually appealing and
Speaker 1: had great sounds, great soundscape. So it was one of
Speaker 1: those games where it appealed to people on a level
Speaker 1: that that basic you know, standard video games didn't like
Speaker 1: they weren't. It wasn't twitch based, you know, it was.
Speaker 1: It could be intimidating if you ran into a puzzle
Speaker 1: and you had literally had no idea how to even start.
Speaker 1: There were there were a couple of puzzles and in Missed,
Speaker 1: I did play and I do still love Missed. It's
Speaker 1: got a very dear place in my heart. Well, the
Speaker 1: next one has a dear place in my heart. Frankenstein
Speaker 1: through the eyes of the monster, and you play as
Speaker 1: Frankenstein's monster, who has a woman's hand. By the way,
Speaker 1: that's a big dramatic reveal in the very early part
Speaker 1: of the game. Goodness, this hand belongs to a woman.
Speaker 1: I'm not okay, I'm not sure how gendered hands are precisely,
Speaker 1: but you can tell because his other hand very different. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: you were playing as the monster, so you're seeing everything
Speaker 1: from the monster's perspective, so you only see any part
Speaker 1: of the monster if the monster puts it out in
Speaker 1: front of his face. Um, and you are trying to
Speaker 1: regain your lost memories. You have no memory of what
Speaker 1: you were before the experiment that brings you to life.
Speaker 1: Dr Frankenstein is played by Dr franken Further himself, Tim Curry.
Speaker 1: He choose scenery so hard in this in this game,
Speaker 1: he's one of my favorite scenery. Yeah, he's he's bonkers.
Speaker 1: Dr Frankenstein is. The first time you see him is
Speaker 1: when your your character's eyes open on the on the
Speaker 1: medical table and he's going on and about how he
Speaker 1: created life, and then he celebrates by injecting himself in
Speaker 1: the neck with something you assume morphine. But you don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, it's a it's if you do anything wrong,
Speaker 1: or you do enough wrong things, he shows up and
Speaker 1: kills you and then says something you know, like you have,
Speaker 1: very snarky and very British. So Tim Curry will appear
Speaker 1: again on this list because Tip Curry not a man
Speaker 1: to turn down a job. As its turns out. Um,
Speaker 1: I would not say that Frankenstein Through the Eyes of
Speaker 1: the Monster is a particularly good game. It was another
Speaker 1: puzzle game, another point and click puzzle game, very much
Speaker 1: like Missed, but with a very different you know, theme
Speaker 1: and tone to it. By point and click, we mean
Speaker 1: that you could just use a mouse to point. It's
Speaker 1: something that you wanted to either move towards or interact
Speaker 1: with and then just click to do that thing right.
Speaker 1: And so you It's one of those games where you
Speaker 1: had to figure out which thing is needed for whatever
Speaker 1: situation you were in. Uh. And depending upon the way
Speaker 1: the game was designed, you would either end up with
Speaker 1: the right result, no result, or with Frankenstein. You know,
Speaker 1: Tim Curry would kill you. Uh. There was a game
Speaker 1: called Ripper, which I first thought when I started watching
Speaker 1: the video that I owned the game, but then I
Speaker 1: realized I didn't own the game. I owned a CD
Speaker 1: that had Ripper as a preview, and it might have
Speaker 1: even been Frankenstein through the Eyes of the Monster now
Speaker 1: that I think of it. So this was another point
Speaker 1: and click game set in twenty and you are trying
Speaker 1: to solve a series of murders that mirror the Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper Murders Victorian England. But this one had some
Speaker 1: really all star actors in it. And we've We've got
Speaker 1: Christopher Walkin, John Frees Davies, Karen Allen and just married it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You're gonna rip lightning and corrap thunder. Yeah. Uh, you
Speaker 1: guys should be thankful I did Burgess Meredith and not
Speaker 1: Christopher Walkin because my walking impression is the worst thing
Speaker 1: in the world. But uh, and I love doing it.
Speaker 1: But you played, you know, this game, and you had
Speaker 1: to try and solve the murders. The preview to this
Speaker 1: is phenomenal, you guys. If you learn nothing from this
Speaker 1: podcast other than this, it'll still be worth it. Go
Speaker 1: to YouTube and look for the Ripper video game preview
Speaker 1: because also it features the music of one of the
Speaker 1: best bands in the world, Blue Oyster Cult, and uh,
Speaker 1: and their song Don't Fear the Reaper, which I also
Speaker 1: remember from that preview that I got on the c
Speaker 1: D where the Don't Fear the Reaper came on and
Speaker 1: I was immediately impressed. Then we have a game that
Speaker 1: I believe you played, Lauren. Yes, this was the X
Speaker 1: Files game. Yeah, we were mentioned this. I remember you.
Speaker 1: You brought this one up in the Worst Video Games
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, it's pretty high on my list. It
Speaker 1: was another point and click adventure. It came out for
Speaker 1: the PSX, the PlayStation one as some people might call it,
Speaker 1: and also the PC. And you you played as this
Speaker 1: FBI agent character that was invented Holly for the game,
Speaker 1: who defined Molder and Scully as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: Because it was really expensive and time consuming to get
Speaker 1: David to Coveney and Jillian Anderson to actually come shoot
Speaker 1: um and a bunch of the other characters from the show, Um,
Speaker 1: Mitch Pledge. I never learned how to say excellent as
Speaker 1: a d skinner. William B. Davis, who played the cigarette
Speaker 1: smoking Man, Stephen Williams who was Mr X, and the
Speaker 1: whole Smoking gun NERD trio for Hickey, Buyers and Langley
Speaker 1: all had small roles in this thing. This tells me
Speaker 1: where where in the X Files Lord happened. Yes, it
Speaker 1: was actually in the Lord. It was set specifically, I
Speaker 1: believe in season three sometime in nineteen six makes sense
Speaker 1: for Mr X. Yes, so it was actually shortly yeah
Speaker 1: O MG, spoilers. Um. And that's this is partially because
Speaker 1: the development took four years and six million dollars um.
Speaker 1: It was all prompted by Fox's specific interest in having
Speaker 1: Italie in game for The X Files when they ordered it.
Speaker 1: The shows in season two and was really starting to roll. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were as one of those shows that was getting
Speaker 1: kind of runaway popularity despite Fox's best efforts to keep
Speaker 1: moving it, moving the X Files to different time slots. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in f m V terms, this game was an
Speaker 1: absolute blockbuster. I mean it had this Hollywood talent involved,
Speaker 1: and it sold about a million copies, which, uh, they
Speaker 1: at least made their money back at that time. That
Speaker 1: was a really impressive. You also have to remember that
Speaker 1: the video game industry at that time wasn't the giant
Speaker 1: beheamoth that it is today. Right. You know. However, the
Speaker 1: reviews and the player responses to it weren't spectacular not
Speaker 1: all of them were as negative as I was, but
Speaker 1: but I have very strong feelings about it. It took
Speaker 1: up like seven PC c d s or four PlayStation CDs.
Speaker 1: There's nothing that really keeps you immersed in a game
Speaker 1: like having to change out one disc for another continually. Yeah, personally,
Speaker 1: I just like it so much because I got stuck
Speaker 1: in a in an action sequence bug that I never
Speaker 1: could get around, and I was like, well, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm not playing this game anymore. And this game is
Speaker 1: broken and it's done, and we still are seeing lots
Speaker 1: of FMV used and cut scenes and support roles. The
Speaker 1: Command and Conquered games are really well known for that.
Speaker 1: Tim Curry reappears. He um he was in Rent Alert
Speaker 1: three as a Russian type character, and uh, if you
Speaker 1: can just imagine what Tim Curry would sound like doing
Speaker 1: his best horrible, over the top Russian accent, then you're
Speaker 1: you're the way there. Civilization too had him as your
Speaker 1: members of your council. I love that because, as I recall,
Speaker 1: the person who was in charge of telling you how
Speaker 1: happy or unhappy your people were was essentially an Elvis impersonator.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and you're the way the game worked. You
Speaker 1: would go through different eras. Right, you go through the
Speaker 1: ancient era, so there's Elvis in a toga. You go
Speaker 1: to a medieval era, so there's Elvis in a doublet Uh.
Speaker 1: In the modernel era, you'd have you know Elvis. So
Speaker 1: it was it was, it was a blast. And then
Speaker 1: you had other like the super dorky science nerd guy,
Speaker 1: the gung ho uh military dude. It was those performances
Speaker 1: I actually really really love. I wouldn't say that they
Speaker 1: were all nuanced or anything like that, but they were entertaining.
Speaker 1: Other games that our listeners have suggested, we talked about
Speaker 1: where the Wing Commander series from Origin, a lawnmower Man,
Speaker 1: Corpse Killer, Ground Zero Texas. We're gonna take another quick break,
Speaker 1: but we will be right back. So many of the
Speaker 1: game companies that made fm V based games, especially the
Speaker 1: ones that were solely FMV, no longer exist. They either
Speaker 1: went out of business or they got acquired by another
Speaker 1: company and folded into them. Uh. It's just one of
Speaker 1: those games that, again the pre production was really expensive
Speaker 1: and time consuming and old Simately, we began to learn
Speaker 1: that players seem to prefer gameplay and interaction over the
Speaker 1: visual qualities of exam perhaps questionable visual qualities and so again.
Speaker 1: Using it as like a cut scene is one thing,
Speaker 1: but to use it as the basis for your gameplay
Speaker 1: really limits you. I've got a quote here that I
Speaker 1: wanted to read out from one Jason Vandenberg, who was
Speaker 1: one of the programmers on the X Files game. This
Speaker 1: was a quote from Edge magazine, I believe, back in
Speaker 1: the late nineties when the game came out, and he said,
Speaker 1: working on the x Files proved to me that interactivity
Speaker 1: and drama directly oppose each other. Thus interactive cinema is
Speaker 1: limited at best and doomed at worst. That was a
Speaker 1: devastating realization. Drama is all about being a helpless witness
Speaker 1: to events. The moment you give the viewer agency, the
Speaker 1: emotional spectrum shifts from tension to curiosity. We could never
Speaker 1: get past that fundamental thing. Curiosity kills tension, and you
Speaker 1: end up with a puzzle game with a rich, detailed
Speaker 1: background behind it, which sounds like missed, which sounds like
Speaker 1: missed what you know and I and I wanted to
Speaker 1: read it out because I thought it was a really
Speaker 1: interesting and very strong perspective, especially coming from a programmer
Speaker 1: of one of these games. However, I'm not positive. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you really get down to it, all video games
Speaker 1: are interactive to some extent. Yeah, and then, and I
Speaker 1: don't think that curiosity always kills tension. You can have
Speaker 1: very tense, very excellently crafted moments. However, perhaps with video
Speaker 1: it's so pre planned and predetermined that it is starting
Speaker 1: to kill off a little bit of that spontaneity that
Speaker 1: you get. Well, yeah, when you have no control over
Speaker 1: what someone you're watching does, I can see where the
Speaker 1: tension comes in because you know what you would want
Speaker 1: that person to do in that situation, traumatic irony. So
Speaker 1: you've got you've got that moment where you're like, don't go,
Speaker 1: don't open the door. You know, but if you're and
Speaker 1: if you're the player and you are playing a game,
Speaker 1: you don't have to open the door. So I think
Speaker 1: that's what he's saying, is that or you're just curious
Speaker 1: to find out what happens if you do open the door,
Speaker 1: And so that's where he's going in with that tension thing. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean I definitely played most through most
Speaker 1: of Again, for example, Silent Hill my my favorite thing
Speaker 1: to reference on this show. Apparently, you know, like knowing
Speaker 1: that I had to open the door and just looking
Speaker 1: at it. Yeah, see, I'm with you there. I think
Speaker 1: that you can totally have interactivity and tension if you
Speaker 1: if you structure the game properly. I think you can
Speaker 1: have both curiosity and drama. I think both things can coexist.
Speaker 1: I think of games like The Last of Us, which
Speaker 1: had amazing moments of drama. And you know, I don't
Speaker 1: I can't speak for everybody, but I really cared about
Speaker 1: these characters and I got to control them quite a bit,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like I was just watching a movie.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure I entirely I see what he's saying,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I entirely agree with it. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. I think that there's a
Speaker 1: point in there about trying to balance something inherently interactive,
Speaker 1: like a video game, with something inherently and are active. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a like a film, like a regular film or
Speaker 1: television shop right, because you're you're mixing the types of
Speaker 1: tension that the viewer or the player is experiencing, and
Speaker 1: it gets awkward. Well, and you know, when you're making
Speaker 1: a video or an animated film, or whatever. You can
Speaker 1: really craft that to evoke a specific emotion and be
Speaker 1: fairly certain that most of your audience is going to
Speaker 1: feel it if you have done your job correctly, right
Speaker 1: right right, because you you have forced them into that perspective.
Speaker 1: They can't change They can't they can't make the camera
Speaker 1: look away, they can't focus on something else, you know,
Speaker 1: without themselves physically doing it within the theater. Sure, but
Speaker 1: when you suddenly take away control of someone who is
Speaker 1: used to having control in the scene, I think that's
Speaker 1: where the frustration of FMV enters. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's certainly an interesting balance here that that uh. And
Speaker 1: again we see this played out today in video games,
Speaker 1: where you will see innovative gameplay introduced to try and
Speaker 1: differentiated game from others, and people react in a very
Speaker 1: dramatic way to that. Either they love it or they
Speaker 1: hate it. But it's it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I think we see that that interactivity is what gamers,
Speaker 1: and I you know, not all gamers, but I think
Speaker 1: the majority of gamers really are eager for. And that's
Speaker 1: it for this classic episode the full motion video era
Speaker 1: of home gaming. I feel like now that that phrase
Speaker 1: is no longer applicable, I mean the full motion video era,
Speaker 1: because we have had more FMV games since, and some
Speaker 1: of them have been genuinely really interesting, not just like
Speaker 1: this sort of cringe e kind of experience. There have
Speaker 1: been a few that have been truly remarkable, And as
Speaker 1: I said, I think at the end of the last episode,
Speaker 1: I really should get Justin McElroy on the show to
Speaker 1: talk about FMV gaming and you know what what impact
Speaker 1: that had and continues to have and what makes a
Speaker 1: good m FMV game. Is a good FMV game one
Speaker 1: that isn't cringe e or is the cringe factor a
Speaker 1: big part of it? And uh, he's certainly an enormous
Speaker 1: fan of FMV games. He did a video series I
Speaker 1: believe when he was still with Polygon I think, or
Speaker 1: maybe it was even with Joystick where he talked about them.
Speaker 1: So I would love to get him on the show.
Speaker 1: But anyway, if you have suggestions for future topics, let
Speaker 1: me know over on Twitter. That's the best way to
Speaker 1: do it. The handle for the show is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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