I'm both excited and incredibly humbled to host a post from one of my favourite writers of the moment, Nick Cole, author of Soda Pop Soldier and CtrlAltRevolt who when asked to write a short piece on gaming and writing came up with the following opus. If you haven't already, go check out his work and thank me later. Take it away, Nick...
Hey! You got your Game in my Idea!
Reese’s
Peanut Butter cups. We take ‘em for
granted nowadays. Like peanut butter and
chocolate are some naturally occurring substance. Imagine that farm! But, back in the day, before all this, there
was some genius who put those two together for the first time... and the world
was forever changed. Even early Reese’
Campaigns focused on the craziness of such a concept as combining peanut butter
and chocolate... as though only some idiot savant or mad genius might dare
violate the laws of time and space to get their flavor on.
Puttin’
stuff together... Sometimes it’s crazy
enough to work, and, other times it’s an awful disaster.
Nowhere
is this more evident in the world of video gaming. Some concepts work. Some spiral downward and pancake in a
glorious conflagration of internet rage and hot potato corporate blame. Who would’ve ever thought a game like
Minecraft would storm the entire world.
And like most games it’s merely a conglomeration of concepts that fit
together nicely. Blocky eight bit
nostalgia, farm sim, and lego. Go kill a
whole bunch of hours in your head. My
personal belief, and Minecraft proves this, is that gamers don’t need a lot of
story, or background world-building. I
think they’re telling their own stories and sometimes the game gets in the way
with how they’d like you to enjoy their opus.
But I digress.
It’s
always an opus, y’know. That’s what
every developer wants you to think.
Including whoever made that SuperMan the Game. Y’know with the rings.
I’m a
writer. And a gamer. Writers are really good at putting peanut
butter and chocolate together. Our Pope,
Shakespeare, basically ran around gluing history and black sheep family drama
together. And the rest of us have been
doing it ever since for the occasional paycheck. For instance, he would take histories and
then mix in a lot of standard intrigue and family relationships, just like any
of today’s Star Wars movies and voila, he had a show to stage at the Old
Globe. The Globe was essentially the
Sixteenth Centuries XBOX One. Except
everything was multiplayer. As in
everyone watched the same show and even, often participated via insults or
vegetables. In fact, shows were written
with scenes intent on breaking the fourth wall.
Scenes expecting the audience to get caught up in the action.
Neat,
huh?
Fast
forward to Now...
While Big
Budget movies and Agenda-driven TV circle the ratings drain, gaming is becoming
the next big arena for people to not only get involved in, but even watch via Youtube
and Twitch. And game developers are
looking for that peanut butter and chocolate combo that will set the world
aflame and earn them a cool sixty million in take home. Sometimes they’ll do movie tie-ins in hopes
of catching the zeitgeist of some nostalgia (Sorry Ghostbusters the Game but
you folded a studio) or they’ll try to re-invent the wheel with a brand new
Call of Duty or World of Warcraft (Which seem to be the two most popular things
in gaming to re-invent. Not because
they’re awesome games, but because the Producer and Studio that’s going to pony
up the front dough want those epic levels of fabled return. So they’re taking a “chance.”)
Putting
stuff together in gaming is fun. And
profitable. If it works. If you nail
Peanut Butter and Chocolate.
Like I
said I’m a writer and I write video game fiction. Stories set in a world where
gaming is huge. Or a big part of the
story. Not stories set in a video game
brand like Halo or Warcraft. But stories
where the hero is a gamer playing a game to solve a mystery, win a bunch of
stuff, and hopefully not get killed.
In my
book Soda Pop Soldier, my hero, a guy who goes by the tag PerfectQuestion
fights in a massive MMO that’s a cross between Call of Duty and Battlefield (My
Peanut Butter and Chocolate is a game made up of both. See... putting things together J.) for a weekly paycheck from a soft drink
company. But he needs some extra dough
so he games in this thing called The Black.
It’s illegal and its basically World of Warcraft meets the seedier side
of Vegas.
(AAAaand... I’m putting more
things together)
Truth is
the public is turning away from movies and their fantastic failures as of
late. They’re getting tired. Whether it’s hacky re-treads of golden age
nerdstalgia, or the fact that they, the audience only watch, something’s not
working in the solely visual mediums.
Maybe they want to play? Y’know,
be a part of the story? Get caught up in
the action. The gaming community is hot,
huge and growing, and unlike Hollywood, which tries to shut down valid
criticism by review sites so no dissent may be brooked regarding their latest
re-invention of the same film they’ve shown you the past twenty years, gamers
instead have always been passionately vocal about what they don’t like, and
what they love. And even though some
people complain about that, well, that’s actually a strength for the
industry. Criticism weeds out the
Suicide Squads and Ghostbusters of the video game world and challenges
producers and developers to go deep and bring us the next big experience. And we don’t like it stupid. It’s got be smart.
Games like No Man’s Sky are proof that game
developers get this and they’re still trying to earn your buck with that WOW!
Factor.
Peanut
Butter and Chocolate can happen at any moment.
You just gotta try some weird stuff and see what works. And if you do, throw your heart over the bar
and make something you’d want to play. I
think that’s still possible in games.
I’m doing it in my writing. I’m
writing fiction about games I’d totally want to play. In fact, next project’s looking like Twilight
2000 meets Civilization. So... Game
on. See you in whatever that looks like.
Nick Cole
is a former soldier and working actor living in Southern California. When he is
not auditioning for commercials, going out for sitcoms or being shot, kicked,
stabbed or beaten by the students of various film schools for their projects,
he can be found writing books.
Soda Pop
Soldier is Call of Duty meets Ready Player One in this fast-paced,
action-packed novel from the author of The Wasteland Saga. Gamer PerfectQuestion fights for ColaCorp in WarWorld, an online Modern Warfare combat sport arena
where mega-corporations field entire armies in the battle for real world global
advertising-space dominance. Within the immense virtual battlefield, players
and bots are high-tech grunts, using drop-ships and state-of-the-art weaponry
to wipe each other out. But times are
tough and the rent is due, and when players need extra dough, there's always
the Black, an illegal open source tournament where the sick and twisted desires
of the future are given free rein in the Wastehavens, a gothic dungeon fantasy world. All too soon, the real and virtual worlds
collide when PerfectQuestion refuses to become the tool of a mad man intent on
hacking the global economy for himself.
Review
"This
smart combination of video-game action and stinging dystopian satire is
meticulously assembled... [The narrator] manages to be a tough, snarky warrior
battling his corrupt society's worst excesses. This is a cheeky and enjoyable
effort by an author to watch." (Publishers Weekly (starred review))
Review
"Gamers
and action adventure fans will find something to like here. I devoured this
book over the course of one day. I might have finished earlier, but work got in
the way." (SFRevu)
Review
"With
Soda Pop Soldier, Nick Cole twists realities and bends minds for a wild ride of
an action thriller. Inventive and lots of strange fun." (New York Times
bestselling author Jonathan Maberry)
Review
"Without
a doubt this book is going to be a classic gamer required reading. It is a
science-fiction and first-person gamer's nirvana. ...This book is a five out of
five stars." (The Nameless Zine)
Review
"Pumping
action, and fantastic futuristic battle is matched with a take on modern
advertising that I can't help but love. I'm really impressed with how well Cole
writes action, I did not want to put this down!"
-BoingBoing.com
Follow
Nick Cole on Facebook over at https://www.facebook.com/nickcolebooks/?fref=ts
Or go to http://www.nickcolebooks.com/
This post is part of Blaugust 2016, an initiative to Blog throughout August. For more information visit the Tales of the Aggronaut Blog
No comments:
Post a Comment