Backstory (was RE: [MUD-Dev] New poll)

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Zak Jarvis <zak at voidmonster.com>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Saturday, June 10, 2000 5:01 PM
Subject: RE: Backstory (was RE: [MUD-Dev] New poll)


>Films probably need 15-20 more years to start to come into their own, and
>it'll be a largely technological issue. Though I think there is also an
>aspect here of audiences accepting the form. I'm fairly certain that the
>average length of a movie has been fairly steadily rising.

    Only recently.  Throughout the 70's and 80's, the average length of
feature films dropped, under pressure from theatre operators and network
television it fell to 80-some minutes.  In the nineties it started to come
back, and I believe now it is somewhere around 100 minutes, with little
resistance to films that are a full two hours or more.  Part of that may be
Cable having become the major after-market channel, HBO and such have more
time to fill than they can find movies to show, and don't have the
incentives to show a feature film in 2 hours with 40 minutes of commercials.
>
>Games are going to need 30-40 more years, again for technological issues,
>but also so the form will be understood well enough that it can be properly
>exploited.
>
>As far as games and storytelling goes, we're not far removed from writing
>in cuneiform on clay tablets. We've got papyrus or perhaps bamboo strips.
>We're not even close to western-style movable type, and it's going to be
>YEARS before we get a Tristram Shandy.
>
    I'll agree with that, our technology, our understanding, and our
audience all have not yet gained enough sophistication.  UO, EQ and AC may
seem primitive as story-telling experiences, but for most of the people
playing them it is the first example of it they've ever seen in this medium.

--Dave Rickey




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