Videogames history week should be a national holiday.

Just about finished writing my blog entry then my computer glitches and deletes it all, ok starting again…

I was thinking about the social environment in MMOs that Kevin was discussing in todays (now yesterdays) lecture and this also being videogame history week this reminded me of MUDs. A MUD (multi-user dungeon) is the predecessor to the MMORPG which is sometimes also called a graphical MUD.

A MUD is also a bit like the online version of a dice rolling game like Dungeons and Dragons and is text based (has its own programing language) so there are no graphics. This website is a data base of MUD’s http://www.mudconnect.com/

Some of them have been going since the early nineties and are usually adapted from fantasy or science fiction series’. The technological simplicity means that these games have a long shelf life.

As was said in the lecture once everyone in a MMO has started it’s hard to get an ‘in’ and it usually involves studying under another play or joining a guild or clan which creates an interesting social environment in the game. So imagine trying to get into a game that has been going for up to twenty years and has its own language.

I had a friend who played WoTMUD for a while; a MUD based on the fantasy series The Wheel of Time. http://wotmud.org/ I would consider myself a fan of the book series but I’ve tried to read several blogs about WoTMUD and also the twitter account @WoTMUD and I have no idea what they are talking about. It truly has a life of its own.

Now getting toward a point: I have a theory that good adaptions have to escape the narrative of their source – staying in the world of the text and obeying its rules of course – and create a new narrative suitable to their medium. WoTMUD gets around this by occurring in the aftermath of the action in the book. I think this is where so many film to game adaptions go wrong.

I played some of the game adaptions that came out with Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movies and they stuck to close to the narrative of the movie: you knew the outcome and were just along for the ride. More annoyingly once you completed one objective you were flung into a side story: completely different character, completely different setting. That’s how side stories create depth and explanation in films and books but in games that’s just annoying and disorientating.

I would be interested to hear if anyone knows of any good game to film adaptions.

That’s all for tonight folks.