Card's Empire

Found an interesting interview from Orson Scott Card on Wired.com:

I'm rather intrigued by the premise. Not the least because I too, came up a similar concept (that got thrown out the window) during pre-Nanowrimo idea generation frenzy. Well, okay, an underground city divided up between vampires and werewolf factions is only similar to a red-state, blue-state asymmetrical conflict in that there are two sides. :P

Hush. The idea is pretty funky all the same. Red vs Blue has a nice symbolism to it, without any directly applicable real world readings. And a sci-fi future world where one side has humongous war robots and the other side is armed with handguns is rather cool. From Card's description of the game story, it at least -sounds- like it has potential, since it appears to center around two people with stakes in both sides.

It has echoes of JMS' B5 epic, where Earthgov goes into civil war, and "we know every one we kill." Poignant words indeed.

Unfortunately, I was a little less thrilled reading the second page of the interview.


WN: As a storyteller, what do you think about the video game medium?

Card: Video games are a viable storytelling medium, but the trouble is that video games always have the same protagonist, which is the player. And he always has the same set of motivations, which is to kill and don't die. That's not conducive to great novels. We have a character with this negative motivation and that character makes a lousy fictional protagonist.

WN: Do you play video games?

Card: I used to. I have a son who's a game designer and I'm very familiar with the medium. But I stopped playing video games because most games are boring, partly because of the protagonist issue and partly because of the predictability of moving from level to level and facing off against bosses.


What rubbish. Here is someone who doesn't have a clue about video games, and generalizing them all as something "with levels and bosses." There are two entire genres - single player RPGs and adventure games - that would beg to differ.

I got a sudden urge to replay Planescape: Torment after reading the drivel coming out of Card's mouth. Sure, "kill and don't die" is a valid part of any RPG, but Torment also focused on the discovery of who the protagonist was, and the /choices/ made by the player aka protagonist to determine who the character was. Torment turned the standard tropes of D&D RPGs around, your class was decided by what you chose to learn in-game, you added stat points to your score as you gained levels, and you didn't DIE per se, you came back in an endless karmic cycle of frustration that reflected the story.

There have been many games with multiple protagonists, some with opposed motivations, in fact. Indigo Prophecy comes to mind. First you play the guy who wakes up in a bathroom with a dead body and are desperately trying to hide it before the cops come. Then you ARE the cops, looking for clues to find that guy. Starcraft - 3 sides, 3 motivations. Probably a bunch of Interactive Fiction too.

Grim Fandango. The Longest Journey (so I hear). Fallout. Baldur's Gate 2. Monkey Island. Strong settings, strong story. Few of them are "twitch" games that rely on reflex either.

I declare Orson Scott Card guilty of gross generalization and clueless ignorance.

The comments didn't help either. Now while his political sentiments are his own, despite other people attempting to drag the issue in to smear his name, the link to the tie-in novel's first chapter was what I was more interested in.

URGH. Did he HAVE to start with an Americans vs terrorist scenario? Why?! I didn't even have the patience to analyze whether his writing was good or not. I'm sick of this theme. I'm sick of people heavy-handedly pushing these politics everywhere. And especially onto a perfectly harmless game about red vs blue.

Let the game players come to their own conclusions about what red vs blue symbolizes. We don't need to have our noses rubbed in the dog shit, thank you.

For one fearful moment, I even thought that the beautiful potential of the red vs blue game had been turned into America vs Taliban/Al Qaeda by Card's input.

Luckily, the last part cued me that "it was just a dream" *ahem* I mean, the above was just a wargame scenario. No, really. Seriously. It wasn't the author preaching to you. Really. Truly. Madly. Deeply. Honestly.

Okaaaaay. I'll buy that, but my disbelief had to be hung, drawn and quartered first.

Looks like it'll just be Americans vs Americans if Card has his way. Guess we'll have to check the game preview sites.

Alas for red vs blue.