- Oct 2019
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mikecosgrave.com mikecosgrave.com
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Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was one example, with Pratchett pointing out the help provided by the Wellcome Trust’s Public Engagement Fund. The trust is a foundation in England that gives grants to projects in film, TV and video games that have a biological or neurological component. Part of the grant process also comes with support from consultants, who work with recipients. For Hellblade, that meant replicating Senua’s psychosis in a convincing and sensitive way, and so University of Cambridge’s Professor Paul Fletcher became integral to the game’s development.
I didn't play Senua's Sacrifice personally, I saw a let's play of it on YouTube. And it was amazing. It makes so much sense now that there was such a great collaboration between the company, Trust fund, Uni and writer(s) - because the psychosis reflected in the game that you experience through Senua's perspective WAS really well done, and done with care/sensitivity. It also is the way mental illnesses should be done in games from now on.
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She’d just gotten published for a snippet on one of Neil Gaiman’s Death graphic novels, and the editor of Minx asked if Pratchett would be interested in writing about video games.
Just goes to show, breaking big successes is as much luck as hard-slog work and talent/skill.
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Rhianna Pratchett, the writer who worked on Bioshock Infinite, the recent Tomb Raider games, Overlord and Mirror’s Edge, joins that club this year.
What a beast! =D Those are some amazingly written games of high acclaim.
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mikecosgrave.com mikecosgrave.com
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Franchise products are governed too much by economic logic and not enough by artistic vision
Frankly this is because of the licensing issue as we know it. A company buys out a license to use Marvel characters in their films or games; in order to make the most money out of the license, maintain ownership of their license, and to avoid paying a ludicrous sum for it again, the company in question has to make media featuring marvel characters - hence the flow of sequels. Instead of artistic vision, address the licensing issue and the artistic vision will actually have room to flower.
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Even within the media conglomerates, units compete aggressively rather than collaborate. Each industry sector has specialized talent, but the conglomerates lack a common language or vision to unify them
Huge institutions like the film industry etc are akin to lumbering golems when it comes to change/adaption - in this case specifically, I personally think it's because the mentality of the industry and those in charge of it are still stuck in the times of hyper-competition against other sectors, rather than cooperation. It would be just as profitable to cooperate/collaborate as to compete.
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Younger consumers have become information hunters and gatherers, taking pleasure in tracking down character backgrounds and plot points and making connections between different texts within the same franchise
This is actually a really good point about the apparent new phenomenon with our generation. The previous generation wasn't really interested in the background(s) of the characters, writers etc and how it tied in to other mediums or other shows in terms of similarities with plots etc. Nowadays, with the wide open access to info on the internet, fandoms have blossomed.
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