Games creators and writers give their theories on how an upcoming crop of adaptations could avoid the same pitfalls as Assassin’s Creed, World of Warcraft and Super Mario Bros
No other film genre boasts such an unimpeachable reputation for dreadfulness as the video game adaptation. Some, such as this year’s Tomb Raider film and the zombie-themed Resident Evil efforts, almost achieve mediocrity. Others are so fascinatingly terrible that they have become Hollywood legend – for instance, the baffling interpretation of Super Mario Bros proffered by edgy British directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton in 1993, in which Nintendo’s bright, joyful Mushroom Kingdom was reimagined as a futuristic dystopia called Dinohattan, where everyone was dressed in fishnets and black leather trenchcoats. A quarter of a century later, it is still impossible to understand why anyone thought that was a good idea.
The ever-expanding Marvel cinematic universe is ample proof that films can do an excellent job of exploring geek culture and fleshing out the paper-thin characters that dominate it; Black Panther has just become the fifth highest-grossing movie ever at the US box office. Millions have now grown up with video games, so why is it that studios have failed to make a single video game movie that doesn’t stink?
Fantastic video game movies do exist – it’s just that none of them are adaptations
He dreamed up his novel about a teenage games fanatic while working for internet companies in the 90s. Cline on his real-life geek-to-riches story – and what it was really like working with Steven Spielberg
It took Ernest Cline 10 years to write Ready Player One. There were times he thought he would never finish the manuscript, let alone publish it. But the novel, mostly set in a global online pleasure world called Oasis, went on to become a bestseller and was translated into more than 20 languages. Now a film adaptation by Steven Spielberg is in cinemas – a real-life geek-to-riches drama so reflective of the book’s plot it seems almost unfeasible.
The sci-fi story’s setup is simple. Teen protagonist Wade Watts is a games fanatic living in a slum town outside Oklahoma City, but spending most of his time in the virtual world. The death of James Halliday, the eccentric creator of Oasis, triggers a treasure hunt that revolves around Halliday’s main obsession: 1980s pop culture. Whoever solves a series of puzzles within the game becomes its new billionaire CEO. Wade enters the hunt, kicking into gear a breathless nerd empowerment fantasy.
Virtual reality (VR) is known for being able to transport an individual and immerse them into another world. People can feel quite frustrated trying to get up close and personal to art works or attending art exhibitions. Tourists will be taking selfies in-front of paintings and it can get very crowded. What if you didn’t have to endure all that, and had an exhibition or museum completely to yourself to study and enjoy some art in peace?
Dutch based company Ikonospace have created a software toolset to enable this. VRFocusspoke to Jerome Demnard about the platform and how he hopes cultural institutions and artists from around the world can showcase their art pieces in a beautiful environment completely created by themselves.
One of the key features about Ikonospace is that it can be created using both Mac and PC, Demnard says. “We’re a software toolset to really facilitate cultural institution and even artists to basically create a 3D environment and showcase their art. To be able to create virtual exhibition for tablet, PC but most importantly we really want people to create content for VR.” The virtual spaces that are created go up on a server and can then be viewed or experienced on the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
Users can create the space, bring in scans of 3D objects or 2D art pieces into the space by simply dragging and dropping a folder into the environment editor. They are also working on adding points of interest, for if the curator or artists would like to add more information to the pieces or the user wants to find out more information. They are also looking to add features such as audio guides, videos as well as potentially ways of integrating interactivity with art pieces.
Demnard says that having users in the space is potentially also healthy and therapeutic. He tells VRFocus that they’re based in Amsterdam where it always rains. They put a woman into their VR museum who was a little depressed, and she was able to explore a beautifully lit museum where the sun would come streaming down and she didn’t want to leave the VR experience.
At the moment Demnard is focusing on making Ikonospace as an alternative for small artists hoping to showcase their art, artists who might not have been picked up yet. They are exploring into making it an e-commerce platform where artists can also potentially sell their art through the platform too. They are also looking at creating a gallery through Steam VR, to help build a platform for artists to publish content to.
The Ikonospace Beta is in development and will go live over the next two months. You can find out more information about Ikonospace in the video below.
Crypto Investor Show highlights variety in sector as interest surges on the back of bitcoin
“If you reach out your hand, you can touch her and direct her,” the female assistant says as she guides Steve, a potential investor, through the bold new world of the cryptocurrency-backed virtual reality adult entertainment industry.
The assistant asks Steve to wear a VR headset, sit comfortably and hold a remote control in each hand. Steve does as he is instructed and extends his left arm towards the naked lap dancer in front of him in the virtual seedy bar.
When someone mentions virtual reality (VR) they may start thinking about the PlayStation VR videogames, or potentially purchasing or re-modelling a car or house. VR and art are not yet something that are commonly put together. This may be due to what some might call the isolating experience one has to go through when putting on a headset. It’s a personal experience.
HTC Vive have been trying to change this with their Vive Arts Program, where they are trying to introduce VR into museums around the world. More and more artists are starting to understand the potential of VR, and you might start to stumble on small art exhibitions that are trying to integrate VR – like in David Blandy’s The End of the World Art Exhibition. Tina Sauerlaender and Philip Radiance Co-founders of Radiance are trying to make it easier for curators, museums and artist to connect on their Radiance VR art research platform.
Radiance is a trained artist himself and discovered VR four years ago. When he started to look for other artists who used the medium he found it incredibly difficult. Sauerlaender who is also a curator found it equally difficult and the two decided to set up Radiance. At the moment it’s a website where artists can upload images, videos, their bio and information about their VR experience. Radiance and Sauerlaender hope to add new features to the website, such as streaming the experience or potentially even downloading the experience and make it accessible for home users to view and experience VR art.
The website launched in September 2017 and features over 50 artists and are growing in number. Users are able to browse by artist, categories and platforms. The VR experiences are available for various VR headsets ranging from the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift to mobile VR platforms. Categories range from 360, feminism, parallel worlds, documentary, sculpture to portraiture to name a few.
Two examples of VR art pieces on the website are German artists Banz & Bowinkel who have created an VR experience named Mercury where a viewer is transported into an archipelago world of connected footbridges where various elements such as nature, culture and technology intertwine into a surreal terrain. Banz & Bowinkel in Mercury question the concept of simulated realities and thereby the human perception of the world.
Explore various elements such as nature, culture and technology as you traverse a surreal landscape in Mercury.
Another example is Mélodie Mousset’s HanaHana 花華 VR art piece for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. In this surreal landscape you use your controllers to create structures, buildings, connections by growing chains of hands. This is where VR merges with the unconscious. Inspired by the manga One Piece or HanaHana 花華, it’s inspired and taken from the character Nico Robin who has the power to infinitely sprout and replicate her own body parts. HanaHana 花華 explored the liminal space between technology and the self.
The feedback for Radiance has been positive, with artists expressing the need for a database such as this existing to help connect them with other artists, curators and collectors. Radiance explains that VR you can create a whole new digital world with endless possibilities that can connect with a user in a way no other medium is capable of doing as there is no more frame. However when it comes to displaying VR art there are several obstacles in the way such as training technicians, maintaining hygiene and power for the controllers during the exhibition.
In order to discover, add yourself to Radiance or potentially purchase or exhibit VR art pieces you can contact Radiance through their website. To find out more watch the video below.
Fans splash out on consoles, virtual reality headsets and events as they defy spending gloom
The UK games market broke the £5bn sales mark for the first-time last year as Nintendo’s new hybrid Switch console boomed and virtual reality headsets flew off the shelves.
Gaming fans forked out £5.11bn on consoles, games, hardware such as headsets and attending events – a 12.4% year-on-year rise – as the sector defied a wider downturn in consumer spending.
PlayStation 4’s prequel to horror adventure Until Dawn is a bleak tale of psychological stress that quickly becomes a haunted house fairground ride
PlayStation 4, Supermassive Games/Sony (PS VR headset required)
It is a familiar horror movie setup: someone wakes to find themselves trapped in an asylum, with no memory of their past and a creepy doctor looming over them. But no matter how many times you’ve seen this on the big screen, it is very different when you’re the one strapped in the chair.
At last, a film that dares to show the positive side of living in virtual reality. Steven Spielberg’s future shocker, about people using VR to escape hell on Earth, promises to be everything The Matrix wasn’t
It’s 2045 and Earth has been brought to its knees by catastrophic climate change and a worldwide energy crisis, not to mention famine, poverty, disease and war. In short, everything we presently fear has come to pass. It is the ultimate dystopian future.
That’s the premise of Ready Player One, a work of science fiction from 2011 by Ernest Cline and now a movie by Steven Spielberg. Wade Watts, the story’s protagonist, is born into a generation that feels failed by reality. The only thing making life bearable is the OASIS, a globally networked virtual reality world. Using a visor and a set of haptic-feedback gloves, Wade and millions like him enter its realm daily.
The Matrix presents VR as a form of sensory prison … from the cradle we are locked away
The techno-sage and Silicon Valley insider sees VR as emancipatory and liberating but what does ‘shared lucid dreaming’ actually mean?
I experienced virtual reality for the first time the other day, at a training workshop for university lecturers. When I donned the Oculus Rift – a sleek plastic headset with handheld controls – I was presented with a desk on which sat some cartoonishly rendered objects: a ball, a toy car, a ray gun. I picked up the gun and fired off a few shots. I rolled the ball off the table. Then the lenses in the goggles misted up and I grew bored.
I couldn’t see how virtual reality was supposed to help with the teaching of literature, but the techno-apparatchiks who were our guides for the day assured me that this was the future of pedagogy (a word they liked). “Just imagine,” they said, “one day your students won’t just be able to read books: they’ll experience what it’s like to be in them.”
Jaron Lanier is both cheerleader and doomsayer in a highly personal story of virtual reality
Two years ago, I stood on the precipice of the World Trade Center. I watched the birds wheel hundreds of feet below my toes, as yellow cabs fidgeted in the squinting distance beyond. Eventually, I took a step on to the rope that lolled between the Twin Towers, feeling its eager push on the soles of my feet while the wind bothered my cheeks (although not my eyes, which were shielded from the desk fan’s gust by the virtual reality headset visor).
That the vignette – created to promote the film The Walk, a dramatisation of the French high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s 1974 dance between the towers – was fabricated in VR and not earnest has made no difference to the strength of its imprint on my memory. It was earnestly terrifying (more than half of the people who tried it, I was told by the software’s creator, are unable to take the physical step out on to the virtual rope). Such is the mind-cheating power of VR, a medium that, if Facebook and all the other heavily invested mega-corps are to be believed, stands on the precipice of its own moment.
His young life combines tragedy, whimsy and peril in ways that might seem far-fetched even for a David Lynch film
