The game is a mess, I'll establish that imediately. The title is plagued by low production costs, awful graphics, and terrible, terrible quick-time events. It's a tie-in game to it's inner core and I don't recommend anyone buy it but boy oh boy is it intruiging in concept.
(If you've not seen Bear Grylls: Man Versus Wild then there are various Lets Play's on Youtube with plenty of analysation of it's production values and exploitation of the piss drinking feature)
Essentially, the game explores an idea that's been floating around my head for a while now, an interactive documentary. All other mediums document locations, cultures, and history in some form; gaming? Not so much. I find this interesting as, in film documentaries, they have to be very carefully paced and heavily monitor how much information is presented to the viewer to avoid convolution and pointless exposition. In a game however, a player would be free to explore environments, time periods, or cultures at their leisure (Assassin's Creed features a hub from which the player can find out information from the places they're in, this is a good start). This could provide a whole new edge to documentaries, documenting what it's like to live in a tribe, rewarding players for finding out as much as possible.
The challenge wouldn't be making the experience worthwhile or even exciting for that matter, the challenge would be making something that sells. The trick would be first, picking a topic that gamers already find interesting and exploiting that interest in the game's marketing. Secondly, the product would need to be low risk for the consumer, spending £40/$60 on a game documentary would seem a little risky for the consumer as it'd be easier just to buy another shooter as it's a safer investment.
With these hurdles established, hurdles that Man Versus Wild not only failed to leap over but tripped on while wearing high heels, we can work out how to overcome them. Lets begin with audience, the obvious demographic would be the shooter fans, the guys and gals who'll buy anything with a U.S. soldier on the box. Both Medal Of Honor (*Honour because I'm a Brit) and Full Spectrum Warrior ventured, not just into what it's like in a war, but what it is to be a soldier. While I'll not go into my opinions of the quality to be found in each title, I will say that both felt extremely authentic at times, intelligent even.
With this topic in mind it would be very easy for a game documentary to study the life of a soldier. Rather than taking the player through a military campaign, show them what training is truly like, show the sort of respect people get as they rise through the ranks, show the emotional turmoil a soldier experiences as they watched the men and women they rained with die around them, show the mundanenity of normal life and the implications of injuries obtained on the battlefield.
In a lot of ways this would be easier to produce than a typical explosive war venture as the structure would be such that, within a few minutes, it wouldn't be expected by the player. Slower, deeper scenes would be on offer in earlier segments, meaning budget and time constraints wouldn't be as straining.
But the issue would be thus: it would be a single player experience, multiplayer would completely negate the atmosphere the single player narrative would work to create. Without including multiplayer the consumer would likely trade the game in, meaning the publisher and the developer would be out of pocket.
The way to fix this problem would be release the product on a digital distribution outlet like the App Store or XBLA. Seeing as XBLA game have mandatory trials (and a documentary game would likely not be adrenaline pumping enough for a successful trial game), I'd say the App Store would be the way to go. The App Store needn't promote the game with a demo, merely promotional screenshots displaying a modern war setting (*ahem* ka-ching). The game being developed as an App would also reduce development costs in comparison to a large AAA release and the marketplace is already home to a mature, game related documentary application in the form of The Final Hours of Portal 2.
What is the purpose of this particular post? I think that developers and publishers alike are scared to venture into game based documentaries out of fear that they won't sell and I want to express that making a game documentary not only is possible but potentially very successful.
Thanks.
