Weird Wired Writing

by Darius Kazemi on November 10, 2006

in Uncategorized

I was reading this Wired article about Orson Scott Card and video games, and early in the article they make the claim that “[w]hile Card’s writing fueled classic LucasArts games The Dig and The Secret of Monkey Island, his latest book, Empire, is part of a multiformat franchise that was conceived from the ground up for video games, comic books, novels and films.”

This is true, but also misleading. There is no mention at all of Card’s project Advent Rising, which was by all accounts a flop that seriously hurt then-awesome publisher Majesco. Also, The Dig is often considered one of the worst LucasArts adventure games (although I kind of like it). There is hardly the consensus among adventure game players to label it a “classic.”

Come on, Wired. Are you so busy pandering to your celebrity science fiction writer that you won’t even mention his failures?

{ 2 comments }

solipsistnation November 10, 2006 at 4:46 pm

Heh, and no mention of the Tales of Alvin Maker game that eGenesis is pretty much not actually working on at this point.

solipsistnation November 10, 2006 at 4:47 pm

Plus he apparently hasn’t played too many games:

“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.”

The next paragraph (which I won’t quote in full either) also makes him look pretty damn ignorant.

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