Ender's Game Finally Becoming a Video Game
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card was a decent enough sci-fi yarn that, over the years, garnered more of an adolescent cult status than a justifiably literary one. For the record, yes, I know it won a Hugo and a Nebula, and yes, I know the Marine University at Quantico wields it as a textbook study of the psychology of leadership. But Titanic won 11 Oscars in the same year that The Wings of the Dove won none, and in 2001, Soderbergh's dazzling Traffic took a bow to Ridley Scott's dazzlingly shallow Gladiator for best film, which while there's no accounting for taste, implies something curious about red carpet pageantry and "impact" versus "caliber."
I read Card's story about boy-genius Ender Wiggin in high school long-time-ago, where I of course fell properly in love with it and remained in love with it and its sequels for many years after. Then I read the first book again in 2004, at which point -- after flinching my way through the cracker-barrel plot and cardboard characters and thumping didactics -- it regrettably went "plip!" off my radar for good. The boy-hero reject, the socially vapid and developmentally neglectful parents, the savage bullies who rarely get their comeuppance, the genocidal messiah who can extinguish an entire race yet walk away only a trifle contrite and somehow remain likable. It was heady stuff for a teenager, but for an adult? Not so much.
Now the book that reads a little like the sort of video game non-gamer adults mean when they use the term broadly and pejoratively is finally set to become one.
Who knows, maybe Card's clumsy edifice has a higher watermark hidden in the very medium the first book unconsciously idolizes. It's certainly going to help that the developer will be Chair Entertainment, the folks who ably handed us a three-dimensional tactically fleshed out underwater version of Geometry Wars, i.e. Undertow, for Xbox Live Arcade last November.
The other bit of good news: the first game will focus on the Battle Room, the 360-degree anti-gravity space Ender and his military compadres use to hone their tactical skills and hash out personal quarrels, i.e. friendship as subordinate to aptitude, for the better part of the novel.
Have we already seen the Battle Room in video games? Not really. We've certainly seen rough analogues like id Software's brilliantly conceived secret low gravity level Ziggurat Vertigo in the original Quake, and more recently (though teasingly and quite badly) the alien spacecraft interior in Crytek's Crysis. But nothing in true zero-G that requires the sort of precision tactical coordination the book details, or -- minimally -- whole teams of players float-fighting in the context of hardline Newtonian physics. A caveat to Chair: nerf Newtonian fidelity to make the game "fun" at your peril.
In any case, does this news excite you? Were you a fan of the book? Still a fan? Care to curb my lack of enthusiasm?
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I found Ender's game to be a good book, but i have to say Titanic dose not diserve 11 Oscars. While it may have diserved one Oscar it does not compare with how much better Gladiator was. Looking back on the Ender series I have to say the first book was the best, and the others where just faint echos. But with Orson's addition of the Shadow series, i have grown to enjoy his books again. Now this game they are making can become a double edged sword. For example, if it completly blows then theres no hope for a movie, and Orson might have some flak about it. Even though that lurks in the dark all i have to remmeber is Advent Rissing, a vey enjoyable game that included similar technology in Ender's Game. So in conclusion i have to say there are mixed feeling about it, could be good, could be bad.
I found Ender's game to be a good book, but i have to say Titanic dose not diserve 11 Oscars. While it may have diserved one Oscar it does not compare with how much better Gladiator was. Looking back on the Ender series I have to say the first book was the best, and the others where just faint echos. But with Orson's addition of the Shadow series, i have grown to enjoy his books again. Now this game they are making can become a double edged sword. For example, if it completly blows then theres no hope for a movie, and Orson might have some flak about it. Even though that lurks in the dark all i have to remmeber is Advent Rissing, a vey enjoyable game that included similar technology in Ender's Game. So in conclusion i have to say there are mixed feeling about it, could be good, could be bad.
- Xiphilinus
I thoroughly enjoyed Ender's game, despite my squeemishness at the first boy "murder" and the later giant's "eye gouge," when I was not much older myself. I still find the narrative of dogged determinationm, leadership, and creative 3d combat very compelling, if the realization was a bit amateurish. (Like my spelling.)
I definitely look forward to this game. If it captures the battle room feel at all, it will be great fun and more than a little satisfying after alll these years. A bit like watching Serenity after the years since Firefly. :)