Wherefore Art Thou, Sci-Fi?

That video games use what was once futuristic science-fiction technology to simulate young worlds of magic and elves never fails to befuddle me. It's not that I have any particular gripe to levy at the over-populated spawn of Tolkien, and certainly I've participated in as many adventures into dragon infested dungeons as the next nerd, but I wouldn't mind seeing a few more derelict spaceships, many-sunned alien landscapes and antiseptic futuristic control rooms in the gaming canon. Why has science-fiction been relegated to second or third chair in the most technologically advanced entertainment medium available?

Science fiction at its best is far more than shooting aliens with guns of increasing unlikelihood, but that's all we've been getting the past few years. It has become a sub-section of the genre that encompasses games like Ghost Recon and Battlefield, an action gaming conceit that permits the development of the unreal. This, while fantasy gaming surges through epic role-playing games, MMOs, immersive strategy games and every corner of the industry where consumers put cash to counter. But I'm encouraged by the potential of several upcoming titles to free gaming's red-headed stepchild from the creatively bereft shackles by which it has been bound. From the hype-overload of Bioshock – of which, we have certainly drank if not actually prepared the drug-laced Kool-Aid – to Mass Effect and Tabula Rasa, it's good to see that Sci-Fi is getting some overdue attention.

I understand that fantasy gaming is easy, because magic offers developers and story-writers the freedom to do virtually anything. No creature or plot-point is off-limits with the omnipotence of magic to craft and shape worlds of daring impossibility, but what seems missed in the process is that the conceit of hyper-advanced technology offers the same design latitudes. Sci-fi is no less prepared to visualize the fantastic, and that developers haven't taken as broad advantage of that signifies that something ain't quite right here in River City. At a functional level, sci-fi and fantasy aren't particularly different, in that magic or technology can both be employed to open wide the doors of unrestrained creativity.

So why is it that fantasy has become the realm of the imaginative and sci-fi the realm of the derivative? Why are there compelling fantasy worlds with varied populations, while sci-fi seems to be limited to shooting Borg rip-offs in dull hallways with plasma rifles, plasma cannons, plasma guns and plasma swords?

The number of really good sci-fi games released in the last few years is pretty thin, and can mostly be defined by the offerings of Bungie, Relic and one or two others. The rest of the sci-fi gaming genre is just mediocre shooters that take the trappings of science fiction so you can shoot helmeted alien guards with futuristic machine guns, and Star Wars games.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with Star Wars games, mind you, or to a lesser extent Star Trek, but the two franchises represent a disproportionate chunk of the genre over the last ten or fifteen years. They so dominate the idea of sci-fi gaming that even if games don't have the franchise license, they continue to exist within the conceits and clichés defined by Lucas and Roddenberry.

It might be easy enough to levy the same complaints at fantasy for doing the same with Tokien and Gygax, but there are a few important differences. First, Tolkien's world is far more imaginative and creative, but more importantly, until recently, it was not a visualized and concrete world to the masses. Middle-Earth existed only like an abstract idea of a world, still open to the imagination of those who read and those who borrowed from it. Star Wars, arguably the Lord of the Rings of sci-fi, is a hard edged world of finite imagination, we all know how it works and worse what it looks like. As to Gygax and D&D, well that was more a foundation for a game than a dogmatic definition. D&D demanded your creativity to work, and provided a framework of original story telling. Fantasy paragons were painted in broad brush-strokes, while sci-fi was a finely imagined portrait.

In short, we were taught from the start to tell our own fantasy stories while we learned to watch others tell us the stories of sci-fi.

That's not to say that plenty of games didn't break the mold of Star Wars, but that it was far easier to fall back on the conceits of existing franchises rather than fully realizing worlds. There were visual and ideological icons of sci-fi coming from these franchises that were mostly inescapable, and they cropped up all the time. And, of course, half the damn sci-fi games just dropped the pretense and slapped the franchise name right on the box.

But, what that's left us with is a few key games that broke the mold by being entirely different, and a bunch of customers who kind of got tired of sci-fi because it the rest of it all seemed the same. With another round of years revolving around Lucas and his middling prequels there wasn't room for much else, and when it was gone there was a hole in the ground where games like Deus Ex, Fallout, Freespace 2, Wing Commander and Synidcate used to be.

But, this is an unusual article, because it ends with concrete enthusiasm for what the gaming industry has got in store for us. Someone must have noticed the hole in the ground, because the next few years have a slew of games coming to our eager eyes with fresh IPs and loads of potential. Too Human, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Crysis, Tabula Rasa and others seem to be ushering a new era of science fiction gaming.

After ten years of elves and magic, I could use a bit of a change.

Comments

The closest games I can think of to sci-fi novels would be the old Infocom games. I never played, what was it, Planetfall? But my brother and I played through Suspended when I was about 12 or 13. That was one tough game that made you think that oozed what I think of when I think "sci-fi".

Also, Wing Commander, though that's more in the pulp space opera type genre I guess.

Elysium wrote:

Yes, I put up Wherefore Art Thou incorrectly and used it wrong. Frankly, that more than anything else distresses me.

I thought you used it correctly?

Wherefore art thou?

As in: Where have you gone?/Where are you?

Wasn't that the meaning in RoJu?

Duoae wrote:
Elysium wrote:

Yes, I put up Wherefore Art Thou incorrectly and used it wrong. Frankly, that more than anything else distresses me.

I thought you used it correctly?

Wherefore art thou?

As in: Where have you gone?/Where are you?

Wasn't that the meaning in RoJu?

You are a seriously filthy skimmer, my man!

Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?

Hi, been reading the site for a while, this is the first time I've felt like there's something for me to say.

I'm a little concerned by the attitudes of many of the respondents about the perceived inaccessibility of Sci-fi. If that is true then why do Sci-fi movies meet so much more success than fantasy, except for a few major franchises?

LOTR and Harry Potter are successful of course but in the last 10 years how many fantasy movies saw commercial success as opposed to Sci-fi?

Sci-fi doesn't need to be hard sci-fi, even Minority Report and The Core saw some success. My point is the public likes Sci-fi, far more casual gamers are uncomfortable with the idea of prancing around as an elf than they are with the idea of being cybernetically enhanced or anything like that.

Fantasy in theory could be used as a mechanism to tell creative stories, yet fantasy as both a fiction and gaming genre has stagnated horribly.

I think that it is laziness on the part of developers and publishers that is leading to the excessive amount of fantasy game titles and also th willingness of the public to buy the same thing over and over again.

Well said. I have wondered why, in a period when we have a real Sci-Fi renaissance going on (Alastair Reynolds, Battlestar Galactica, etc.) that games have not followed suit. Of course, Elysium is way more articulate than I am.

Maybe it goes in cycles, or maybe it just spotlights the true lack of innovation by game developers. Did you notice how every developer has basically said "we want in on the WoW/MMORPG bandwagon?" And so, 2-4 years out, they trot out the latest Fantasy MMORPG, hoping to lure players away from whatever game they are growing bored of....only NCSoft has had Tabula Rasa going for a while, and I am limiting my expectations on that one.

Basically, I think that Sci-Fi takes more work than fantasy. I was watching a documentary on Ridley Scott the other day, and one thing that struck me was how he talked about the design and vision. It just kind of came to him all at once, and he tried to align the movie with that vision. The movie stands out, even now, because it's a fully realized vision of the future...and that continues to spark our imagination.

Fantasy really doesn't take much imagination or realization of vision for a game designer or developer.

Do this test: think about the Fantasy for a moment.

Now, some of you are thinking Penthouse at this point, but most of you are thinking swords, armor, magic, elves, etc. The world of the game is already defined, you just have to string it together in such a way that it is coherent to the player and storyline.

That's one of the reasons why I burn out on Fantasy so quickly. It's really hard to stay interested when it is simply another retelling of "save the princess/save the world."

I would like to see more innovation, more strangeness, more SURPRISE, in the worlds I explore, but I guess I have to wait for Bioshock.

mateo wrote:

That's one of the reasons why I burn out on Fantasy so quickly. It's really hard to stay interested when it is simply another retelling of "save the cheerleader/save the world."

Fixed it for you

Basically, I think that Sci-Fi takes more work than fantasy. I was watching a documentary on Ridley Scott the other day, and one thing that struck me was how he talked about the design and vision. It just kind of came to him all at once, and he tried to align the movie with that vision. The movie stands out, even now, because it's a fully realized vision of the future...and that continues to spark our imagination.

This is what i was trying to say. Science fiction has to make sense otherwise it's just fantasy.
Examples of bad science fiction are Batman and Robin - using diamonds to power a cold suit... or light flowing around corners like an explosion in blade 2. There's no real world basis for this sloppy imagining of people who don't have any (or very little) grasp of science.

Duoae wrote:

Is there a game there that really is science fiction? Or is it just fiction dressed up in fancy clothes?

But this does count as sci-fi as well. Using the present and near-present still constitute the genre. Think Children of Men, Minority Report, or a slew of other movies in this arena. Hell, for giggles, think Road House, which I believe Klosterman described as sci-fi / fantasy because it was completely implausable, yet it is set in the present. You have a philosophy major bouncer who is world-famous that goes to a country bar set in Kansas that is full of thugs night after night because the evil genius wants this town to cow-tow to his machinations and he is going to use the bar as the tool to do so. Throw in some karate scenes and one or two handgun scenes and, voila! something that could never, ever, ever, ever happen.

Duoae wrote:

Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?

I do bite my thumb at you sir.

BlackSheep wrote:

But this does count as sci-fi as well.

I'd argue that it doesn't.

Think Children of Men, Minority Report,

Are both sci-fi. They take biology and technology research (okay, Minority report also mixes in paranormal too) and extrapolate possibilites into the future. They are not remixed "the past" set in the future. I consider (perhaps wrongly) the films and books (and games) that present old scenarios and art-styles as the future as fiction/fantasy - not science fiction.... though bioshock does straddle that more than any other in the list that was referenced before.

So i don't consider unexplainable and unfounded "high technology" (that could, in effect, be considered magic) as science. It's a narrow way of looking at it and i'll admit that there are exceptions and that it's not a perfect way of looking at the issue, but without it then you really can't differentiate between medievil fantasy/future fantasy and science fiction.

Using the present and near-present still constitute the genre.

Yeah, you're right about that. Though i don't think i ever said that sci-fi couldn't exist in those two time periods. Maybe i was a bit harsh on Fallout and Crysis. I recind my comments about those two games

Hell, for giggles, think Road House, which I believe Klosterman described as sci-fi / fantasy because it was completely implausable, yet it is set in the present. You have a philosophy major bouncer who is world-famous that goes to a country bar set in Kansas that is full of thugs night after night because the evil genius wants this town to cow-tow to his machinations and he is going to use the bar as the tool to do so. Throw in some karate scenes and one or two handgun scenes and, voila! something that could never, ever, ever, ever happen.

Never seen this film. From the description, i wouldn't classify it as sci-fi any more than Tank Girl.

It's a narrow way of looking at it

Yeah, it kinda is, and that's not what I'm talking about in the article. By sci-fi, I mean what the ordinary person would consider sci-fi, not the fairly demanding needs of the purist. I mean, I'm not really criticizing the perspective, but I'm being practical. The industry is never going to play toward the purist, and frankly I think the hardline practitioners of the philosophy of sci-fi are part of the problem, not the solution.

I'd rather have a ton of crappy sci-fi games if it means I also get more really good ones. That's the advatnage that fantasy is getting to enjoy right now.

Elysium wrote:

I'd rather have a ton of crappy sci-fi games if it means I also get more really good ones. That's the advatnage that fantasy is getting to enjoy right now.

Actually, i'm not as much of a purist as i sound. I love films like Total Recall and series like Firefly and i own approx half/half sci-fi fantasy games. I just think there's little to no difference between crappy "pulp" sci-fi and fantasy.

I mean, (and i'm not ragging on starwars or KOTOR here) what's really the big difference between KOTOR and a fantasy party-based RPG?

In the end, I'd guess the lack of SF themed games has more to do with the game industry's "me too" philosophy than anything else. As others have said, since WoW is such a money cow, everyone else wants their own piece of the action. Gamers, in general, are also creatures of habit (witness the 4,896 WWII titles available in the last 5 years), so maybe that has something to do with it as well... Still, it's not like FALLOUT or HALF-LIFE 2 or KOTOR or DEUS EX or MECHWARRIOR/BATTLETECH weren't successful, so WTF?

Maybe the launch of STARCRAFT II will rekindle the SF magic?

BTW, I still don't see how SF games are "more work" than fantasy. Either requires the author/creator to come up with a world and explain how it works. Sure, you can just go generic "Tolkien" style fantasy, but you can also just as easily go generic "Trek/Wars" style SF if you wanted to. Countless well thought out SF worlds already exist (see my previous post about using an existing SF RPG universe), and that seems to take care of even THAT "heavy mental lifting." So again-- where's the extra difficulty?

Duoae wrote:

I mean, (and i'm not ragging on starwars or KOTOR here) what's really the big difference between KOTOR and a fantasy party-based RPG?

None, which is exactly the point.

I've lurked here for a long time but the synchronicity of Elysium's post and my thought yesterday pushed me over the edge.

From what it sounds like, I'm like Elysium in that I just want a new setting so that I actually have something to choose from. I'm tired to death of Nazis and elves. I don't need an accurate portrayal of subatomic physics, I just want a few more games with "freeking lasers." And plasma. Love the plasma. In particular, I was thinking that it would be nice to have some more turn based strategies in a sci-fi setting. I want mechs, blackhole generators, stasis fields, whatever. One good example is what Big Huge did with Rise Of Legends in shaking up the settings of its game. Steampunk is also a nice compromise, like in Thief.

Whether the story plays out like nth version of LOTR, Othello or Ulysses bothers me not (and isn't that what most games are doing anyhow?), I would just like something different settings wise. And lasers. Or plasma.

SommerMatt wrote:
Duoae wrote:

I mean, (and i'm not ragging on starwars or KOTOR here) what's really the big difference between KOTOR and a fantasy party-based RPG?

None, which is exactly the point.

Yeah, which was my point that there's a difference between fantasy/"futuristic" fantasy and sci-fi.

We're complaining about the lack of sci-fi games but if people are willing to settle for futuristic fantasy then there's plenty of just plain fantasy games that fill the same niche...

Preacher, RTS and TBS are pretty well up compared to other genres for sci-fi.

C&C
MoO
Gal Civ 2
Total Annihilation
Perimeter
(can't think of any more but there are quite a few)

BlackSheep wrote:

...think Road House...

Like Red Dawn and Highlander, I'm pretty sure that was a documentary. If fiction, why would they, as Sam Elliot pointed out, name the primary setpiece "The Double Douche"?
It makes no sense.

No writer could come up with such gems as:

"I used to f%*k guys like you in prison"

and, my favorite:

"I got married to an ugly woman. Don't ever do that. It just takes the energy right out of you. She left me, though. Found somebody even uglier than she was. That's life. Who can explain it?"

Now I have to go rent it...

Duoae wrote:
SommerMatt wrote:
Duoae wrote:

I mean, (and i'm not ragging on starwars or KOTOR here) what's really the big difference between KOTOR and a fantasy party-based RPG?

None, which is exactly the point.

Yeah, which was my point that there's a difference between fantasy/"futuristic" fantasy and sci-fi.

We're complaining about the lack of sci-fi games but if people are willing to settle for futuristic fantasy then there's plenty of just plain fantasy games that fill the same niche...

No one is going to make a game out of DARWIN'S RADIO or encountering the "space baby" in 2001 (which somehow reminds me of that simpsons episode where Martin is playing the "My Dinner With Andre" videogame... "oooh! Tell me more!").

Saying that an RPG that uses laserguns, spaceships and plasma shields instead of swords, horses and armor is "furutisic fantasy" is just completely bizarre to me. Is HALO just a "futuristic fantasy" version of OBLIVION? You seem to think that a "SF" game must entail some crazily different set of experiences than what we're already used to. Why? There are all kinds of SF... comedy SF, Space Opera, Hard SF, etc., etc., etc., so why can't those different types appear in a game format?

If you believe in the concept that most human storytelling follows the same basic patterns (the "hero's journey," for example), then the only thing that changes is the SETTING-- You can use this same basic formula to tell the story of Hercules, Superman, or Luke Skywalker. Part of what we're tryign to tell you here is that we're sick and tired of the fantasy tropes, and want games set in other time periods. Why don't games use futuristic settings? Why, besides PERSONA or the MOTHER games, are there no RPG's set in modern times?

Your argument is like telling someone who wants to watch STAR WARS to see LOTR instead... it's all the same thing, right?

Duoae wrote:
SommerMatt wrote:
Duoae wrote:

I mean, (and i'm not ragging on starwars or KOTOR here) what's really the big difference between KOTOR and a fantasy party-based RPG?

None, which is exactly the point.

Yeah, which was my point that there's a difference between fantasy/"futuristic" fantasy and sci-fi.

We're complaining about the lack of sci-fi games but if people are willing to settle for futuristic fantasy then there's plenty of just plain fantasy games that fill the same niche...

Nah. I don't want an elf or an orc. I want a mech or a power suit or whatever. There really is a difference to me. It's like saying to someone who wants to see some great films "don't watch Ran, because you've already seen King Lear." Changing the setting breathes fresh life into a story, perhaps even demonstrating how universal the underlying message is, even if the arc is the exact same. Whether you reject the label "sci-fi" for such a setting change, it almost doesn't matter to me. If the way to get more of the games made is to call it "future fantasy" then, damn yo, give me more "future fantasy."

I do wonder, however, why fantasy "owns the rights" to these story arcs. They certainly go as far back as Greek philosopher and probably well before. Tolkien didn't create a new moral struggle, he just put in a new, detailed environment (one which even borrowed from Macbeth!).

Preacher, RTS and TBS are pretty well up compared to other genres for sci-fi.

C&C
MoO
Gal Civ 2
Total Annihilation
Perimeter
(can't think of any more but there are quite a few)

RTS gets its fair share (C&C3, WH40K, Supreme Commander) but turn based are pretty thin outside of the 4x genre, where it is clearly the defining presence. I personally think a sci-fi Combat Mission game would rock.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Sci-Fi is in the doldrums because Science is Hard!

Yup. Throw in the fact that half of America believes the earth is only a few thousand years old and you can see why Sci fi is a hard sell.

Ouch, SommerMatt and The Preacher, i think i didn't explain myself very well.

I didn't mean that people should be happy with playing fantasy instead of future fantasy. Not my point at all - though i can see that i wasn't clear enough. My point was that developers were already creating worlds with the same amount of difficulty and imagination... just set in the past... so they're not seing the disparity in setting. They just see a development of a world.

You're probably right and it's probably because of popularity of fantasy (D&D rather than WoW) because most developers will have grown up with that.

Preacher, i'm not familiar with the 4x terminology? What about titles like UFO - both the real time/semi turn-based and the new turn-based one that's based on x-com?

Why don't games use futuristic settings? Why, besides PERSONA or the MOTHER games, are there no RPG's set in modern times?

You say that, but most FPS are current day or futuristic. Sure there's the glut of WWI and II games along with a smattering of vietcong. In the FPS genre fantasy is a rarity.
There are a few games - perhaps in a similar number but in reverse to FPS - in other genres that deal with present day and futuristic settings. The Shadow Hearts RPG's are set in a recent alternate reality world. There are more but i'm not that into RPG's.

There were a few futuristic RPG's a couple of years ago. Xenosaga II, FF8 (That is pretty much my definition of futuristic fantasy ) but i think that people are still getting "over" the impact made by D&D.

This is by no means a complete picture - in fact some notable games are missing on there. There is also this page which is more complete but still lacking. Looking at the lists we see that there are a few sci-fi or present day, though they are overshadowed by the fantasy.

(sorry for caps, i'm copy/pasting)

.hack series
ANOTHER WAR
CONTACT
MAXIMUS XV ABRAHAM STRONG SPACE MERCENARY - though this is a space hacknslash!
METALHEART: REPLICANTS RAMPAGE
megaman series
Metal Dungeon
Nightwatch
Phastasy Star
Resitricted Area
Star Ocean
KOTOR
Vampire the masquerade

And that is only in Europe, i'll bet the US has more, eg. Rogue Galaxy. As you can see from that list. A few developers have gone into the shallow end of the futuristc fantasy subgenre - sticking to swords and techmagic.
There are a few games upcoming

Actually, one game i like the look of is restricted area. I think i'll pick it up.

The problem as we've already stated is that fantasy is easier for people to get and to market. I think as the people who grew up in the late 80's through the 90's on a steady diet of sci-fi and present day environments get into more powerful positions in the games industry we'll see an increasing amount of sci-fi rather than fantasy. This is the generation that had fully realised Games Workshop tabletop games, spacehulk, Warhammer 40k. Films like Bladerunner, the later starwars, Aliens, Terminator, star treks (and the Next gen and DS9). On TV lots of japanese mech cartoons.... Droids, transformers, Gobots.... etc.

I think the balance comes from what the developers are comfortable with and what the public can understand.
I know i've given some examples of what the public's reaction to sci-fi has been in the past but another one is the original Star Trek. It was fairly popular when on TV but it wasn't until it was taken off air that people really showed how much it was liked. Then how long was it until the Next Gen came along? And look how much more popular that was!

When one first though of RPG one thought of D&D and why not? It was the first major commercially successful RPG game really ever produced. From there we branched out into a whole universe of RPG games from modern to hyper modern to sci-fi and beyond. From the beginning of game development fantasy has set the bar in many forms from the first commercially successful MMOs to classics such as Wizardy, Bard's Tale, Rogue and others. Thinking back on successful games such as Diablo, TSR's D&D series of games like Pool of Radiance, Sierra's successful venture into the game realm with King's Quest and let us not forget Origin's claim to fame, the Ultima series. Fantasy RPG in many different forms has been the most popular and for the game generations (which is most of us and younger) and hence it is ingrained into our psyche. Coupled with the extreme success of the fantasy genre in films as of late with LotR, Harry Potter and also period films in the Medieval and Dark Ages such as Braveheart, King Arthur and even Knight's Tale and others. Also with the popularity growth of Renaissance Festival type events, it's not hard to see that the Fantasy genre is extremely popular. This is carried over into the gaming market as fantasy is good and great. Star Wars lack luster showing didn't help much in the scope of Sci-Fi. Serenity did ok in the box office and honestly I can't think of any Sci-Fi series since the Matrix that has done extremely well. Also in the Gothic Horror Supernatural genre we have Underworld, Night Watch and a splash of other horrible films. The popularity of Anne Rice is wanning as Interview of a Vampire gets older and Bran Stoker's Dracula is also showing it's years. So right now Fantasy is trumping everything with the possible exception of Pirates of the Caribbean but with exception of a few games even that genre isn't taking off all that fast. Even though a 7th Sea MMORPG would be excellent. However that's also in a fantasy like genre. Though if the HBO series for "Song of Ice and Fire" is a super hit then I would expect to see a game of some sort not far to follow since fans have been wanting a game in that specific story for a very long time I would speculate.

It's not hard to see why Fantasy is top dog at this point. Would I enjoy more Sci-Fi or hyper modern genre games? Absolutely. We already have several hyper modern or near future games coming out. Just about any war game coming out soon shows a near future setting. City of Heroes is currently satisfying the hyper modern genre though with the popularity of Heroes on TV and shows like 4400. With movies like Spiderman it's possible we might see more hyper-modern genre games other than the Hollywood sponsored viral games like Xmen and Spiderman. I would love to see Shadowrun as an MMORPG and not a FPS game as it has recently been released. I personally think the Shadowrun universe is sorely wasted on a FPS game. Cyberpunk and Rifts would also be something I would like to see. A bit of Cyperpunk set in a Snow Crash like setting would be amazing. Rifts would be excellence like Shadowrun because it carries with it both high Sci-Fi but also magic to satisfy the Fantasy RPer. There is also a large hole waiting to be filled for Gothic Horror which can obviously be filled with a WoD (World of Darkness) MMORPG of some sort. The possibilities are there but not the capital because investors want something developed that is going to be popular based upon the current demographic. Long shot games are not the best way to get a return on your investment.

Bazarov wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:

...think Road House...

Like Red Dawn and Highlander, I'm pretty sure that was a documentary. If fiction, why would they, as Sam Elliot pointed out, name the primary setpiece "The Double Douche"?
It makes no sense.

No writer could come up with such gems as:

"I used to f%*k guys like you in prison"

and, my favorite:

"I got married to an ugly woman. Don't ever do that. It just takes the energy right out of you. She left me, though. Found somebody even uglier than she was. That's life. Who can explain it?"

Now I have to go rent it...

Well, if you have cable, renting it is superfluous because it comes on TV at least twice a week on one of those 'T' stations.

Indignant wrote:
Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Sci-Fi is in the doldrums because Science is Hard!

Yup. Throw in the fact that half of America believes the earth is only a few thousand years old and you can see why Sci fi is a hard sell.

Multiple waves of difficulty here - first is for the designers to actually create the world/story/etc, but then you have to communicate it to people. If you have people (I'd include reviewers & VPs of game companies here) trying to understand what the game is all about, there is much greater awareness of what a sword or fireball does than a Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator.

But...if that was all it was, we'd be already be inundated with games from other "standard" genres that are easily understood - spy, western, sitcom spring to mind as under-exploited. I know there are some games from those genres out there, but the elf to gunslinger ratio is pretty bad...

Duoae wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:

But this does count as sci-fi as well.

I'd argue that it doesn't.

Think Children of Men, Minority Report,

Are both sci-fi. They take biology and technology research (okay, Minority report also mixes in paranormal too) and extrapolate possibilites into the future. They are not remixed "the past" set in the future. I consider (perhaps wrongly) the films and books (and games) that present old scenarios and art-styles as the future as fiction/fantasy - not science fiction.... though bioshock does straddle that more than any other in the list that was referenced before.

So i don't consider unexplainable and unfounded "high technology" (that could, in effect, be considered magic) as science. It's a narrow way of looking at it and i'll admit that there are exceptions and that it's not a perfect way of looking at the issue, but without it then you really can't differentiate between medievil fantasy/future fantasy and science fiction.

Using the present and near-present still constitute the genre.

Haha... just watched Stan Lee's Harpies last night. That's some good Sci-fi for anyone's gullet! Mixing and matching fantasy and sci-fi! All with Billy Baldwin and some piss, piss poor CGI and acting that bordered on criminal. Someone needs to take away Stan Lee's creds for that one. Totally stole from Army of Darkness, which I would also consider a sci-fi/fantasy setting.

Anyway, on to my point here. I think the reason that people gravitate toward the fantasy genre as opposed to the sci-fi genre is because of the framework included in the cliched fantasy and quasi-historical settings. It is easier to put ourselves into that framework than it is to have a sort of 'open license' that sci-fi allows. Most of us do not want to write a novel, we would rather read one. If we lean on historical half-truths and mythologies already present, this is tantamount to reading a novel as opposed to dreaming up radical and differenet ideals of the possible future.

So the conclusion is that someone has to write a high sci-fi book that clicks with society in general, sells as well as Harry Potter (as an outsider) and then is turned into a successful series of books that are then translated to film.

The book has to have enough of a world presence to support analogue roleplaying games as well as computer RPGs and the inevitable film tie-ins....

So... go on. Get writing!

Cod wrote:

Multiple waves of difficulty here - first is for the designers to actually create the world/story/etc, but then you have to communicate it to people. If you have people (I'd include reviewers & VPs of game companies here) trying to understand what the game is all about, there is much greater awareness of what a sword or fireball does than a Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator.

It all comes down to what kind of target audience one has in mind. Triple-A titles with high production costs will always need to appeal to a broad audience, and therefore one needs to serve those motives and symbols familiar to this audience, at least for purposes of marketing. One way to bring in more details is to "sneak in" new material after a few hours of playtime, and make it optional content.

there is much greater awareness of what a sword or fireball does than a Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator.

Also, there's much greater awareness of what a laser gun does than the Broken Battlesword of Al'Hazadem. Works both ways.

Duoae wrote:

The problem as we've already stated is that fantasy is easier for people to get and to market... I think the balance comes from what the developers are comfortable with and what the public can understand. I know i've given some examples of what the public's reaction to sci-fi has been in the past but another one is the original Star Trek...

I understand your point. I just don't understand where it comes from. How are people "more comfortable" with fantasy? What evidence are you basing this on? Before something like HARRY POTTER or the LOTR movies came out, what FANTASY properties were EVER popular in the TV/Movie world?

SF has always been more popular in the mainstream entertainment machine... Look at the top grossing films of all time:

#2 -- Star Wars ep IV
#4 -- ET
#5 -- Star Wars ep I
#7 -- Spider-Man
#8 -- Star Wars ep III
#10 -- Spider-Man 2
#12 -- Jurassic Park
#15 -- Spider-Man 3
#20 -- SW ep II
#21 -- SW ep VI
#22 -- ID4
#27 -- SW ep V
#31 -- Matrix Reloaded
#39 -- Batman
#41 -- Men In Black

etc., etc.

You might argue semantics that superhero films shouldn't be included in the "SF" category, but that's another argument. My point here is that people-- a LOT of people -- are very familiar with the SF genre for their mainstream entertainment choices. For TV, we have HEROES, all the TREKs, Futurama, BSG, B5, the X-Files... the list goes on and on. So where are people more "comfortable" with fantasy?

glacellus wrote:
Cod wrote:

Multiple waves of difficulty here - first is for the designers to actually create the world/story/etc, but then you have to communicate it to people. If you have people (I'd include reviewers & VPs of game companies here) trying to understand what the game is all about, there is much greater awareness of what a sword or fireball does than a Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator.

It all comes down to what kind of target audience one has in mind. Triple-A titles with high production costs will always need to appeal to a broad audience, and therefore one needs to serve those motives and symbols familiar to this audience, at least for purposes of marketing. One way to bring in more details is to "sneak in" new material after a few hours of playtime, and make it optional content.

Again, I don't know where this idea comes from. I'll put forth the crazy theory that the reason why there aren't very many SF games out there is because... NO ONE TRIES TO MAKE THEM. People can't buy what doesn't exist.

I compiled a list of sci-fi games on the 360 since launch. It's not a huge list, but it doesn't look bleak either. Some of the 360's best games use sci-fi settings, with vastly different takes on the core idea. I did not include any Star Wars or Star Trek games, and plenty of games from other genres have sci-fi flavors to them (such as Crackdown):

Gears of War
Quake 4
Shadowrun
Perfect Dark Zero
Lost Planet
Prey
Geometry Wars Advanced
Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars
Earth Defense Force 2017
Chromehounds
Phantasy Star Universe

Furthermore, IGN's Games of Summer 07 lists over 25% of the major games coming out for PC and 360 as having a sci-fi setting. Only 1 real sci-fi RPG, though, Mass Effect.