Clive Barker's Jericho, developed by Mercury Steam and published by Codemasters
In Part I
of our four-part Q&A with quadruple-threat Clive Barker--he writes
novels! he directs movies! he paints! he designs videogames!--we
discussed the sources of inspiration for his just-released videogame
Jericho and the "bigotry" of certain critical attitudes towards the
medium. Today, in Part II of our interview, Barker explains which
aspects of the horror novel can't make the leap to horror games;
recounts his own dealings with the British Board of Film Classification
(which recently upheld its ban of Manhunt 2) and the Motion Picture
Association of America; and his experiences working in multiple media.
Looking at the medium that you're most known for--the novel, the
horror novel--and the values that typify your work in the medium: mood,
pacing, you have access to interiority and things like that. You can
give the reader a sense of multiple characters. And it's an older
medium so there are many more models that you can follow.
Yeah.
How much of that do you find useful to bring across to games,
where the nature of interaction, the nature of what the audience of
players experiencing is much more direct? They're conditioned to want
more action. There are obviously strong horror elements throughout
Jericho. But at its base, it's a shooter. So which of those values that
you've developed for years in the novel and brought over to other media
that are in some ways more like the novel--like comic books and the
movies--which of those values transfer over to games and which do you
say, "You know what, I have to get rid of that, or translate it into
something else entirely?"
Well, the first big thing is the interior life. I mean, it just goes
out the window. Again, games don't deal with that yet. Will they? Yes,
I think they will. I think we'll find ways to design the screen. It may
be that we eventually will end-up playing on three screens
simultaneously, but there will be history being played out that is
directly related to--who's got a pen in their hands?
Female publicist: I do.
Just--would you just write--
Female publicist: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I just had a good thought. Real good. [Dictating to publicist.] So,
yeah...use....game as...history...of characters--I'll know what that
means; just make sure I get it.
Female publicist: Okay.
It occurred to me as I was saying that to you that to actually make
a game with a strong metaphysical shape or nature like this one,
dependent upon an understanding of character's history--which you would
then have to sort of jump back in time to understand--would bring you
much closer to the state of a novel. And that interior life we were
talking of would simply become history.
You could take the members of this squad and next time we do this we
spend the first part of the game choosing the squad, so you then spend
time dealing with pivotal episodes in each squaddie's life. And then I
think we'd be much closer to what we can conventionally think of as the
strengths of the novel. It's about people who are doing things in the now, but when we need to know about the then, all the authorial voice has to do is shift a little. It's not quite so easy here, but that isn't to say that it can't be done.
