Ebooks as video games, apps?

[stonetools]

Will ebooks evolve into video games or apps?

Set in 1947 and placing participants in the role of a beat cop climbing the ranks of the LAPD, this week’s console sensation LA Noire is as much a statement of intent as it is a video game. The creators cite Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and the films of Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder as inspirations, and have included 20-odd hours of studio-quality dialogue voiced by so many members of the Mad Men cast that the game sometimes resembles nothing so much as a Sterling Cooper corporate away-day.

It emphasises deduction, clue-hunting and, courtesy of some astonishing developments in graphics technology, reading human expressions as the means of navigating its complex plot. And it arrives in tandem with a collection of short stories from writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, Joe Lansdale and Lawrence Block, each one set in its murky and morally equivocal universe. In some respects, it seems less a game than a sort of full-scale cultural land grab. Its creator, Brendan McNamara, has said he envisages audiences “sitting on the sofa playing LA Noire with their girlfriends and friends and passing the controller around, almost playing it like a TV show”.

But LA Noire is just one example of a growing interpollination between the worlds of traditional narrative and the fast-growing sphere of computer entertainment. One recent and surprising phenomenon in novelism has been the success of printed works based in gaming universes: one of the novels based on the space-opera Halo video games has shifted more than a million copies, and graphic novels linked to both Halo and the Gears of War series have sold extremely well. But as the prospects for in-game narrative deepen, more and more screenwriters, novelists and comics creators appear to be going straight to the source and branching out into games themselves.

LINK

There is also HERE, where Al Gore created a book as app .
Are we moving to a world where 15-20 years from now , we'll be reminiscing to our kids about a time where we read plain text on non-interactive devices called e-readers, which usually didn't even have a TOUCHSCREEN?

[RainingLemur]

Having played a little of LA Noire, it's definitely fun. I find it to be more of a game than, say, Heavy Rain.

I don't think that ebooks will completely evolve into apps/games, but there will probably be more "interactive" ebooks that'll likely be apps. Either that, or there will be some kind of "choose-your-own-adventure" ebooks with some increased functionality.

[elcreative]

Gosh... screenwriters, novelists and comic creators are going straight to the source and branching into games themselves... yawn... must be slow news day for amazingly unoriginal conclusion like that... first examples started in early days of adventure games and have continued ever since... and we keep getting the joys of interactive books and how they're going to replace books and reading... oh yes, that one stretches back to the beginning computer gaming...

Doesn't seem to occur to the writers of these pieces that none of these things precludes the other... "The Theatre is dead now we've got cinemas and film!!" so I'm left wondering about all those big buildings where they purport to put on "plays." "No more board games now we've got computers," so sales soared over the last few years (well until the banks made us all broke) and so on.

Every few years, someone thinks it's cool to write about the death of some art form/entertainment method. Me, I like interactive games and other computer entertainment systems but there are equally times when I don't want to do anything but be entertained... could watch TV, go the cinema whatever but I'll read or listen to audio drama (pictures usually better)...

[leebase]

My cook books have. I LOVE having cooking apps on my iPad. Far superior an experience to cook books.

Lee

[carld]

There's a little mingling, but no, games will not replace ebooks.

Edit: btw, LA Noire is the first video game to really get my interest in a long time. I use my XBox 360 as a media center for DVDs, Netflix and Hulu, but I might just consider shelling out $60 for this.

[crich70]

Well games are more and more like movies in some ways, but I don't see books being replaced by games themselves. Full immersion VR games (if they are ever developed) might come close in some ways in that they will create a sense of reality for the player, but books will more likely just change form as they have before and are now. First was the oral story then the clay tablet after that came the scroll and hand written manuscript which led to pbooks and now to ebooks. The format may change a bit (from txt to mobi to epub, etc.) but other than that the ereader is the only change I can see coming in the future. I mean Kindle and Nook are both good for example, but so was the Beta machine and VHS player in the days before the DVD came along. Who knows what the next storage medium for books will be any more than they know what the next medium for movies will be.

[teadonkey]

While I don't see a real REPLACEMENT here, I'd love a murder mystery book that is interactive. Now that would be something I could really, really get into. I suppose that would be game-like, sort of choose your own adventure, but in the form of words instead of images on a television set.

[Richey79]

LA Noire is just another sign that video gaming is maturing as a medium. As people become bored with games which are the equivalent of Star Wars and Commando, the main focus shifts away from violence and onto plot, theme and character development. It's good to see the rare games that take their cues more from literature than films.

Someone above mentioned Heavy Rain, which maybe wasn't very interactive, but had some fantastic characters and used pace and emotional weight to affect the participant. Bioshock was a great piece of science-fiction with the kind of plot twists you don't find in film now, because film-makers don't want to risk aliienating those viewers with short attention spans. Bioshock also lifted much of its theme of moral doubt from the work of Ayn Rand.

One video game reviewer expressed it well when he said, 'video games are still waiting for their Citizen Kane.'

As for ebooks becoming apps, or even blurring boundaries with books in the future: yes, I think that some certainly will. In fact, once most people have tablet computers (give it five years), we'll see a glut of them, just as we did with interactive CD roms when computers started using them. Look at Al Gore's recent app for a good example of how this will be done.

[JeremyR]

I'm missing the specific connection between LA Noire and books. Just the tie in book? Because games have had tie in books for a long, long time. At least the late 80s.

And have been inspired by them since the beginning. Heck, the first adventure games were even all text. Including one that was similarly themed (you play a detective, anyway)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadline_%28video_game%29

Beyond that, back then, because of the limited amount of space you had on the disk, a lot of times you were supposed to read the text in a little booklet that came with the game.

Heck, the first game I had for my C-64 was a whole bunch of mysteries that you had to solve (along with a little book of the text you had to read). I remember because my father didn't want me playing games on it, but this didn't count because it was mostly text or something.

[Andrew H.]

Let's ask a more fundamental question - will movies replace books?

If movies didn't replace books, why would games?

[stonetools]

Actually,this "fundamental" question isn't a question at all-movies didn't replace books.
But emails ARE driving out faxes, and -more gradually- first class mail, and no one has sent a telegram in quite some time.
Ebooks are simply highly formatted HTML documents. Its pretty clear that they can do much more with this form factor.
Its also clear that ebooks in their present form can't command much in terms of price-indeed, less and and less , if we follow the reactions on this forum ($9.99 for something that offers several hours in entertainment-Unconscionable!! ).
Publishers will want to offer much more in terms of value added, in order to command a higher price, and the way to do it is to offer much more than formatted text -some kind of enhanced UX-a game or app like UX.
Mean while as the younger generation grows up with this enhanced UX as normal , only us old fogies will be clinging to our text files. Eventually, the text file ebook goes the way of the telegram and the fax. A possible future?

[elcreative]

No...

Originally Posted by stonetools

A possible future?

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Actually,this "fundamental" question isn't a question at all-movies didn't replace books.
But emails ARE driving out faxes, and -more gradually- first class mail, and no one has sent a telegram in quite some time.
Ebooks are simply highly formatted HTML documents. Its pretty clear that they can do much more with this form factor.

Books just tell a story. So do movies. It's clear that movies can tell a story with far more enhancements than books can.

Yet they have not replaced books. Because people want to *read*.

Games won't satisfy people's desire to *read*. Neither will apps. People will, of course, play games and use apps - just like they watch movies and TV. But they won't replace reading.

Its also clear that ebooks in their present form can't command much in terms of price-indeed, less and and less , if we follow the reactions on this forum ($9.99 for something that offers several hours in entertainment-Unconscionable!! ).

This is not clear at all, despite what the the MR echo chamber says. E-book sales are through the roof. E-book revenue is through the roof. E-book profits are through the roof. Random House recently attributed its 6% rise in profits to e-books.

The fact is that e-books are selling like hotcakes, and that agency pricing has not slowed the adoption of e-books.

Publishers will want to offer much more in terms of value added, in order to command a higher price, and the way to do it is to offer much more than formatted text -some kind of enhanced UX-a game or app like UX.

They can charge more for "enhanced books," but I don't think that many people will be buying them.

Mean while as the younger generation grows up with this enhanced UX as normal , only us old fogies will be clinging to our text files. Eventually, the text file ebook goes the way of the telegram and the fax. A possible future?

No. Just like movies didn't replace books. *Exactly like* how movies didn't replace books.