indiegames
February 8th, 2010, 21:40
http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2010/02/340x_custom_1265663129808_ws.jpgThere's not much Shakespeare in video games, no major Hamlet games and only scattered hopes (http://kotaku.com/5415815/marc-ecko-wanted-to-re+make-macbeth) for a Macbeth one (http://kotaku.com/5462863/dantes-inferno-producer-ponders-macbeth-the-game). The lead creator of Dante's Inferno thinks the writer himself, could have been a game design visionary.
Hey, the Wall Street Journal asked Dante's Inferno lead game creator Jonathan Knight the question:
WSJ: You mentioned Shakespeare as one of your interests during your MFA. What do you think he would have been like as a game designer?
Knight: Shakespeare would have been on the forefront. He was an innovator and not just a great story-teller. Arguably, he's more of a medium innovator. He borrowed heavily. "Hamlet" is a complete rip-off of a story on the prince of Denmark. Some people think he lifted it from a work that actually came between the two stories.
He was such a master at harnessing the new. For him, the new medium was open air theater on the south side of the Thames. He solidified a big portion of the English language with his plays much like Dante did with Italian vernacular.
There's more in the original article, including tidbits about what Knight and the team at EA's Visceral Games omitted from their adaptation of Dante Aligheri's famous poem.
On the Shakespeare front, possible game designer, yes. And wouldn't it be interesting to see a master of merging the highbrow and lowbrow making games — or is that exactly what we have already, perhaps, at work in studios around the world?
Dante's Inferno: Do Classic Poems Make Great Videogames? (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/02/08/dantes-inferno-do-classic-poems-make-great-videogames/) [The Wall Street Journal]
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More... (http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/kotaku/full/~3/G-wtf1Jilg4/shakespeare-as-video-game-designer)
Hey, the Wall Street Journal asked Dante's Inferno lead game creator Jonathan Knight the question:
WSJ: You mentioned Shakespeare as one of your interests during your MFA. What do you think he would have been like as a game designer?
Knight: Shakespeare would have been on the forefront. He was an innovator and not just a great story-teller. Arguably, he's more of a medium innovator. He borrowed heavily. "Hamlet" is a complete rip-off of a story on the prince of Denmark. Some people think he lifted it from a work that actually came between the two stories.
He was such a master at harnessing the new. For him, the new medium was open air theater on the south side of the Thames. He solidified a big portion of the English language with his plays much like Dante did with Italian vernacular.
There's more in the original article, including tidbits about what Knight and the team at EA's Visceral Games omitted from their adaptation of Dante Aligheri's famous poem.
On the Shakespeare front, possible game designer, yes. And wouldn't it be interesting to see a master of merging the highbrow and lowbrow making games — or is that exactly what we have already, perhaps, at work in studios around the world?
Dante's Inferno: Do Classic Poems Make Great Videogames? (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/02/08/dantes-inferno-do-classic-poems-make-great-videogames/) [The Wall Street Journal]
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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/kotaku/full/~4/G-wtf1Jilg4
More... (http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/kotaku/full/~3/G-wtf1Jilg4/shakespeare-as-video-game-designer)