Commercial Playthroughs

I would like to see video game companies releasing two products. The first are your typical $50 to $60 retail video games. The second are $30 corporate playthroughs of the game which seamlessly show, at standard definition for that particular video game, all of the cutscenes and actual gameplay that a professional would see on his TV screen if he was to sit down and play through the game. Naturally, cut out errors. Naturally, to make boss fights and puzzles more entertaining perhaps deliberately flounder for 1 to 2 minutes before "solving" the riddle or defeating the boss. But beyond that? No deaths. No getting lost. No wandering around not knowing where to go. A relatively stream-lined playthrough captured on video and sold at retail stores as a DVD or Blu-Ray disc for just $30. Click the title to read more.

I'm beginning to think that I'd rather buy these games like that than buy them as they exist right now. And if it's more cost-effective to program it into a video game than it is to film it with actors and actresses on set, then I'm all for it instead of pushing for cinema-quality video recordings. Think about it: if a game takes 10 hours to beat and retails for $50, only sells 100,000 copies, and is considered "a major profit" for the company who made it, how could they ever hope to possibly make 10 hours (finished product) of Hollywood footage of the same material and turn the same profit? It just can't be done.

I considered books, but in most cases books are inferior to film/games, sometimes unacceptably so. For example, I could go for either a Shadow of the Colossus game or a SotC film, but a SotC novel would lose a lot of the magic because so much of what makes the game jaw-droppingly epic is seeing tiny Wander scrabbling all over the colossi which are furiously trying to knock him off of their bodies and away from their weak spots just like a man does a pesky mosquito. Or I could go for a Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly film just as much as the game, but an FF2:CB novel wouldn't be nearly as awesome because so much of the game's magic is in the visuals -- ghosts that appear out of nowhere and then disappear just as quickly are amazing touches to a game or to a film but would become a nuisance in a novel if they were mentioned every other page. And it's not nearly so scary to read about a grisly ghost mauling the heroine as it is to witness it onscreen and (if a video game) to adrenergically flee from the malevolent specter as quickly as your character's delicate legs will allow her to.

But in many cases, I don't think the advantages of "being in control" which video games offer are enough to outweigh the advantages of "being a passenger along for the ride" which films offer. Sure, there's something to be said for being the gamer, but I'd rather watch the film with my family and relax, knowing that no fight scene is going to be overly drawn out or dull, knowing that every scene in the professional playthrough will move along just as seamlessly as it would were it an actual Hollywood film, etc. I had a guest over last night and I wanted to show him the end to SotC. I told him it'd take only 20 to 25 minutes. (15 minute ending sequence and a 10-minute-or-so boss fight prior to that.) But boy was I wrong! Because of my poor execution of the controls, my friend's patience wore thin when after 40 minutes I'd finally slayed the final boss and told him, "Okay ... NOW here comes the ending. :)" It ruined the experience for him. I ruined the experience for him. I felt guilty, but I also felt powerless. Youtube videos are so small and grainy that they don't outmatch my own playing on a ~24" television screen. But with no Game Genie or cheat codes or anything, there was no way for me to auto-spawn at the top of the boss's body if, after spending 5 minutes just getting there, I got a little greedy, tried to run when I should have crouched, and was flung off of his massive being, hurtling down to the ground, damned to begin the ascent yet again. If I could auto-spawn back to that point, no problem. But I can't. If the game and I had better communication about what I want it to do and what it's asking me to do (controller-wise), then maybe we'd have been fine. But that wasn't the case: the game told me to Left+Triangle, and I did, and my friend agreed I did, and I did it at least ten different times for every one successful execution. (Note: I had to reclimb him four times before I killed him. You do the math.)

So this is what I'm talking about. If I want to show a friend Shadow of the Colossus ...

Or if I want to show him Xenosaga ...

Or if I want to show him Shenmue ...

Or if I want to show him Fatal Frame ...

Then I think that it'd be really quite nice to have the luxury of owning a corporate playthrough on DVD or Blu-Ray. It would be really very nice indeed to be able to just pop it in, skip ahead to the correct chapter (on the DVD, I mean), fast forward or rewind as necessary to get to the exact place I wanted to show him, and then hit Play, sit back, relax, and enjoy the movie. My guest(s) aren't playing the game anyway, and I already beat the game, so neither of us loses anything by watching the game played by a pro inside the company. That's why I think the "YOU GOTTA PLAY IT TO EXPERIENCE IT, MAN!" argument falls apart. It doesn't hold for people who (a) already played it or (b) will never, ever play it ... ever ... but still are interested in the story.

Sega did it with Shenmue 1, which they released alongside Shenmue IIx to catch non-Dreamcast owners up to speed with the plot before flinging them into Wai Chan; and I wish they and other companies would do it again for other games.