Philip Pullman is a genius author. Brilliant. He also stuck his name on a list of 'experts and professionals' who went to the Daily Wail with pitchforks, demanding the head of junk food (agree there), TV and videogames, because the three are turning children into unhealthy blobdroids.
There was a lot of goodwill sense their argument, but also a fair bit of nonsense:
Their letter continued: "They still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives."
It's a little too black-and-white, let's-go-back-to-the-50s for my taste. Too either/or. But I digress - my point is, while Philip added his name to this argument, a few weeks later, Sega announces the development of Philip's His Dark Materials trilogy into a series of video games. Three movies are also being made - more 'sedentary screen-based entertainment' there.
Let's give the chap the benefit of the doubt: it's all well-meaning stuff behind the ideas presented to the Daily Mail (if reactionary and antiquated), and there's always the possibility that his publisher or agent may have flogged the rights to New Line and Sega without necessarily taking his ideology into account.
Still - the combination of announcements was worth pointing out as a little bit .. iffy.
If the issue is kids stuck indoors, how about His Dark Materials innovates instead, with a series of "get out and play" ARGs - maybe he should give Jane a ring - or games that require some kind of physical as well as mental exertion? Maybe something using the console cameras, or geolocation, or hey, invent a whole new peripheral...?
Whatever his opinions of games are I'm pleased to see these books being turned into games. I just hope they are done well.I think the daemons will make an interesting element
The entire idea would be awesome for an mmorpg, with the different worlds and all the races within them.
Posted by: wes | October 05, 2006 at 16:26
Well, I'd probably leap to his defence and point out that the film deal probably included licensing, and so it's New Line (or whoever's making the movies) that've done this, meaning that he had about as much to do with the games deal as JRR Tolkein had to do with the whole EA canon of Rings games.
But it's still a pretty dumb PR move, even if it's not his fault.
How the hell they're going to make half-decent games out of those books remains to be seen. They're classic point-and-click fodder, but I'm afraid they'll get turned into generic 3D brawlers, or Harry-Potter-em-ups. You know: Lyra is the "stealth" character, etc...
wes' MMO idea is a nice one, though :)
Posted by: tom | October 05, 2006 at 17:27
Having just finished re-reading His Dark Materials I fully agree with the Pullman as genius author categorization. However, it's interesting to note that sedentary screen-based entertainment = bad, whereas presumably sedentary page-based entertainment (Pullman's bread and butter) = good ...
Posted by: idiotjed | October 05, 2006 at 17:40
Well QUITE, jed! Hence my annoyance at the thoughtless, simpleton approach that is SCREENS BAD! FRESH AIR GOOD! because a) the two don't need to be mutually exclusive, and b), as you say, books, meditating, sleeping waiting for a bus and sitting at an office desk don't seem to be a problem.
Posted by: Alice | October 05, 2006 at 18:01
The double standard about sedentary activity is funny- but a few hundred years ago, (amongst the upper classes) reading books was *not* considered a proper use of young people's time, rather like watching television is now. I'm not sure when/why that changed. I suspect that literacy, especially being "well read," became an important marker of class distinction, as well as being economically valuable.
The recent pro-reading view is more of a conservative reaction- reading was the pastime for previous generations (who didn't have tv/video games), thus they feel it's what children should be doing now. The importance of literacy is obvious, the importance of visual literacy and technological literacy less so. Due to that same conservatism, there *are* a certain number of parents who would prefer their children to be watching tv rather than playing games.
Given the trend, I await the day when parents bemoan children's reduction of time spent playing computer games, and decry whatever the latest pastime will be.
Posted by: bob | October 05, 2006 at 19:17
This is far from a formed idea, but since the books are about parrallel universes and places, I suggest using a mobile device with GPS that takes a start point and then asks you to physically move to somewhere else a predetermined distance away to "locate" the parallels in another place. And also demands that you go to a park bench - which becomes the one in Oxford - you go to a road, which mirrors one in the story... and then you sit in various places and play until you have to move with the characters elsewhere to another story location - and another real one for you. Then you would have the feeling that the characters exist just you do, visible but only contactable via suggestion through your device, moving around in another dimension just out of reach...
Posted by: Andy | October 06, 2006 at 10:27