April's Together Retro Theme: Elkin's Eccentric Extravaganza

[Ack]

It works for me. I may just go pick up Phantasmagoria and finally play through it if FMV wins.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Referring to something as a full motion Video game does not notate gameplay elements. That is the equivalent of calling Call of Duty, not a shooter, but a 3D game. It can be called a fmv game because it uses ful motion Video primarily in gameplay, but that is not a genre. It says nothing of its actual content outside of the fact that full motion Video is used. Crime Patrol, A Fork in the Tale, Her Story and Dragons lair have nothing in common in outside of using full motion Video as its primary form of execution. The gameplay itself is drastically different. One is an shooting gallery arcade game, one is an interactive movie, one is a quick timer event game and one is an adventure game.

[marurun]

I agree that there is a particular set of games that have been lumped into an "interactive movie" category under the name FMV (the genre you actually see used on Wikipedia is Interactive Movie, not FMV), but what's interesting about that is that many of the games put in that category aren't actually interactive movies, per se. So using it as a genre is misleading, because many folks often include games in it that don't fit, just because they have a lot of FMV scenes in them. So many games classified as FMV games really are just games that have lots of FMV. Look at one of the poster children of bad FMV games, Sewer Shark. There are some Dragon's Lair-like sequences where you have to pick the right direction to navigate tunnels, but the bulk of the gameplay is just rail shooter against an FMV backdrop. People call it an interactive movie, but that's quite inaccurate to the primary mode of gameplay. Many of the LaserActive games were like this, rail shooters against an FMV backdrop. But those games are nothing like, say, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, which is also classified as an interactive movie. Holmes is really just an investigative adventure game with video clips to tell the story and reveal some of the clues. 7th Guest is similar. It's just an adventure puzzle game. No action sequences to speak of. So when most people speak of FMV games or Interactive Movies, they're really talking about 3 distinct and different kinds of gameplay elements: rail shooters, adventure games, and Quick-time event games.

But I'm not trying to open a can of worms where genre is concerned. I merely want to point out that using FMV (or interactive movie) as a genre is fraught with peril due to some real definitional inconsistencies, more so than with most other colloquial genre designations.

And it is clear that's not how Elkin is using the term for this poll. I mean, his explanation is pretty straight-forward. It's games WITH FMV, not games that ARE FMV, so to speak. And a lot of the questioning and discussion that's arisen from that has come from lack of reading (or reading comprehension).

[Exhuminator]

Referring to something as a full motion Video game does not notate gameplay elements. That is the equivalent of calling Call of Duty, not a shooter, but a 3D game. It can be called a fmv game because it uses ful motion Video primarily in gameplay, but that is not a genre. It says nothing of its actual content outside of the fact that full motion Video is used. Crime Patrol, A Fork in the Tale, Her Story and Dragons lair have nothing in common in outside of using full motion Video as its primary form of execution. The gameplay itself is drastically different. One is an shooting gallery arcade game, one is an interactive movie, one is a quick timer event game and one is an adventure game.

The idea of an "FMV game" as its own genre concerns its presentation, not its game design. From the same sources I already quoted for you:

"A full motion video (FMV) is a video game narration technique that relies upon pre-recorded video files" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_motion_video )

"Games in which most of the game is presented as full motion video (FMV)" ( https://www.mobygames.com/genre/sheet/fmv/ )

"A "full motion video"note ("FMV" for short) is a video game term, used back in The '90s for Cutscenes which use pre-rendered or live-action video, as opposed to playing in-engine" ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... otionVideo )

From the very same source which you yourself linked to earlier as a repository of FMV games:

"FMV stands for Full-Motion Video. When a video game features live-action or animated video, that video is called FMV and the game is categorized as an FMV Game." ( http://fmvworld.com/faq.html ) <---If FMV World isn't an authority on this, who is?

Yes there can be different game designs inherent in an "FMV game". But the umbrella term is used to house games which utilize FMV itself as a primary portrayal mechanism.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I'd vote Neo Geo except I bet this poll gets rigged as well.

lol I want some deets about this. I'll make sure to rig my poll so "Micro Cabin games" gets 100% of the vote.

[Exhuminator]

a lot of the questioning and discussion that's arisen from that has come from lack of reading (or reading comprehension).

Or maybe because Elkin used this image in the OP:

[dsheinem]

FMV takes the lead!

[marurun]

I think that implies they looked at the picture and then didn't read the thread.

Also, I love how close the top 3 themes are. Nobody is really discussion RTS in-depth, because we already did that last month. But it's clearly still in people's heads.

I can tell you right now that I don't have a pony in this horse race (despite what you might think based on my posts thus far) and I think it'll be fun to watch what the finish presents. Regardless of which theme wins, I think there's a lot of room for some fun discussion.

[Gunstar Green]

People, commit to a vote and stop trolling for crying out loud. It was funny last month now it's just lame.

[alienjesus]

a lot of the questioning and discussion that's arisen from that has come from lack of reading (or reading comprehension).

Or maybe because Elkin used this image in the OP:

This doesn't disprove Marurun's comment, because if you saw the image and assumed then you didn't read the text which clarified.

So, you know, lack of reading or reading comprehension

Anyway, for all the arguing over FMV and Neo Geo semantics, I notice that RTS just overtook Neo Geo and is only a point behind FMV. This is a 3 horse race, and one of those horses is going almost entirely unnoticed as it approaches the lead.