Sometimes Hollywood movies are subtle, giving us a small taste of an idea by hints, whispers or analogy. The conch is really our voting system in a democracy. The lion is really Christ. That sort of thing.
And then there are those times when it walks up, smahes you in the face and says "Ripped from the headlines!!" If producers knew "ZOMG!!", I suspect it would have been in this trailer:
http://www.themoviebox.net/movies/2006/STUVWXYZ/Stay-Alive/trailer.php
I suppose it was inevitable that this generation would get it's own "Mazes and Monsters" movie tapping into people's general fears of new technologies.
Should we be taken aback that it is focused squarely on tacit fears of MMO addiction? Or is it, when combined with WOW's success, merely another sign of virtual worlds entering the US mainstream?
Are there any non drm videos available? Windows only... sigh. :)
Posted by: Tony | Feb 08, 2006 at 16:08
It was asking me to install Flash 8 in IE ... even after I installed Flash 8. In Opera it asks me to add the WMP plug-in.
Not sure how many hoops to jump through before quitting.
Posted by: Chip Hinshaw | Feb 08, 2006 at 16:14
Shake your "junk"?
Posted by: brian | Feb 08, 2006 at 16:36
It worked fine on IE on a PC, but not on Firefox.
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Feb 08, 2006 at 16:41
http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/hardcandy/large.html
Posted by: | Feb 08, 2006 at 16:59
The mind really does boggle at the thought of putting extensive DRM controls on what is, after all, an advertisement.
Posted by: Byron Ellacott | Feb 08, 2006 at 17:19
"http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/hardcandy/large.html"
Actually no, I'm trying to point the thread to an MTV movie called "Stay Alive," about a group of 20-somethings who play an addictive game and are then taken over by it.
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Feb 08, 2006 at 17:44
Okay -- finally got it (IE7 no likey). DEFINITELY Mazes & Monsters 2006, imo. I saw that movie when I was about 13 years old (probably at the peak of my D&D play, which was short-lived anyway). I remember just thinking of it as a movie about a kid who goes nuts playing too much of a game. It didn't strike me as any big warning, though I'm sure plenty of parents saw it as such.
There are undoubtedly people who drown psychologically in these games. I've met a few who I'm sure came damn close. A woman in one guild temporarily lost custody of her children because of her obsession. One of my best pals in EQ spent all of his RL money traveling around the US to meet women he had befriended in-game, and the RL encounters were always awkward (most of the women were NOT expecting a visit) and were usually followed by him disappearing from the game for weeks.
Now, he had issues anyway (game or no game), as did the woman I mentioned, but the game clearly delivered both to some sort of "safe place" that really made them forget their troubles, and also made them feel the way they wish they felt in the "real" world. Not necessarily a bad thing, but for both of these individuals it led to extremes that were unhealthy, to say the least.
Posted by: Chip Hinshaw | Feb 08, 2006 at 20:51
The trailer is in several much more friendly formats here. I'll change the original post as well.
http://www.themoviebox.net/movies/2006/STUVWXYZ/Stay-Alive/trailer.php
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Feb 09, 2006 at 13:31
"Mazes and Monsters" was more about someone losing themselves in the game - the boogey-men were in his mind, not in the objective world.
This movie strikes me as the opposite: a garden-variety horror flick about supernatural shenanigans surrounding the "game" as the focus.
SW
Posted by: Steve Williams | Feb 10, 2006 at 11:28
Really? It seemed to me that they were losing themselves in the world (heavy "torn from the headlines" addiction angle in the intro), and that it is also manifesting itself in the real world.
In any case, I'm trying to point attention to the fact that virtual world fears are about to hit the mainstream in the same way that they did for D&D and consoles. Sure, everyone wants to talk about RMT, but this is the kind of thing that soccer moms are actually going to hear about.
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Feb 10, 2006 at 13:36
It's like the Day After for videogames. I agree, Dmitri, that they (or at least one of them) lose themselves in the world, but I wonder if the vw manifests itself in the rw, or if that's just the main char (or who seems to be) unable to distinguish between the two. (Much like Hanks' character in Mazes & Monsters.)
This will be fodder for the "Video Games Are Turning Our Children Into Murderers" crowd for sure.
Posted by: Chip Hinshaw | Feb 10, 2006 at 18:35
The game in the trailer looks like a "unreleased, bootleg" horror game played by six or seven people, not a persistent world or anything massively multiplayer. What gave that idea? The fact that they talked about addiction, and that MMOGs figure prominently in lots of videogame addiction stories in the last few years?
Posted by: Naomi Clark | Feb 10, 2006 at 23:02
Yes, that and the multiplayer angle. I guess we'll see.
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Feb 10, 2006 at 23:25
I can't really see any connection between Stay Alive and MMOs, to be honest. I also think it's a bit early for MMOs to be entering the mainstream. I mean, really, have video games in their entirety really entered it yet? Insofar as having movies made about them, anyway. Aside from some absolutely terrible straight-to-video films and Uwe Boll disasters, I can't think of many game-related movies.
If Stay Alive is playing on fears of anything, I think it'd be more a case of 'Hot Coffee' entering the mainstream than MMOs. But of course, a movie about polygamy isn't the best idea, so I guess they chose to mimic The Ring instead. "They say you play a video game, and then one day later..."
So yes, I wouldn't worry about it. I don't think Stay Alive is demonising MMOs any more than The Matrix demonised MSN Messenger.
Posted by: Dom | Feb 12, 2006 at 12:57
Dom>I can't really see any connection between Stay Alive and MMOs, to be honest. I also think it's a bit early for MMOs to be entering the mainstream. I mean, really, have video games in their entirety really entered it yet? Insofar as having movies made about them, anyway. Aside from some absolutely terrible straight-to-video films and Uwe Boll disasters, I can't think of many game-related movies.
Dom, I wasn't certain what you were saying here and it scared me because I was thinking, "isn't the video-game business like a $20B-a-year industry, and doesn't WoW have 5 million subscribers? Sounds pretty mainstream to me." But, now (after re-reading) I think you are talking about video-games as fodder for the movie industry, and I have to agree with you that the "crossover" (if it can be called that) has been largely unsuccessful. And I think part of the reason is that TV viewers probably aren't particularly drawn to shows on the subject of videogames, and gamers probably aren't particularly drawn to TV in general.
I think that I am an avid gamer BECAUSE television is such a passive (sorry to generalize) medium, and I feel that I get more stimulation and exercise my mind more (depending on the game, of course) when I'm engaged in "interactive entertainment" such as videogames.
Posted by: Chip Hinshaw | Feb 13, 2006 at 11:33
This trailer lost me when it said:
But what happens when the game you play...begins playing you?
The rest is typical Hollywood B.S. I don't see how addiction has anything to do with it - clearly this bootleg game is haunted! What we are seeing is the same thing that happened with the internet in movies like "The Net", "Fear dot com", etc.
Posted by: gatmog | Feb 13, 2006 at 12:27