e.sport / tournament&show – page 10
Admit that you almost thought it was easy, my tournament-show thing?
A money story – that’s right
Agreeing with game developers – it’s true
But this found – it rolled itself.
In fact – no.
It doesn’t work at all, and especially not by itself.
I’ve made a lot of progress on structuring the moments of the e.sport tournament – I’m at the point where talking about it here would probably become a monument of boredom for you.
So here I am with the real difficulty of my nice idea: it is the transition between the stage show and the game final time.
How to avoid the pitfall: it is a totally artificial collage?
How to manage what the spectators will see?
When will they watch the e.sport final?
Will he/she watch the whole thing? It deserves it.
But then, how long will the spectators be there? And what will they see?
The play until the tournament?
Then the tournament?
Then the end of the show?
That’s a lot of questions – and I have to answer them.
If you can help me, I’ll be happy to do so.
Well – okay – I’ll figure it out and you correct it later.
Moving forward with the first tournament has already given me some interesting insights.
I’ll go from there.
You remember, we were going into the tournament with the 14 characters from the play and the 4 major characters from the video game.
All this to get to the final phase, where there will be 4 characters from the play and 2 to eliminate; and the 4 major characters from the video game, in each of the teams.
This means very very very clearly that the phases of the tournament will have eliminated 8 characters of the play.
And that the final phase will leave only one – the winner.
On the other hand – unless I start cheating like crazy – a video game, a real one, which puts real players in competition has a huge characteristic: it is totally unpredictable.
Once the players have been given the framework of their game, they are the only ones in control.
It’s beautiful – because I get a different show every time.
It’s terrifying – because I have to manage it in a show that’s also on stage.
And most of all, there’s no way I’m going to take away that instantaneous, improvised dimension that there is to the game.
Did you find the word I like?
If you like actors, yes –
There is: improvise.
For now – I don’t make anything of this word – but I’ll keep it for you.
I plan to unfold the end of the show from the outcome of the game – because it makes the game incredibly valuable.
This is manageable up front, by providing as many possible endings as there are possible endings in the game (clearly: four, since I’ve provided 4 possible endings – those 4 tailored to the winning team).
But to achieve this, I need, horribly, imperatively, a link between the scene and the game.
What are my characters, who were all quietly on the real stage of my theatre, going to do inside a video game?
As long as I don’t have the answer – the editing is artificial- well… too obviously artificial.
So I have to bring their arrival in the video game – but not the arrival of all the characters – the link is made on the day of the finale with 4 characters in play and 2 to eliminate.
I have 8 left on the stage.
I’m not going to lie and tell you that I have “the” answer.
I have my intuitions – my desires as a spectator – and my reservations as a spectator.
So I think that we should not be too complicated, and even less beat about the bush.
I have characters on the stage who are in conflict with each other – that’s why I chose this play.
I can – because it’s done every day – change the temporality and place these characters in our world – with our games, our phones and all our contemporary hocus-pocus.
Once they’ve arrived in our world, these characters – the notion of video games is part of their world too.
I think we need to set up a situation where my 6 characters in total agree to “play” the rest of their relationships, not in the old-fashioned poker game, but at Moxxxis, in Borderlands.
From there, these characters on stage become de facto spectators of their avatars.
– This gives “two actors” by character : a normal actor and the player who plays the character. –
And the other characters, those who were eliminated from the final, become spectators and commentators of the whole thing: and here I need actors able to improvise, to make their character react with what happens during the final. They have to improvise, at that point, because no one can know what will happen during the tournament for either of them.
And so, here I am with a very, very nice link between the stage and the screens.
As a result, the game keeps its place as a game – the show keeps its place as a show, with a stake: who will win the game?
What the audience won’t know – is what happens afterwards, once the winner has won.
And so, instead of stopping watching at the end of the tournament, we stop watching at the end of the show.
I haven’t answered all my questions – yes, give me time –
but I’m pretty happy with this way of looking at implementing both “at the same time”.
Especially since, by giving my performers the voice of the “spectators”, they will be able to increase all the emotional dimensions that exist between their characters and incredibly enhance the play phases, because they will react to the play phases.
No? but yes, it’s going to be great! We have to think about it, it’s true, we have to be precise, not tell ourself stories and not forget details – I agree.
But still – it’s going to be totally awesome
ALTAIR - Concepts 