Interview: Orson Scott Card talks about games, including his own dream project

Posted Oct 27th 2009 11:00AM by Big Download Staff
Filed under: Features, Action

By John Gaudiosi

Bestselling author Orson Scott Card has won an endless array of awards for his Ender's Game novels. His most recent endeavor, Empire, was a smash hit based on a video game concept from Epic Games-owned Chair Entertainment. The second novel in that trilogy, Hidden Empire, hits bookstores next month. The recent Xbox Live Arcade game Shadow Complex is a prequel to these new sci-fi novels that focus on a modern day Civil War between the red and the blue states.

In this exclusive interview, Card took some time away from working on the screenplay for Paramount Pictures big screen adaption of Ender's Game to talk about his love of video games and his own personal dream game project. After all, Card ended up working on his newest trilogy because of a relationship that grew from his first video game work on Advent Rising (developed by the founders of Chair Entertainment when they worked at GlyphX Games).

What was it that attracted you to video games?

I have to say, this is like a 12 step program. I am a computer game addict. And it's not under control. But at least I learned my pattern. I did the standard old story of how do you get off of opium? You take morphine. How do you get off of morphine? Heroin will cure it every time. And that's what I was doing with computer games. I discovered the kind of game that I like to play when I first played Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It's a war game, but with a lot more complexity to it and without any of the tedium. The individual battles are not terribly interesting. It's the set-up leading to them. It's the strategy and your basic plans.

What did you play after that game?

I played Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon incessantly because it wasn't just about the economics of building railroads. You actually got to put the rails down from city to city. What I loved about the original Railroad Tycoon was the accidental cheat that automatically gave you an endless amount of money. So you could spend all of your time building the darn railroad, which is what I loved. I didn't really care about the money. It was just a tedious thing that I had to deal with in the game.

Did you stick with Sid Meier after that?

Yes. Then there was Colonization, where first of all you play it with the Americas. But that quickly became boring and so you get to play it with new worlds every time and you really are discovering new stuff. You know who your rivals are, so that in that sense the game is the same game. But the terrain is different every time. And I began to realize, this is what I love -- to have different varied terrains. At that time, I was pitching to several game companies my concept for a game that creates itself on the fly, where there is no world. Basically this is what Sid Meier does in Civilization II. He creates world after world each time you play it.

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Tags: chair-entertainment, empire, enders-game, epic-game, featured, orson-scott-card, sid-meier

11 Comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Who the Eff is John Gaudiosi, why is he interviewing this self loathing closet homosexual, and why are you providing a venue to further his career? Half the video game audience would love to never hear from him again, and yet these devs keep working with him. They must be fucking republicans. God I fucking hate republicans.Posted at 11:17AM on Oct 27th 2009 by Jose

*removes bigdownload.com from his RSS reader*Posted at 11:27AM on Oct 27th 2009 by GRT

^^^^ You guys are pathetic.

The imagination of a good novelist is exactly what video games need. Though Empire wasn't that great of a novel, I did finish it and it set things up for a wonderful series of games/movies/books.Posted at 11:49AM on Oct 27th 2009 by Royale

Sure, but Card isn't a good novelist in the least, and his dreck made Advent Rising's storyline absolutely excruciating to force yourself through.Posted at 12:38PM on Oct 27th 2009 by Jayle Enn

whoa, looks like OSC came to the wrong place for an interview. I'm a HUUUUGE Card fan. I guess I'm disappointed that there wasn't news of any of the Ender's Game adaptations. And another thing: it's usually pretty safe to say that men with five biological children aren't homosexual, at least what society thinks a homosexual is. I think Card would say something like: Homosexuality is an action not a label, like eating doughnuts. The more you eat em and choose to enjoy them the more you want them. Which is what research says it is. So it's impossible to BE a homosexual you can only have urges to do a homosexual act. whoa that was long.

uhhh. OSC, if you read this, I'm a huge fan and I hate Sid meyer games. They take too much time to play.Posted at 3:16PM on Oct 27th 2009 by funkamatic

It would only take a fan of a moron to utter such moronic things:

"Homosexuality is an action not a label, like eating doughnuts."

Homosexuality is not a choice or anything like consuming a fucking breakfast pastry. Just because someone has a family doesn't mean that they're not homosexual. When society expects one to act a certain way, one would be inclined to act that way, no matter what their hearts and minds truly know what is right for them. Just because that isn't your sexual orientation doesn't mean it's wrong, it's just not for you. So if you're straight, you shouldn't have a problem with homosexuality because it's none of your fucking business. Except for lesbianism, because that just snakes women away from us, but then again, so many of those broads look like dudes.

Still, nothing at all wrong with it!Posted at 3:27PM on Oct 27th 2009 by Jose

Are we interviewing Neo Nazi's tomorrow?Posted at 5:49PM on Oct 27th 2009 by Ummm, no

No Ummm. no,

Hating people because they were born black or Jewish is just wrong. Believing homosexuality is an aberration, and homosexuals are disgusting lesser humans is perfectly fine.Posted at 9:47PM on Oct 27th 2009 by Jose

Really interesting interview and thanks to BD for posting it. Its just too bad it provides another venue for hypocritical retards to post their stupid, irrelevant, anti-Card rants. Get over it! He has an opinion different than yours and exercises his right to voice it.

I don't agree with everything he (or anyone) says, but it doesn't prevent me from reading his great works. He's also done work on some games I really like so I for one am interested in his thoughts on games. Posted at 9:04PM on Oct 27th 2009 by gamerstuff2010

It's my right to voice my idiotic hypocritical retarded rant :)

And really, who's being hypocritical, me who is defending homosexuals as a straight person, or the anti gay novelist who writes about little naked boys? Oh, sorry, you like those books, pervert.Posted at 9:52PM on Oct 27th 2009 by Jose

Blah blah blah, Orson's ego is still huge, blah blah.

He's apparently never heard of Love: http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/index.html

Your "dream game" is already being made, OSCie, in fact, you can download it and play-test it on your machine right now.Posted at 1:58PM on Nov 2nd 2009 by datashade