Rangefinders: The Videogame

bensyverson

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While I was at the Salvation Army digging around for rangefinders (I found a Lynx 5000, but it was $20 and a little busted), I came up with an idea for a videogame I would actually play. Bear with me as I dork out.

Setup:
It's called "Decisive Moment," and it stars you as a fledgling photojournalist in the mid-to-late 1960s. You're just out of college, living in a midwestern college town like Madison, WI or Chicago, or Iowa City. You have a friend who tips you off that a C-level local paper needs a photojournalist to cover local news. Your character has shot photos with his/her Canonet QL-17, but not professionally. At this point in the game, you have $10, which you can either spend on film or "photography night class" which is basically an in-game photography training seminar. If you buy the film, you better know how photography works. If you take the class, you only have two rolls of film (48 exposures) to shoot with.

You go in for an "interview" (really, a non-interactive cut scene) with the photo editor at the C-level paper, who asks if you have "professional equipment." You lie and say you have a M3 with one lens. Over the course of the game, you can either save up and buy a Leica and lenses, or you can continue shooting with the QL-17 and save up money. Later, with enough money, you could fly yourself to remote locations when there are big events happening, and sell the photographs. On the other hand, a fast wide angle lens for your M3 might help you get some more valuable shots as well.

Anyway, the photo editor gives you a test assignment: he wants you to shoot a small anti-war rally at the local college. The editor isn't sure he needs a photo with the story at all, but if you shoot something good, he'll buy it.

The interface to the game is basically a first-person perspective. Pressing a button on the controller brings the camera up to your eye. Pressing a different button lowers the camera to your hip. Yet another button extends your arm, and from there you can rotate the camera around using your wrist (directional pad). When you're looking through the viewfinder, you see a recreation of the QL-17 (or, if you buy it, M3) viewfinder. In other words, your view becomes darker and smaller. You have to line up the RF image using the joystick, and set the shutter (and aperture if you're shooting with the M3 or QL-17 in manual) using four buttons (aperture +/-, shutter +/-). Just like the real QL-17 or M3, you have to either know how to adjust the settings "blind," or you have to take your eye away from the VF and look at the camera while you adjust, thereby possibly missing some action.

If you use the M3 you also either have to guess exposure, buy and use a light meter, or write down some exposure guidelines in your notebook (which entails taking your eye off the VF and opening your notebook, all of which takes time).

You also have to manually rewind, unload and load new film using a sequence of key presses. The faster you learn the key presses, the faster you get at it. Once you've shot all the film you brought, you head to the paper's darkroom.

You can interact with your subjects -- even asking them to pose or repeat actions. However, a posed shot could be viewed by your photo editor as too editorial. You can also take metaphorical or expressive shots, but again, beware of your editor.

In the darkroom, you hand off your negatives to a photo intern, who develops the film and prints a rough contact sheet for you. That's the first time you get to see your images. Using a loupe, you look over your contact sheets and pick up to three images to print. The printing process involves first picking a paper and a filter for the enlarger. Along with the type of film you bought, these will determine the tonality and contrast.

The enlarger allows you to change filters, as well as perform crops and rotations. You need to manipulate a grain focuser with the joystick to get good focus. You can either guess the time based on the exposure of the contact sheet, or make a test strip print with different times. Every time you expose a piece of paper (such as a test strip), you have to develop it. This entails dropping it in developer, then stop, then fix, then wash, using a timer on each step (for the purposes of the game, the times will be sped up).

Once you have up to three prints you like, you take them to the photo editor. Each photo editor you encounter will have different tastes that influence how they'll react to a photo. Conversations you have at the beginning of the job will clue you in to what they're like. For simplicity's sake, their tastes will fall somewhere between the extremes on these axes, but you'll never know exactly where:
Generally uncritical <-----> Generally highly critical
"Pure" journalism <-----> Expressive/editorial
Sensationalist <-----> Conservative
Literal <-----> Metaphorical
Action shots <-----> "Composed" shots
Image quality <-----> Content quality

For example, your first photo editor at the C-level paper might rate as relatively uncritical, more open to editorial work, more of a sensationalist, preferring literal work, action shots, and not caring as much about image quality.

The "photo editor" will analyze your photos, and render a judgement. The algorithm will first check for basic technical quality, by seeing if the photo is in focus, your subject isn't cut off, etc. Then it will look for coded elements in the image. For example, if there was a spontaneous flag burning, a clear shot of it would rank highly as pure journalism, sensationalist, literal, and as an action shot. A shot of the discarded gasoline can would rate as more editorial, conservative, metaphorical, and composed. The objects and events themselves in the game would be coded this way. The photo editor will give you feedback based on how closely your photo matches their leanings.

Depending on where you are in the game, the judgement could affect whether or not you get paid, whether or not you get published (which increases your clout), whether or not you get a better assignment next time, or whether or not they recommend you to more prestigious publications.

As the game progresses, the 60s wear on, and the protests and civil unrest get more and more heated. If you do well, you can travel to a bunch of the most interesting events during the last half of the 1960s. You're ostensibly a photojournalist, but you can also shoot artistic "personal" shots if you brought enough film. The end of the game is 1970. If your clout is at a certain level in 1970, you move to Manhattan and get a retrospective of your work. You can choose whatever shots you want for the retrospective, personal or published work. Then for fun, you can upload your gallery to the net. If your clout isn't very high in 1970, you're just offered a staff job at an A-level midwestern newspaper.

The possibilities for sequels are endless. In one, you've turned into a New York fashion photographer in the 1980s -- play your cards right, and you could be shooting Cindy Crawford and Christie Brinkley, or otherwise, you'll be doing catalog work to save up for that Hasselblad 500 C/M (better work on your lighting!). In another, more boring sequel, you're a sports shooter in the 1990s, trying to get into Sports Illustrated while saving up for a EOS 1n and massive Canon L lenses. 🙂

Ha, okay, so maybe I'm totally insane, but I'd love to play this rangefinder game.
 
Dork. j/k! 😉

I like the idea, obviously a game of limited appeal. I've had a similar thought, though, when I was playing Call of Duty or Brothers in Arms. I thought it would be cool tohave a mod that makes one of your "weapons" a camera instead. rounds would be frames and clips would be rolls of film. Everything except actually recording a photo is already in place in fps style games.

guess this makes me a dork, too
 
Haha, Paparazzi has got to be another game. 99% of the game would be spent waiting in the bushes for a celebrity to come out of their apartment, or a restaurant, or a club. When they did, you'd have about 10 seconds to get a good shot. You can buy long lenses, or save your money and get close, but you'll risk getting punched if you get too close to the stars. 🙂
 
Darn it!

I came out of a long-time computer game addiction into photography, and now you guys are talking about something that will potentially drag me back.... BRILLIANT !!! 😀

The game should also have:
- Factual specs of different RF cameras (I remember learning more about guns in computer games)
- An online multiplayer mode in which you can choose to be the journalist or the editor
- A real city rendered in CG with people in it doing what people do
- Graphic-wise it has to be at least as detailed as this one

If pulled-off decently, this won't be just a game, it will be a simulator for learning photography. Man, how cool!

Btw, I got a 65 (NOT BAD) on the Superman game (one time play, no repeat), what's your score? 😛
 
That's a little too detailed, on the darkroom and exposure stuff, IMO. High budget video games, let alone low budget ones, aren't even close to being able to realistically simulate something like that. Even if they were, there's something called real life that works even better if you want to do all that...

It's a good overall idea though. There would have to be a lot of cutscenes, which I actually like in games if they're well done. GTA:San Andreas has a camera you can pick up and go take pictures if you want, which is pretty fun. There's even some specific pictures you're supposed to take to complete the game, IIRC.
 
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