Madame Butterfly: The Video Game

         
      In this blog I was asked to turn the opera,"Madame Butterfly" into a video game. The first thing I would do is turn this game over to  Telltale games. The video game company, "Telltale Games", is famous for turning over the storyline to the player. The company makes the player pick what happens in the storyline by giving them four options ultimately deciding the climax of the storyline. By allowing Telltale games to help me I could give the players more of a connection with characters like Pinkerton. Another idea would be to change the ending or give the players choices that ultimately decide the ending of the game. This is Telltale games sweet spot and I believe the collaboration would make a very successful game. The other way Telltale games would help is they are known for there movie like video games that tend to produce a lot of drama. I believe a video game with drama in  today's society is a big attraction to kids between the ages of 18-24. The way I know this to be for the most part true because kids in my generation love shows like the Walking Dead. Telltale games sold a lot of copies of there video game version of the popular tv show. Which gives me confidence in the fact they could do an amazing job on this close to a century old opera.

This game would have to be R-rated because of the sexual nature along with the game ending in suicide. In the opening scene of the video game maybe you see some imagery and foreshadowing by flying around as a butterfly with uplifting Japanese music playing in the background just to ultimately catch on fire as dark and scary Japanese music plays. Ultimately the butterfly goes down in flames transitioning to the first act of the video game. Then you see the cutscene of the love between Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton and there goodbye. Then the first chapter you get to play as Pinkerton in the U.S Navy and get to see his mindset change. Another way to make this game more popular is by changing the storyline by allowing the players to choose if Pinkerton should leave Cio-Cio-San or not. This idea was not shown in the opera and would interrupt the chronology of the opera ,but ultimately makes the game more interesting. If we use this route then it would help the player see two sides of a story for better or for worse. Every story likes to show one sided biases. The video game would  fall in line with other top 21st century video games because the story would be more complete and without bias. Then the next cutscene we would play as Cio-Cio-San giving us the option to wait for Pinkerton or not. These choices would allow many different endings with many different scenarios based off what the player chooses. It would be hard ,but maybe there is a scenario that gives the character the choice to play as Pinkerton and decide weather or not to even leave for the U.S navy. To make this game very successful In the twenty first century you would have to keep a lot as well as change a lot.

    While watching the opera ,"Madame Butterfly", I realized the mix of emotions from deep love to deep pain and sorrow. The video game I would create would show emotion ,because emotion produces reaction. Madame Butterfly produces various strong reactions from the audience when watched for the first time. Sadly I feel to reproduce those same reactions with kids from my generations playing this video game I would have to shorten the story because kids attention spans are shorter. Also on the matter of my generation being a factor and having a short attention span you could easily sell this to my generation by putting a flaming butterfly on the cover of the video game. I feel this game would be hard to make if you kept 100% of the same storyline and 100% of the same endings. This opera is beautiful and weird and could be sold as a video game ,but I feel the storyline would have to be added on to and shortened. Kids in my generation are big on first person shooting games, maybe we have a chapter of the campaign where we fight in Japan apart of the U.S navy as Pinkerton. This opera is important part of chronology of the opera ,but to make a 21st century video game you would have to add on parts and try to stray away from chronology. This opera as a video game in its entirety allows the creators to go 1,000 different directions with a 1,000 difference endings and options.