The latestJurassic Parkgame,Jurassic Park: Survival, looks pretty cool. It’sall about a woman left behind on Isla Nublarafter the place is abandoned in the wake of the first movie, who must fight her way through the jungles and attractions to make it to safety. Except she’s up against dinosaurs, so the best way to fight is to run and hide. It’sAlien: Isolation, except with dinosaurs,and that’s a stellar pitch. Despite this, it just feels like it’s not a real Jurassic Park game. Very few of them are.
The point of Jurassic Park has been lost with all the sequels, but the dinosaurs are a very specific metaphor in the first book, and that continues over into the movie. Jurassic Park is a condemnation of capitalist greed, and the ways the wealthy believe they can wield utmost power without consequences. The reason Jurassic Park fails is not because the dinosaurs are too strong, or even because life… uh, finds a way. The fact that the dinosaurs can change their gender to breed is to underline the stupidity of the rich in trying to control things they don’t understand. The reason Jurassic Park fails is because Hammond underpays his employees.
He “spares no expense” on the glitzy stuff, but the positions go to the lowest bidder, and when they ask for a raise, they’re turned down. He splurges millions on the park and it all falls apart because he won’t spare an extra hundred bucks for a crucial employee who needs it. This is what Jurassic Park is all about, not the dinosaurs. Granted, it wouldn’t be much of a story if the employee sabotaged his candle-making empire by stealing his recipe for wax, but the dinosaurs are not the point of the story.
Most video game adaptations miss this. It might be unfair to judge Survival yet, given we’ve only seen a single trailer, but it sure seems like it’s just about dinosaurs. Then again, Alien: Isolation does manage to uphold its own movie’s politics, by constantly underlining the disregard management has for the workers - this is the cause of the Xenomorph’s rampage, and the penny-pinching cutthroat policies that render the ship so unsafe and flimsy in the first place.
Jurassic Park: Survival was originally cancelled in 2001, and has been brought back from the dead for this new game. It has, however, changed developers, so will probably be rebuilt entirely with just the name and general concept remaining.
Jurassic Park: Survival will be the 37th Jurassic Park game, and while some have explored the core themes, most are about not getting killed by dinosaurs or running a dinosaur park. The latter might flirt with the themes and the impossibility of the task at hand, but it’s hard to critique capitalism when the goal of the game is to win at capitalism. The third most popular type of Jurassic Park game is replaying the events of the game, a la theLegotitles, but these tend to skip over the critique of Hammond and emphasise the dinosaurs. Ditto the board games, card games, and amusement park rides based on the movies.
Again, the dinos are obviously the selling point. That’s how you know it’s Jurassic Park and most of the movies' best and most exciting moments feature scales, claws, and teeth rather than cheque books and spreadsheets. But 37 games in, just surviving against dinosaurs doesn’t seem all that compelling anymore. We have other games where we have to survive against powerful things, and the concept for this specific game is two decades old already. If this is going to bring Jurassic Park into the modern era of video games, it needs to do something more.
It doesn’t need to, and in fact shouldn’t be, on the nose about it. Alien: Isolation is subtle, but consistent with its politics. People tend to overreact to the word ‘politics’ and the fact Survival has a woman of colour as the protagonist already makes it political in the eyes of many. But if Survival remembers that Jurassic Park was brought down by its greed, not its beasts, then it could be onto a winner. Otherwise it’s just another dinosaur game not worthy of the name.
