John Woo Establishes Game Studio With Sega

Thanks to Gamerfeed for pointing out that renowned film-maker John Woo has established a game development studio, Tiger Hill. The studio will work with Sega of America to co-create new game properties that'll hopefully capture some of the stylised action so many games have 'borrowed' from John Woo movies. What kind of chance does a film-maker have of making a difference in videogames, now films are becoming more game-like and games are becoming more film-like?

Comments

Woo-isms

[Universal Nerd]

I am a John Woo fan, mostly due to his glorifing of violence, so I must demand the following in his games:

Pidgeons or doves flapping their wings in slow motion during a small interval during a major firefight.

Guns in churches or church-like locations. Firing guns in churches is a plus.

Slow motion. This is NOT bullet time, slow motion violence is the epitomy of movie violence.

Two guns aerial fighting - Matrix ripped this off of the Master Woo, he makes firing guns and leaping seem so easy that even a wimp can do it.

Gun-play, through having AWSOME golden guns, twirling them in mid air or - the coolest of all Woo-isms - the release of the magazine and the reloading while the good guy and bad guy have a breather between more lead exchange.

Silence, five minutes of silence in an action flick is like a cool breeze in the middle of a hot summer's day. Silence and slow motion together create the perfect atmosphere during a fire-fight, add that to a reloading scene and you've got me in tears.

I've yet to see a flick with so much style as John Woo manages to put in his. Glorified Violence, as my girlfriend calls it. :)

John Woo? Vin Diesel?

[cgenman]

Video Gaming and movies are very, very different entertainment mediums, with the best games relying upon great play mechanics rather than a great story. John Woo has a wonderful sense of rhythm, timing, and camera angles but those things are controlled by the player in any game. His movies are also strongly character based, whereas videogames are concept based.

The one thing that Woo will be able to bring to the table is his ability to connect good and bad characters in such a way that they find themselves intractably bound to eachother... But as games require hundreds of faceless, nameless mooks, such character on character interaction would be less important.

Unfortunately, this is just another example of the hollywood types trying to get into something they don't understand. Nobody expects Stephen King to be able to cross over mediums from books to movies, why do people make that assumption from movies to videogames? Simply saying that they are both visual mediums and are on some sort of "convergence" shows just how little Woo understands this industry.

What kind of chance?

[AnamanFan]

"What kind of chance does a film-maker have of making a difference in videogames, now films are becoming more game-like and games are becoming more film-like?"

I know this seems like a shameless promotion since it comes out tomorrow, but the answer to that question will be answered with "Enter the Matrix."

This is a very rare project where film directors are in the director's chair for a video game. This is revolutionary mainly because it breaks taboos in Hollywood about video games.

A few weeks ago, Emerson College in Boston held their 'Web Night' panel discussion which included Randy Fenton, the founder of Dare to Play (DtP). DtP is a tool to create a non-liner narrative structure using a hotmail-like account to interact with characters. The intent is for branding for movies where audiences experience a sort of prequel to a movie (as well as some Edutainment applications).

The common problem he has faced is being labeled as a game. For example, DtP was featured under the Sundance Interactive Festival, but only by a hair. The board was at a fight between calling DtP a game or not. Sundance Interactive do not want to incorporate 'games' into the festival, but how can an interactive project not be constructed as a game? Under this logic, titles like 'Myst' or 'The Longest Journey' do not have narrative merit. This is the challenge between the movie and gaming industries.

Hollywood thinks all video games are variations of Pong.

There are a lot of reasons and theories as to why, from union issues to change in audience positioning. But now, special effects work is very similar to video game creation, especially with motion-capture and human scanning practices. The film industry is already making mini-videogames as non-interactive movies for a few years now. Something needs to point out this fact to the industry.

I believe the Wachowski brothers will make that point with The Matrix. The principal photography of the new series of The Matrix was of 3 main units, "Matrix: Revolutions," "Matrix: Reloaded," and "Enter the Matrix." Film people made a video game. The game may or may not be revolutionary for the audience (out side of the plot's involvement with the movie), but it will be for the process of creating a video game.

It shall be exciting to see what happens next...