Games Industry Echoes Of Hollywood's Golden Age?

Zack Young writes "I just read an article over at TweakTown Gamer that has an interesting comparison between the movie industry and the gaming industry. It mentions many of the similarities between the relatively young gaming industry and the film industry of the 1920's, including the introduction of new technologies and how they shaped and are shaping the artistic direction the formats take." The article also suggests: "The overall structure of gaming companies... resembles the studio system of the 'Golden Age of Hollywood' rather than the fragmented independent layout of today. The movie studios such as MGM, Paramount or Warner Brothers had their own stock of actors, writers and directors from which the crew of a particular movie was comprised."

Comments

It's gonna be more evolution than revolution

[Toxygen]

The article makes mention of the advent of "talkies" being a revolution in the film industry and what the comparable revolution would be in the gaming industry, but didn't movies just use an announcer or a narrator, or even just a piano playing in the beginning? That's still sound for the movie, regardless of the source, and different implementations of the same idea is just evolution.

Re:It's gonna be more evolution than revolution

[leviramsey]

The silent movies would have dialogue by pausing for a card to be put on the screen. Music was done by distributing sheet music with the film to be played in the theatre; that was even a later development, because for many years, the theatre was responsible for performing its own music for the film.

Re:It's gonna be more evolution than revolution

[Jerf]

"Quality" and "quantity" are two points on a continuum, not binary absolutes.

A sufficient change in quantity becomes a change in quality.

Having a generalized sound track is so different from having "a human voice not of your choosing and a piano" that the two are hardly comparable, even if technically both are sources of sound.

The litmus test is, "Will my understanding of one contribute significantly to my understanding of the other?" In this case, the answer is no; understanding what is possible with "a guy and a piano" will only give you the barest hint of what is possible with a full soundtrack.

I'd say it justifies "revolutionary" as a term.

(That said, at this point the only true "revolution" left for gaming is significantly more physical interaction, or direct neural connections giving the impression of more direct physical interaction. "(Distributed) Multiplayer", massive and otherwise, was the last "revolution" in gaming and I doubt there will be any more for a while.

("But you can't predict the future! Maybe something awesome will happen!" No, but I can make a structural argument: We've tapped all the senses that can reasonably be tapped (taste and smell are irrelevant, touch in non-trivial modes is essentially what my "physical interaction" point is about and is very hard), and we've tapped human interaction via multiplayer. There's nowhere for a true "revolution" to come from anymore, just a whole lot of incremental evolution that may add up in totality to a revolution, but with no one true "revolution" point.)

OK, this rambled a bit, but hey, this is Slashdot, right?

Golden Age

[saramakos]

I thought the TRUE golden age would start when Duke Nukem Forever finally comes out?!?

More like the 80's?

[NanoGator]

Just struck me as a little odd that the state of gaming was compared to the 20's instead of the 80's. It seems like in the mid-to-late 80's is when we saw the the start of convincing effects. The result of this was fewer compromises in making a movie with a vision. It wasn't perfect, things still looked fake, but man it just got better and better.

You'll have to pardon me, I just watched the Back to the Future trilogy. Cannot help but be reminded at how refreshing I found those movies when I was a kid. Seems to me that gaming's in that state right now. The graphics are quite sophisticated, the renderings are very close to what the artists intended, but there's still quite a leap to go before we get to 'convining'.

Maybe I'm just focusing on the wrong aspect, though.

Re:More like the 80's?

[Viptorian]

The difference between the 20's and the 80's was that actors would sign to be exclusive to a particular studio. They could not go anywhere else to make a movie. Period. Thats kind of like when Squaresoft decided to only work with Sony. You used to see a lot mroe loalty with video game companies and the designers. However, i'm amazed at all the cross-console licesing that is going on. you can pretty much buy the same game for any system these days. Go to a video store and look at what games are not on rival systems, look at the company that made it and see if you see the name of that company on any of the other company's labels. You can still see the loyalty these days, its just not as obvious, especially with sega and atari primary as game developers these days.

Re:More like the 80's?

[PainKilleR-CE]

It goes a little further than that, though. You don't just have development companies that will sign exclusives with certain manufacturers. You also have each development house keeping all of it's own developers, artists, and designers in-house. If you want Carmack to work on your engine, you either have to be id Software or you have to license the engine from him. If you want Square's composer, you either have to be at Square, or setup a deal with Square to license music from him. The only other way you can go about it is to try to convince the person to leave the development house, and with non-compete clauses that can be pretty hard to do (ie look at EA and Ubisoft). Additionally, you have a handful of very large publishing houses that do most of the business in the industry, or, with consoles, everything goes through the console manufacturers as publishers. Some of the major publishers (EA, Sierra in the mid-/late-90s on the PC side, Microsoft, Sony, and even Nintendo on the console side) buy up development houses that they believe have done good work in the past rather than trying to hire on individual developers or license material from them.

There's a lot more room for independents in the games industry because of the lower barrier to entry than in the movie industry, but this has always been the case (and really the movie industry and even the music industry is seeing the barriers to industry fall rapidly as PCs and technology for digital music and movie recording and editing advance). At the same time, the barriers to entry are rising in the games industry for the first time in quite a while, and most people that make their way into more popular development houses get there through the community of the games those companies produce (by making mods) rather than by developing games from scratch on their own.

Re:Definitely

[sofakingl]

Hardly any decent games? This is the SNES and Genesis era you are talking about, an era that many gamers think of as the real gaming golden age. There were so many good games on both of those systems that are looked apon as being classics. Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, the SNES Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, Street Fighter 2, Phantasy Star 4, Castlevania 4, and several others were released in that era, and are cherished by many gamers.

A little late!

[Allen Varney]

I pointed out these similarities in an article for Amazing Stories back in 1998, and I was nowhere near the first to make the observation.

Programmers like actors?

[R33MSpec]

"..The movie studios such as MGM, Paramount or Warner Brothers had their own stock of actors, writers and directors from which the crew of a particular movie was comprised.."

On another train of thought - I wonder if programmers who gain 'status' for creating outstanding games may be well known enough (e.g John Carmack) to be exactly like an actor, in the way:

Programmers will have a personal manager and be able to almost freelance between game companies for particular game projects - like an actor is offered movie roles, a programmer would be offered contracts by gaming studios for a particular game.

Games would highlight even more so the fact that a particular programmer worked on a previous 'hit' game - like any new movie will highlight any A-list actors it may have in it.

Re:Programmers like actors?

[PzyCrow]

Why on earth would a player be concerned with programmers?

An actor gets famous for the following reasons,

1. Sufficient skill
2. Good/Uniqe apparance
3. Charming charateristics
4. Exposure in good films

none of these should be apparent in a game.

A good programmer produces bug free code.
Bug free code is not noticed by the player.
Thus: Good programmers are note noticed by players.

Re:Programmers like actors?

[obeythefist]

True, but game developing companies are made famous by a combination of very similar attributes!

1. Sufficient handling/tilt/gameplay consistency (many console games lack this)
2. Good/Unique A/V features demonstrated(graphics and soundtrack)
3. Charming characteristics (Rockstar Games produces a game - expectations of its characteristics?)
4. Exposure in media and of course word of mouth

Re:Programmers like actors?

[beders]

I think the actor-programmer analogy is less applicable than the director/game designer. You pick up a game designed by Sid Meier you know what you are going to get.

This seems to have been in decline in recent years (or am I getting old?) being replaced by the studio, probabley a function of game project becoming bigger and more expensive

Re:Programmers like actors?

[Bazzargh]

Programmers are nothing like actors - game characters are like actors. As in, I liked Mario's earlier, funnier work.

The superstar programmers are more like the auteurs of old, doing script, direction, cinematography and editing - but not acting - and even in gaming they are the exception not the rule.

Its possible that soon actors will be like actors - games already contain their mocap'd, scanned, and sampled avatars. How long will it be before having an actor in a game guarantees an opening weekend?

"A guy and a piano" undersells the silents

[ianscot]

understanding what is possible with "a guy and a piano" will only give you the barest hint of what is possible with a full soundtrack.

What was revolutionary was dialog, voices. The music involved was under more studio control as a result of soundtracks, but that's a tradeoff.

Music for silent movies was a significant artistic "industry." House bands were pros, working many hours a day, and they had to really know their stuff. Studios might specify a theme for certain parts of a movie, and if the theater had that in their library -- theaters had music libraries -- they'd play it. Otherwise they might choose from similar keys and moods. (Under tight time constraints, movie studios use a pretty limited range of themes for their previews now. Think of how many movies use "Carmina Burana" or something close to it for their trailers.)

You wouldn't believe how complete the score could seem, based on the rudimentary "cue sheets" that a movie came with; they could do an hour-and-a-half of music (for a major release) based on cues on one side of a sheet of paper. We're talking about significant live performances of music, not just some guy banging the keys playing ragtime.

Sometime find a local art museum showing, say, an old silent Sci Fi title, and go see someone playing the theremin alongside it. Live music adds something, even if it doesn't synch with the movie as perfectly as a modern score does. It's different, not just a change in quality.

Sound Revelution? How about GTAIII?

[FouRPlaY]

It seems to me that Grand Theft Auto III might just be the sound revelution.

Not only does it tell a story, but it is the free-form, non-linear, go-at-your-own-pace, any order, video game ideal. The user is complete control of the progression of the story.

Not to mention its commercial success.

Sounds like a candidate to me! ^_^