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Hollywood's Rising Fascination With Videogames
Thanks to the New York Times for its article (free. reg. req.) discussing the growing interaction of Hollywood directors with videogame products. The piece notes that Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson has "worked out a deal with the game maker Ubisoft and Universal Pictures, the studio that plans to release 'King Kong' next year, that will give Mr. Jackson substantial creative control over the future game", and also mentions John Woo (" now developing for Sega a video game, an idea he will own outright, about an elaborate heist", as well as his proposed Metroid movie), and Ridley Scott ("seeking a video game maker to form a partnership with him and his brother Tony") as other Hollywood creatives seeking input into games.
Although I feel such director involvement will perhaps benefit the cinematic quality of games, the fact remains that too much creative control from these guys will be a bad thing. Games are games. Movies are movies. Unless Peter Jackson is some sort of closet game design guru, I can only hope for prettier games that play lousy.
Well, I don't really doubt that Hollywood directors are very interested in video games as a new creative medium for themselves. Yet, I can't help feeling that the executives in Hollywood have an alterior motive behind their involvement in the video game world. I'm guessing that they're scared of the game industry, and that if they can further their involvement, the more power they'll have over what happens within it.
At the very least, this has a little something to do with damage control. Their increased involvement allows them to have more power over what happens in the game world and also gives them a new area to do business.
In a worst case scenario, they're trying to start taking over the industry and are just beginning to sink their teeth into it.
Really, I can't blame Hollywood for trying to stay afloat. The major game companies almost seem to want this increased partnering, I don't agree at all that they should partner, but at least this will make it easier for up and comers to shine like never before. The video game scene has a very critical audience, so I hope the big boys stay in top form, for their sake.
Regardless, the potential competition between the established companies and the new breed is starting to excite me. Let the games begin.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
For the most part, titles that go from game to movie or movie to game have been terrible (Super Mario Bros., Enter the Matrix, Street Fighter 2, etc.) However, I can only see the growing interest of Hollywood into games as a good thing. Sure, it's been bad in the past, but that's mostly due to the fact that one side is only interested in capitalizing off the title to get some extra bucks (like LOTR or the Matrix). There wasn't a serious amount of forethought put into it (at least it seems to me) but more of a "Hey, this is a successful franchise, let's build a game/movie out of it" (game/movie depending on which direction) "so that we can get more money."
With this increased input and interaction from movie makers, games stand a good chance to do better where they've generally failed: story. And sometimes, games need a little push in the cinematic direction too. How many times have you seen a cutscene that made you puke or a default camera angle that was unusable? Or how about the terrible voice acting that seems to be a hallmark of so many games? And boy oh boy, story... imagine if a lot of games got a good push in that direction. Sure, there are been some games with interesting/excellent stories in the past (HL, Deus Ex, LucasArts adventure games, and others come to mind), but the majority of games do not have a good story - almost all FPS, most RTS, some MMORPG, most platformers, and the list goes on. Maybe finally, it will be the norm for games to have intriguiging story lines with good dialogue.
This will probably be modded OT but I think something should be said.
Here's the original post (including the missing financial context and Google link) that I wrote up shortly after reading the article at midnight last night when the New York Times site is updated.
Admittedly, it's a bit long and deserves some necessary editing (substituting the IMDB link for the directors' respective filmographies and movie credits for example).
When I logged in early this morning, the post was rejected and in mid-afternoon simoniker posted the story (1 of only 2 today - it's after 6:30 PM as I write this comment). It's entirely possible - though somewhat unlikely considering the sequence of events - that simoniker stumbled on the article by himself and wrote it up entirely by himself.
In the past I've largely ignored that fact that many articles submitted when simoniker was editing invariably are rejected and then - often very similar or identical text - are posted uncredited.
I'm not the first person here to take notice of the pattern or to point this out.
It's not about the Karma or complaining that something wasn't posted, or anything of that sort because I've been maxed out on Karma for a long time, I have lots of submitted items posted, and probably even more rejected because someone else thought to submit it before me. Rejected posts aren't the problem.
It's about common courtesy and respect for the readers and the people who make Slashdot work.
Slashdot works because of the people who take the time to write in and let their fellow readers know about items of interest to geeks everywhere. It's more than a little irritating to take time to do a write-up on a holiday weekend, have it rejected and then see a nearly identical (less so in this particular case) item uncredited.
Most people have had at least one experience of a pinhead boss taking credit for their work, and most people have tolerated it because they get paid to do their jobs and don't want to risk workplace wrath. Here, nobody's getting paid except the Slashdot editors, to whom none of us are accountable. The reader/reporters aren't getting paid and the virtual tip of the hat as thanks is the only reward. I've read people's compaints about a relative lack of submissions or stories in the Games section. If this type of behavior is the reason, it goes a long way to explaining why.
simonker, 'Stuff that matters' is part of Slashdot's slogan. The bottom line: Give credit where credit is due.
It matters.
There was a similar article in the Washington Post today, at the link below: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A637 34-2004Apr9.html
Please note that the Post seriously needs to do better research on this sort of thing, rather than just making popular assumptions. They say that the target audience for "R-rated" video games are "teenagers and young adults," though the age of the average gamer is closer to 30. I suppose it's possible that the target audience is different from the core demographic, but if so, that just means that the marketers at every major game publisher are absurdly incompetent.