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Hollywood Courting the Gaming Industry
beatleadam writes "In a trend that we all seem to already be hyper-aware of... 'The video game industry was once an afterthought in Hollywood, at most an ancillary source of revenue like action figures. The people passionately developing the computer-based form of entertainment were seen as dorks compared with the celebrities. Not anymore. Now that games have matured into a $11 billion business, topping movie box-office sales and siphoning television viewers, the lucrative and increasingly influential genre has attracted more star power than ever.'" We did another story about this a month ago.
I don't see this lasting too long. The "Van Helsing", "Spider Man", and "X-Men" video games are weak, and get horrible reviews.
Why doesn't Disney just fund companies like id or epic games so they can have more developers who can turn around games quicker, create better engines, etc
That's just what I play video games to see:
Stuck up "actors" I don't like doing their normal piss-poor job of acting on high budget, yet poorly designed ( technologically and cinamantically ) games that I will never play, opting for net hack.
Further, let's turn a cheezy game into a movie! Yeah, it'll be slop, so people will pay us MILLIONS to bad mouth it.
And you know what? We will. At the end of the day, the execs know that we will fork over our cash for crap because we are told to do so.
In closing, let me leave you with this thought: Moo.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
some games aren't really games.. more like interactive content sold for $50.
MHO is that hollywood is seeing the dollars. you make a bunch of CGI movies or even real movie like ROTK and TTT and you add some animated version of the main hero that you control doing some punching/sword swinging and they get $50 for their DVD/Movie vs $15-$30 for their movie.
we already have seen millions of dollars invested in videogames, like doom 3 and half life 2,but 5 years ago from now they would be able to relase new versions of games within 6 months of the original relase.
With the level of detail and complexity of new games this will slow down to 3 or 4 games a year per company. Time will tell when small computer game developers will join efforts in order to deliver huge games quick ($$$) ending with like about 4 mayor gaming factories, with fictional characters, some celebrities and some young programmer waiting to get his(her) big break. Is this where games are going?
"The quality of life is inversely proportional to the number of keys on your keyring."
...I still think that other movie tie-ins like promotional fast food offers, action figures, jillions of DVD and VHS releases, etc. etc. will bring in more money. I mean, if the total market is $11 billion then that generated by tie-ins from other media must be only a few tens of millions.
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I'm selling my K5 acct.
On the Van Helsing movie site's front page, only one link actually goes to the movie's page. There's links for a video game, a cartoon, repackaged versions of old monster movies, and even Van Helsing merchandise.
If shitty advertisements disguised as films are the best Hollywood can put out, it's no wonder they need the video game industry. I'll take an Enix or Blizzard (well, make that ArenaNet) game over another Matrix sequel any day.
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Having quality voice talent in games is a plus.
Having bad action movies based on games is a minus.
Instead of doing both the movie and the game in the piss poor fashion of late how about trying to at least get one or the other done properly. Games like Van Heilsing are horrid and the movie really isn't much better. Both were released the same day and really all you see featured about the movie is the "amazing" special effects. I don't know about everyone but for me the special effects ridden movies of late have failed to deliver. The main reason I go to see a moive a "story" or "plot". Instead its just one big effects shot then some poor dialog and/or character development then another enormous effect. How long trend will this continue? I guess as long as they can make enough money at the box office to cover it. Or if not at the box office then from the game revenues, after all it probably takes very little money to make one of these "movie" games.
Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous/interesting/insightful value of this comment
Some of you will berate me for saying so, but some movies based on video games are actually good. By any financial account, some have been VERY successful.
This does not follow when the roles are reversed; I have yet to witness a game based on a movie that was successful in any respect (unless someone can convince me otherwise). Even as a huge matrix fan, I have not been the least bit interested in playing Enter The Matrix.
As long as the movies make money, Hollywood will still make them, even if they are raffish.
that with every year, commercial game development is becoming more and more out of reach of smaller/indie studios. The expectations are being raised with every Doom3 and HL2 that comes out. Nowadays, the models have to be on par with movie-quality standards, the sound has to be done in a professional studio and etc. Gone are the days when a small studio could write a game and hit it big in the industry. Mods seem to be the only way the little people could make themselves known, and even those have to be on par with the modded game (level are not designed from blocks anymore, they are their own complex 3d models). And eventhough i drool everytime i see a new screenshot of HL2/Doom3 and see the new ATI demos, I also long for the days when people got excited by 16x16 pixel characters and 8 bit sound.
I had a blast playing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
If they can make games like this that actually have depth to them, instead of a shooter with just a level from each scene of the movie, I am all for it.
But I think there is going to be a problem seeing a movie based on a video game. You already have in your mind, a set perception of the game and how it should go.
Kinda like reading a book and then seeing the movie. It always seems like the movie sucks compared to what you had read.
So people don't watch as much tv, and all the junk they used to sell you to play with has been replaced with electronic boxes.
You can bet damn sure they're going to get that $20 out of your wallet one way or another. Even if they have to devour another market to do so.
Ironically, you'll pay more for them to do that.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
Yeah, we need some more boring, crappy games based on movies and boring, crappy movies based on games so people will get jaded about the games and the industry will go into recession like it did post-Atari. Then maybe the people that are in it for the glitz instead of the games will go find something else to do.
What would we have gotten if Atari had continued to dominate back-in-the-day? More Atari 2600 Pac-Man probably. That brief recession allowed us to get the NES. Cool upgrade, eh? But,now we're getting yet another stupid James Bond game on PS-2. It needs to die so people will at least try to reinvent gaming into something better instead of continuing to push hollywoodfied, star-studded crap.
TW
Sure, we get compared a lot to the movie industry, but we don't get much credit for our work.
We still have a long way to go before we're really like Hollywood, and not just for recognition. There's also the model used for game development and marketing. But I've not the time to go on a complete diatribe, so you can Google about it.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
it sounds like the early days on the movie industry where studios would sign actors/personalities and they wouldnt be allowed to go work on things outside the studio's movies.
Not only do we not get to reap the rewards of what we've sown, but we barely get any credit for our work, either. Unless you're very indie (like myself), in which case almost nobody ever plays the game anyway.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
I think that a lot of people here are missing the point.
Both video games and movies are basically 20th century mediums. And as such they are now halfway steps to a new 21st century medium: an interactive digitally-generated photography.
Combine synthetic animation such as the AnaNova newscaster with quasi-AI like the classic Eliza program, voice recognition, on-line anonymous interaction with thousands of strangers presenting their image to you as 'avatars'. Have it semi-scripted by Hollywood screenwriters and directors. Run it on multiprocessor systems that are 1 or 2 orders of magnitude more powerful than today's systems.
You get an entirely new medium that makes today's movies and games look as dull as Super-8 family movies and silent film tricks from a hundred years ago. There are some people in Hollywood that realize that movies are about to go the way of Vaudeville in the next twenty years
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Full-priced video games may be on a par with movies in terms of how much total money they are generating, but they are still far less popular than movies. A full-priced video game costs 4 to 5 times as much as a movie ticket, and 2 to 4 times as much as a DVD, despite the fact that the average video game has a much lower production cost than a widely-released Hollywood movie. Maybe if games cost less, the audience would expand, people would buy more games, and there would be less savings to be had by pirating games.