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EA Discusses Spielberg Game Collaboration
simoniker writes "As part of a wide-ranging interview with EA Los Angeles' Neil Young, the exec has been talking about how EA's collaboration with Steven Spielberg is working, commenting: 'Well, he doesn't like come into work, grab his lunch and set down for the day. Basically, it's probably best described as a writers' table on a TV show... it's Stephen, [Looking Glass veteran] Doug Church, who's producing his first game, me, a couple of the designers, Ryan Church [no relation to Doug], who did the walkers for War of the Worlds...' Young also commented of Spielberg: '...he's pretty conversant in the medium. He plays a lot of games.'"
Judging by this article, I'm not certain that this collaboration is such a good thing. It's nice that Spielberg likes games. But if you go to any major game development forum, such as gamedev, you'll see lots newbies who think that they already know how to make games just because they know how to play them.
Actually, Spielberg was a (if not "the") creative force behind Medal of Honor when it was first released on the Playstation. To be fair, I can't say with certainty his involvement wasn't much more than saying "Dreamworks should do a WW2 first person shooter" while filming Saving Private Ryan. Still, he's hardly a 'newbie.'
To be fair Carmack's role is more along the lines of cinematographer then director.
He may be the headliner at ID, but he is the technical lead, not art/design.
Carmack would certainly not have any difficulty in working on movie CG technology, and would probably be a considerably better camera man than the average Jo.
Similarly the is no reason that a good director should not be able to handle the art direction on a game as easily as a film.
On the other hand the writing of a film is in no way comparable to the design of a game. However Spielberg doesn't write his film's and the is no reason to suppose he will try and design a game without expert help.