Peter Jackson on the Future of Storytelling

Via VoodooExtreme, an article on Team Xbox covering a panel at X06 on the future of storytelling in games. Along with Mr. Jackson, industry veterans Peter Molyneux and Greg Zeschuck weigh in on this issue. The meat of the article is a video of the presentation, which is regrettably in .wmv format. The Escapist has some highlights of the conversation up in their news section. "'I've got to the stage now where I just end up catching something on DVD and I'm more excited about games coming out in the next 2-3 months than films,' said Peter Jackson, director of Lord of The Rings and founder of Wingnut Interactive, an offshoot of his movie studio. 'That created an awareness in me of the shift in entertainment options out there, and if I'm feeling that others are too.'"

Comments

Time

[EMeta]

Even though I'm not much of a gamer anymore, I totally see what Jackson is saying here. I could maybe invest 9 hours of my life into a typical 90 minute movie (though there are only a handful of these), while I imagine FF VI alone has lasted me 90 hours in its replaying over the years. One of these things is just not like the other.

Calling all English majors

[Amalas]

This is exactly why one of my friends is double majoring in CompSci and English: to write good stories.

Any good writing class should teach you about developing characters, rising action, falling action, keeping readers interested, etc. That's the sort of stuff that needs to be applied to gaming, not graphics.

feelings, woah, woah, woah, feelings...

[rodentia]

That created an awareness in me of the shift in entertainment options out there, and if I'm feeling that others are too.

I'm feeling, Peter, that you're feeling influential enough to generate feelings among the hoi-polloi, the better to feel your wingnut investment a bit heavier on the hip.

Just a feeling.