Slashdot Mirror
Publishers Detail Specific In-Game Ad Plans For Future Games
MTV's Multiplayer Blog recaps a recent event held by Massive Inc., a subsidiary of Microsoft, during which game publishers put forth specific ideas on what types of in-game advertising players will and won't be seeing in the near future. The examples varied in how interactive and intrusive they were, from name-brand bottled water power-ups to destructible virtual billboards to taking advantage of sports game locker rooms for product placement. They did claim they would restrain themselves from blatant advertisements that would ruin immersion in fantasy games. Blizzard partnered with Massive to bring ads to Battle.net, but don't expect to see ads in the associated games.
>>...what types of in-game advertising players will and won't be seeing in the near future
Hey, game publishers, let me tell you what types of in-game advertising I'll be seeing in the near future: NONE! Know how I know? because I WON'T BE BUYING YOUR PRODUCTS! Seriously. It's the reason I quit watching television several years ago: it was bad enough that the quality of the shows was weak, but the encroachment of pervasive, obvious product placement and obnoxious on-screen banners thoroughly ruined the experience.
I play games to escape from this garbage, not to endorse it. I'm not interested in your advertising, and as of late I'm barely interested in your cookie-cutter games that are big on cost & hardware requirements and poor for overall entertainment value. You're walking a fine line, already.
What I'm saying is, you need to focus on the basics -- creating games that are fun and deliver good value -- rather than considering my eyeballs some sort of resource that you get to exploit.
Pissing off your customer base is not the road to financial success. But what do I know? I'm only the person who used to buy your products. And I suspect there are many, many more people who share my sentiments.
No, it's not fair. I'm paying for the game. My time is valuable, and it is not for sale to advertisers. When they give me the games for free, they can put in ads. Until then, I don't want advertisements of any kind, and I will not buy any games from any company which sells them.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
What if they lowered price on an ad-supported version of a game. Say a new fps game set in a city. There is billboards and stores and stuff you can see, if you pay full price for the game this is all for made up stuff. But if you pay maybe half the price for the ad supported version, everything is the same except there is billboards with ads for coca-cola? I don't really care at all what they do, I play a game if i enjoy it, if they can add ads into that without annoying me (forced ads to watch every time the game launch or stuff that kills immersion like an ad for coca cola in a fantasy game) go ahead.
The advertisements are going to offset the cost of development, which should reduce the cost of games or more likely make less popular more profitable. This should hopefully lead to more niche games, more interesting games. It would also be nice if video gaming gets some money from the "real world" rather than always paying licensing fees. If the next Outrun! the developer gets some change for making the car a Ferrari, a Lotus or a Vette, I don't see the harm.
Real classy.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
I want to tell you to get off the soap box, but you're partially right. The in-game ads in Guitar Hero III were completely immersion-breaking for me. It's a small part of why I've stopped supporting that series.
Advertisements don't always break immersion though--series like Madden and Tony Hawk would be really cheesy if they lacked ads for real products/companies like what you would see in a real football/skateboarding arena. I don't have a problem with publishers capitalizing on this, and it would be insane to expect them not to.
Also, the banner ads in the Battle.net lobbies never bothered me very much--I'd get into a game and forgot about them.
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You actually think that it will lower game costs? Please show me one time in the past 20 years when a company creating a new line of revenue means they actually reduced prices on other lines. Just one. This won't make games any cheaper or any better. And because it means companies will be spending more money on advertising (which creates no useful goods or services) the companies that advertise will raise prices. This will cost you, not save you.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Then they had better be careful they check out various patents that might already cover this.
Otherwise they might be in for some nasty surprises.
I don't care about immersion. I hate ads. These companies have no right to waste my time dealing with them. I do not and will not support any company which sells ad space on paid products. If I'm paying for it you have no right to do so.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Like I said to another poster- name one time that a company has ever lowered prices because they started accepting ads. They either go free and sell ads, or they keep the price exactly where it is. If they already know you will pay x for a game, they have no reason to charge less than x. They'll keep charging the same amount and make that plus the ad money.
And no, I still wouldn't buy it. I wouldn't boycott the company if they were upfront about it, but I would never buy anything with ads in it. I'd rather support products that don't do that bullshit.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Newspapers depend on ads to make the price low enough for people to afford them. But I bet most /.-ers never read a newspaper because they get all the news from the web. For free. Payed by advertizers.
-- Cheers!
Go ahead, make pirated versions even Better Than Original. If you can flip a JNE to JE and bypass protection, it should be no problem to just jump over the "render ads to screen" or "download ads from server and save to file" function.
True, modern DRM is a bit more difficult than flipping JNE to JE, but that just goes in the favor of the pirates; the ad-download function can't be more difficult than the DRM, and they're already quite able to remove the DRM... So, yeah, publishers, go ahead and compete yourself out of the market.
They have been for awhile now.
Reminds me of my cable box. Over the life of this thing I'll may than pay for it outright. I'm also paying a ridiculous amount per month for service. Yet there on the bottom of the "guide" is an advertisement that takes up not one, but two slots that could otherwise be used for more guide information. Worse, THE CURSOR ACTUALLY STOPS THERE like I'm going to intentionally click on the stupid thing.
I like how you completely ignored the newspaper and magazine example. Also, please stop throwing around the term "no right" - they have every right. You don't have to like it or purchase their product, but it has nothing to do with your rights.
The thing for me is I agree that they shouldn't waste ones time, actually I never let ads waste my time as I can take care of that perfectly well myself. BUT other than that I don't give a shit I probably get get affected by them subconsciously but so be it. Ads does not have to waste ones time. The ads themselves does not waste my time if they are integrated in a smooth way. I mean does anyone get mad over seeing a billboard or some ads on a bus? If not why should one get mad over an ad on a billboard or a bus in a game?
I didn't mind the in-game Axe Body Spray ads playing on the video screens in common areas of Anarchy Online. Until I heard the same Axe ad playing over and over again... I hated it... I was actually hoping for new ads.
If more vendors had jumped into the advertising and maybe tried a few clever/entertaining ideas I'd have no problem with it.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
One area I think ad's can do something good for players is keeping multiplayer servers online. I doubt many companies makes a great deal of money from keeping servers online for multiplayer in old games. If EA had placed ads in the lobbies of some of their old games that would probably cover the cost of running the servers instead of shutting them down.
I do not personally condone pirating. Yes, I know, pirating is rampant, easy, free, and also .... stealing.
Blah blah DRM, SecUreRoM, xYzCRPA...
If you seriously believe that the game makers and other software developers will continue to thrive in a highly manipulative market, (with rampant pirating) you are crazy. This will ultimately only hurt the market.
This has been a great revenue model for all sorts of really great free products and software! (Yeah! You didn't steal itEXCLAMATIONPOINT).
I like using open software; as well as other great software that is FREE. And watching TV and that YouTube, oh and Hulu! BBC.com and CNN kinda cool, reporters and shit.
You pay for sattelite TV and still watch ads...
Why?
Because if not, it would cost even more. Equally, if a game company can make more money from the ads than the sales itself, they may move to lower price points, or invest more into development. Hell, they might even look upon pirates kinder if they don't disable iga's.
Newspapers depend on ads to make the price low enough for people to afford them.
Games (especially the ones that will have ads) are being sold at a high price and obviously at a profit. They won't lower the price of games and add ads on top of the high price, that already pays for the game.
The price development of newspapers and games is not comparable.
You mean Duke Nuke 'Em smokes Camels and drives an H3 Hummer? I could deal with that but having him tank up on Zima really ruined the game experience for me.
In Battlefield 2142 they put ingame adverts in, but they actually didn't detract from the game - they were simply on billboards in urban settings, and made the place seem MORE real that adverts for "Generic Corporation". However, it needs to be done very carefully to avoid ruining the game's atmosphere, and I do agree that ingame adverts should be recognised in an appropriate discount on the game itself.
What about if you buy a game and then find out later that buried deep in the game is an advert? You won't be able to tell just from the packaging that there's advertisements in the game.
Sorry it's too small to properly advertise, can we use a 10 000 x magnification next time.
Management.
That's a good point that I hadn't considered. I must say it would be nice to walk through a city in a game and see real ads, as long as they don't interfere with the gameplay. Thay make the game more 'real' if done well.
-- Cheers!
Pirates are important for maintaining a natural balance and fighting global warming.
I bet you are one of those pajama-wearing-ninja-lovers too.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Right, because advertisements are buried deep where no one is likely to find them. They're more valuable that way. (Hint: Some of us read game reviews before throwing our money away.)
The in-game ads in Guitar Hero III were completely immersion-breaking for me. It's a small part of why I've stopped supporting that series.
I've gold-starred all of easy, all of medium except [tier 8, Don't Hold back, FCPREMIX, TTFAF], five-starred tier 1-6 on hard and at least half the bonus tracks with ~15 gold stars, and I'm only Raining Blood and Battle With Lou short of completing expert.
I haven't noticed any ads.
(except during startup; you pseudo-skip those by aggressively hitting the fret buttons, and they happen pre-immersion).
I could go look for them, but I prefer living in blissful ignorance. I hope I can even though I know they're there :)
In most single-player games in-game advertisement is absolutely silly. Likewise in subscription-supported online games - you pay to use the servers, you deserve to be free of ads. But what about those games that are NOT subscription supported and have an online component, like say Diablo 2? Or any other game where the company runs their own servers free-to-play? They have to pay for that somehow, and I seriously doubt that $50-60 you spend on a game will last for as long as, say, Blizzard's battle.net has. If done right, the ads won't be all that noticeable, or won't be in the actual game at all (similar to how battle.net has them in the chat screens, but doesn't have them in game). In this case, I would have no problem buying such a game. However, in the event that they are horribly out of place and serve only to lessen the value of the game, I'll be the first to tell them where to stick their ads.
Rainbow Six: Vegas did this and it was not any cheaper. (I was lucky enough to have received it as a bundle with a video card.) Every single fucking chance they had, there was some billboard for Intel or some other product. It didn't add any immersion for me, that's for sure. I was actually quite annoyed about it. Even the walls inside the buildings had ads on them. Give me a break.
Now I haven't been into a B.net lobby in forever, but from what I remember, those banner ads were for their own products. Now with Activision on board, I imagine it will be for Blizzard's and Activision's prodcuts?
Actually, they do have the right. You are not being forced to play their game. If you don't like where the commercial gaming industry is going, lend a helping hand to bring the free software gaming scene up to speed :)
Actually I stopped buying newspapers because they were so many ads. I'd happily pay a few bucks for one, especially with good investigative reporting. But I won't pay a damn cent for one with them. There's also several magazines of various genres that I used to subscribe to, but no longer do due to ads. As for the online versions- there's ads on the internet? Haven't seen one in years, thank you AdBlock.
The most insidious thing about ads- they really don't lower your price. The companies that take out the ads have to pay for them. You may get the newspaper cheaper, but you'll pay for it on every trip to the store you ever make. Ads are a net loss to society- they produce no goods, they provide no service, yet they cost a boatload of money. They're a drag on the efficiency of the system.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
No, I don't. I don't have satelite TV. But if I was to get it- I'd happily pay more for an ad free version.
And no, cable/satelite wouldn't cost more if there were no ads. Why not? Because they already charge what the market will bear. If they raised prices, they'd lose more money from loss of subscribers than they'd gain in revenues. If that wasn't true, they'd raise prices even with the ads. The idea that the ads actually make things cheaper shows a complete lack of understanding of economics.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Yeah the more I think about this the worse I think it is. If some company gets payed by some other company to show their ad to players in the game they are probably paying more the more the players see it. The players are going to see a lot of it and they will go out of their way to place the ads. I still think ads got a place in game. Racing games using cars from real life I think are okay. Also I don't mind a banner in some loading screen (like valve) or in the multiplayer lobby (like blizzard) just don't overdo it and let it take over the game!
"Fact"? What "fact" is this? The publishers may have claimed that the ads will not be intrusive, but just saying something doesn't make it true. Marketers are lying scum, and like all liars, the things they say tend not to be true.
The fact is that advertisements and product placement are nearly always intrusive.
I will accept a game that has billboards with ads for Coca-Cola -- if and only if that same game, in the same play session, also contains billboards with ads for Pepsi.
That would be realistic, and would therefore add to immersion and enhance the game.
What, the Coca-Cola marketing board don't like the idea? Too bad. I guess I won't play that game then.
Well, you should be able to. There should be a "Warning: Contains Marketing" statement, alongside the warnings about violent content or bad language.
Personally I'm far more concerned about our children being exposed to marketing in video games than I am about violence or anything else that the media have moral panics about. Childhood exposure to Coca-Cola marketing and McDonalds marketing is the direct cause of many serious health problems. Childhood exposure to nipples has not been proven to have any negative effect at all (in fact, breastfeeding proponents seem to argue it's a good thing). So the ESRB and their counterparts in other countries should be putting a very prominent warning on the packaging when a game contains these nasty messages that are teaching our children to poison themselves.
Amen! If they do this, the pirated versions will have this crap removed. Why are they trying so damn hard to alienate their customers?
OK then, but that precludes you from enjoying magazines, newspapers, subscription television, sporting events, travelling on a bus, driving past billboards, going to the cinema, going to a pub, or buying anything from the Internet.
In fact, if you do a single one of these things, ever, then you're a hypocrite. Looks like you're going to have a very limited existence.
I would think that a nascar game without ad's will be out of place maybe you can have fake ad's / ad's for other games in it but real ad's will fit in other sports are the same way.
I know this one's been around for awhile now. That steaming pile known as Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (not to be confused with Tactics) had Bawls in it, which were pretty much just health potions if I'm remembering correctly.
From wikipedia:
Brotherhood of Steel employed in-game advertisement in that Nuka-Cola bottles and even advertising billboards from the original series were replaced with Bawls Guarana bottles and signs.
"I mean does anyone get mad over seeing a billboard or some ads on a bus?"
I, for one, do.
I'm with you. If in-game advertising is unobtrusive and lowers the cost of my game OR promotes them to continually patch or update a game (like Valve's Steam games), I'm all for it.
Considering this is about Microsoft, I'm hoping this is limited to Xbox. =/ Not holding my breath though.
For sure though, any game with ads will not be getting my money. Last thing I need is to be playing MGS and have an ad for Viagra claiming to bring "New life to your Snake".
The only upsides to ads that I can see is brand awareness garnering trust and facilitating consolidation that results in more efficient production of goods, but with the awareness or reduced competition firms typically just charge more so any efficiency gained is hoarded.
The downside is enormous. It distorts market mechanisms (and ad rates are usually decided by dubious proprietary sampling methods outside of the Internet) to the point where you pay some of Sean Hannity's contract even if you don't watch or listen to his programming. It's basically a sales tax the amount of which you cannot possibly know, that dots your landscapes, paints your buses, renders worthless almost every magazine, and creeps ever inward to anything you pay attention to.
And of course one should make no mistake: people will not continue to pay for ads that you do not notice, since it does them no good. They will push the line until you're annoyed enough to pay attention.
I will accept a game that has billboards with ads for Coca-Cola -- if and only if that same game, in the same play session, also contains billboards with ads for Pepsi.
I guess that means you won't play any simulations of professional sports. As I understand it, each sporting event has only one soft drink sponsor: usually either Coke, Pepsi, or DPSU. Nor will you play theme park simulators in the vein of Sim Theme Park or Roller Coaster Tycoon, as each amusement park also has one soft drink sponsor (e.g. Coke for Indiana Beach or Pepsi for Cedar Point).
I do not and will not support any company which sells ad space on paid products. If I'm paying for it you have no right to do so.
Cable television operators sell ad space on paid subscriptions to basic cable. So I guess you canceled cable television, and you're on DSL or dial-up now, right?
Riiight. Because Blizzard making $10-15 per month per subscriber doesn't add up.
I recently quit WoW, but during the over 3 years I played I paid about $650 in monthly fees and a grand total of $90 for the game itself.
Players are willing to pay monthly to play online.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
CDs cost a fraction of what cassette tapes cost to manufacture, yet it took 15 years for CDs to come down in retail price to the inflation adjusted point of cassettes.
The point is, companies will simply take that extra money and shove it in their pocket. Consumers won't see any benefit from it.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I'm mad the city uses buses for revenue, but the school buses do not. The school needs money a lot more than the city does...
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Really? I didn't even know that half of the amps and such were actually branded... I thought they were just made up. Seeing branded guitars and such in a music game isn't so much of a problem. Guitar Hero: World Tour, however, was littered with needless shots of KFC buckets, AT&T billboards, and other distractions that only serve to date and cheapen the game itself. If they wanted to advertise for KFC in the game, they should have had Buckethead as a playable character. :P
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
*cough*BF2142*cough* While I can see a handful of Indie publishers moving towards the play-for-ads model, the big publishers will never do that. It has been interesting though to see all of the ad-supported net games out there. Yeah they are pretty lame usually and churned out by some Chinese script-shop, but still interesting...it means there is a viable business model there.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Clearly the ESRB warning should mention stuff like that.
Rated T for Teen
Contains: Drug References, Fantasy Violence, Suggestive Themes, Commercialism.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Here's where I disagree though...if you purchase a game, knowing full well that it contains ads, well...that would be kind of your fault for deciding to purchase it. It is their game, and if they want to sell it with ads that is fine, but we have the right to vote with our dollars.
Now what I find unacceptable is when a company pulls bullshit like EA did with bf2142 and start placing in-game ads AFTER the game has already been released and people have purchased it. Talk about a fucking bait-and-switch. "Here's your wonderful game, and PS, after we have your money we'll start milking you for more by ruining the game experience with ads!"
What I'd really like to see if CLEAR and HIGHLY VISIBLE labeling on the front of boxes noting that they contain advertising and clarifying how the ads are incorporated and how many you can expect to see. If it is an advergame, dammit, I want to know before I waste my money on it and I shouldn't need to hunt down online reviews to know that.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Yeah, they should put billboards in the classrooms, placement ads in schoolbooks and have sponsored classes.
Hi children, this English class is brought to you by McDonald's.
Did they also detail the new demographic of their user base? Cause it sure as hell won't be me.
Also there are no ads in WoW.
Newspapers depend on ads to make the price low enough for people to afford them. But I bet most /.-ers never read a newspaper because they get all the news from the web. For free. Payed by advertizers.
I'd add that if you've been paying any sort of attention at all if you're in the U.S. you'd notice that newspapers are in pretty bad financial shape for quite some time (this predates the more recent economic problems.)
TLDR version: Newspapers are fucked.
The reason the GTA series was unable to obtain a license to model the games cars and name them after real world cars was because none of the car manufacturers wanted to see their car associated with not just violence....but they refused to allow an in game model of their be susceptible to any sort of damage. This has been documented in the past before not mostly with the GTA franchise, but with every racing franchise in history.
It's the reason why in the Gran Turismo (racing series on SONY platforms) they have a complete licenses to use exact replicas of hundreds of real life cars from dozens of competing auto companies. It's because the GT producers and developers SIGNED a contract stating that no cars could be damaged in the game by the player. That's why in GT you can ram cars into walls, drive 130 MPH head on into another car, and nothing happens to the car or the player. This is all intentional in order to obtain the license to use the car brand names.
This goes even further with sports games. Nothing controversial can ever be allowed in sports game that use the official Major League Baseball, NFL, NBA, etc. license. No players can get kicked off the team for shooting themselves in the leg (Plaxico) or hosting an illegal dog fighting ring (Vick) or beating their wives (B. Myers) or using steroids (half of MLB).
Metal Gear Solid 4 had an item called 'Playboy' that you could use to distract enemy soldiers with who would read the magazine instead of fighting you. In game advertisement? Sure. Distracting? Not really. Because it's a natural element to the game, magazines have been in MGS before.
Would seeing COCA COLA and PEPSI banners inside the sports stadiums of sporting games really put people off this badly that they would stop playing games? I wouldn't think so. Most people who play sports games watch sports, and sports have the most advertisements per minute of show than any other television genre.
But...would I want to see giant banners for PEPSI or DORITOS in GTA4, or Fallout 3? No. Because they would seem so out of place and would detract very much from the game.
But those advertisements could be REMOVED on the PC versions. Don't like that PEPSI ad? Replace it with a picture of your girlfriend by substituting some texture or .img files in the director the game is in. Or create an advertisement free mod of the game. I'm sure it would be the most popular mod. Consoles gamers (I am one, and a PC gamer) will get stuck with commercials but PC gamers hopefully can just MOD advertisements right out of most games.
I to had once thought of that. This idea is the same for TV shows. They have been putting product placement in TV shows. The main character is holding a can of coke for example, or there are some donuts in the background. It isn't that much of a distraction.
If advertising starts being required for games and TV shows this limits the types of shows and games you can have.
For example, it would very wrong to have the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise in Star Trek to hold a can of coke. Since that is the case, what might happen is simply we would never get any shows/games were it wouldn't be appropriate to have ads.
Developer: "Here is a good idea for a game..."
Business dude: "Does the setting allow for good ad placement?"
Developer: "No"
Business dude: "Then come up with a different idea."
I remember when I was playing "The Metal" on Expert, in whichever venue first unlocks that song, there were two big ads for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles off in the distance on either side of the stage.
You pay for movies, yet they have advertisements in the form of product placement everywhere. Granted, games are a bit more expensive than a DVD, but isn't it the same concept? Do people really care that the virtual bottled soda on the in-game table is labeled "Coca-Cola" rather than "Nuka-Cola" or some similarly made-up brand?
This is covered in the fucking summary. Blizzard has signed Massive to provide advertising in Battle.Net lobbies.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Children what is four times fives? But, before you raise your hands to answer a word from our sponsers...
You must be new here. People stopped fully reading summaries ages ago, much less TFA.
Anarchy Online has ads in the free version.
I see things a little differently. Advertisers will only pay to advertise in games where the target audience is expected to be large, which means samey blockbusters. This could be a massive revenue boost for the next GTA or Gears of War, but it's unlikely to mean much for the next Psychonauts.
The eventual effects of increased advertising will probably be complex. It might help small, independent developers increase their revenue marginally, but I think it's more significant as a disincentive for major studios to try anything different or quirky. Onward, to the lowest common denominator!
Major Hollywood movie: Tens of thousands of people involved, from A-list stars to catering services. $100++ Million budget, but sells for $15 at Walmart/Target.
Top-level music act: Unless it's a yearlong Michael Jackson reservation in a studio, a top CD costs a hundred thousand $$s to create, including studio time, musicians, catering, etc. Total people? Less than a hundred. Maybe just a couple dozen. Sells for $10-$15 at Walmart/Target.
A-title video game. A hundred people involved, tops. single-digit million dollar budget, tops. Sells for $40-$60 at Walmart/Target.
It's not about what it costs to make, it's about charging what the market will bear, and always trying to squeeze a bit more out of the consumer. And don't forget cross-marketing. (T-shirts, movie tie-ins, books, lunchboxes, McDonald's toys, etc.)
You were saying?
...Adblock isn't just for firefox anymore. We'd all love you even more than we do already if we could get an adblocker for these games along with our No-CD patches.
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
Does this mean I must now carry a trailing banner with my Piper Cub in Flight Simulator?
I actively pay attention to in-game ads. I then go out of my way not to buy products from these companies. Ergo, the more money a company pays for advertising, the less profit they'll generate from me.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
there's already tons of in-game advertising with most current game titles. it may seem simple to some, but rock band uses fender guitars [and their subsidiaries, like jackson and gretsch] and I think ludwig drums] for the most part. guitar hero uses gibson based materials.
sports games use things like 'the gatorade replay', or the 'ford player of the game' or whatever. soundtracks are littered with artists that various labels have pushed and you usually get some sort of MTV music video-esque blurb at the bottom saying the artist, the album, and song.
it's been around for a long time. they're just talking about it more now and seeing if they can do what they did in movies and translate it to games, according to TFA.