Slashdot Mirror
Comparing the MMO Industry With the Silver Screen
Karen Hertzberg writes "With video gaming — specifically the massively multiplayer online titles — quickly surpassing Hollywood's cash flow, it seems logical that the silver suits at Tinsel Town would begin paying attention to their digital brethren. On the same line of thought, Hollywood provides the MMO industry with a history in the entertainment medium that we simply don't have. Ten Ton Hammer's Cody Bye sat down with four industry experts to draw together some similarities between MMOs and films, and he attempted to use those points to draw out some predictions for the future of the MMO gaming industry."
They (you know, "they") don't tie the two industries together in a video game.
Login to "Hollywood World", pick your sim. Have them go on sets, act, thrash hotel rooms, act strange on Letterman. Get fat, get too skinny. Drink too much, do drugs. Go into rehab. Be "reborn" with a role that makes you relevant again.
Hell, I'd play this game. :-P
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Try to play a (post N-64) Bond game and tell me with a straight face that Hollywood should be involved in gaming.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
They should be looking at the differences to see where convergence will generate a lot ^H^H^H little more money.
My prediction is that by 2020 films & their ilk will have all but disappeared, like lithographs in the age of photographs, or 16mm in the age of video. etc. etc.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
With Hollywood operating a fully-functioning, movie-making machine throughout the two World Wars, it wasn't until Asian cinema blasted onto movie screens in the 1950s that we saw really poignant non-English cinema. Akira Kurosawa was perhaps the most influential of these Asian film makers, and his films Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress went on to influence a large number of film makers. However, Asian cinema still hasn't caught up to Hollywood in terms of overall, international popularity, and may never surpass the Los Angeles juggernaut.
However, the scenario is different when it comes to video games. Nintendo and Sony - and Sega for many years - have held a tight-fisted grip on the video game world⦠but not so with MMOs. Remarkably, MMO design and development has remained a very segregated sphere with very little crossover success occurring. Still, the MMO industry is beginning to feel the influence of our Asian allies quite significantly, and the buzz around this fall's upcoming release of Aion only proves this point.
The question still remains: Will Asian MMOs ever succeed where their film brethren have failed? I went to our experts to find out. Again, the answers were mixed and divisive along several lines of thought. Rather than preface their thoughts in any way, I'll just give you the ideas of the men, straight from their mouths.
I think a lot of the responses deflated this pretty well even though a few reinforced it. I've been torn apart on Slashdot for claiming Hollywood out performed other country's movie studios (like the USSR) so it'll be interesting to see the movie buffs here come out of the woodwork. The fact is that you can't judge a country's MMO successes based on its movie successes. Luckily most of this article doesn't attempt to do that but why ask, "Will Asian MMOs ever succeed where their film brethren have failed?" It doesn't make any sense to me. Compared to 95% of other countries, I find Japanese movies to be very successful. Same with their MMOs. I don't understand this parallel or the differences between MMOs here and MMOs there. WoW has obviously been very successful both in China and the US ... and while Chinese studios may only have one per year debut in US theaters, they are successful in China. Confusing to compare across countries the movie/MMO success stories. Weakens the comparison of MMOs to movies in my book.
My work here is dung.
We're ahead of the filmmakers' schedule... we've already got a million remakes of World of Warcraft, none of which are as good as the original.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I've got this! They're like action flicks! Except with loot!
*No plot
*No cinematic story telling or character development (just nonstop action)
*They make tons of money corporate executives want
*Corporate executives are interested in making money, but are too stupid to understand what a video game (much less a MMO) really is
*By making comparisons with an established industry, you can pretend to lend credit to your MMO ideas
*One company has a virtual monopoly on what consumers get
*I'm just going to start pulling stuff out of my ass now
*MMOs and movies both overcharge for the highly desirable yellow products (gold, popcorn..)
*People write articles on how they're correlated!
With video gaming â" specifically the massively multiplayer online titles â" quickly surpassing Hollywood's cash flow
This is fucking bullshit. Each of the Hollywood studios brought in around $8-12 billion each last year. Activision Blizzard as a whole company only made $5 billion. World of Warcraft is the most successful MMO to date and it grossed around $1.1 billion last year. I'm not sure where this submitter is getting that an MMO title's cash flow exceeds any Hollywood studio's cash flow, since it's total BS.
Obviously, if the MMO market follows the path of Hollywood, the small good studios will gradually become encased in massive media conglomerates that will stifle creativity and focus on profits, then endorse the actions of gangster organizations like the MPAA and RIAA, while programmers and content developers protect themselves with massive union hedgerows. Eventually the Next Big Thing will come along and kill all of their profits, and they'll begin to resort to carrion crow rehashes of formerly popular titles.
Oh wait, isn't there a new Star Wars MMO coming out... ?
I will always love movies, because sometimes I just want to watch a story and not participate. Just like I'd rather read a book than write my own.
Some interesting predictions in the article though. One thing they should recognize is the power of the indy developer. Look at how the movie industry has moved to embrace the indy film industry, if only because it shouldn't cost a 100M dollars to make a good film and get a good return on investment. All parties win.
In a world ruled by darkness, could one man kill 20 spiders?
In a time before time itself, will one spaceship be able to deliver 10 space cows to Jita IV?
The movie that will keep you on the edge of your seat, waiting to level: MMO Grindhouse.
It wasnae meant to sonny. Parse the sentence: "looking at the differences to see where convergence"
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I couldn't get through the page fest to check if they made the one parallel that really matters: movie execs would love to "lease content" to you the way MMO's do. That's what they want to be the future.
Everyone brings a wireless laptop, and game moderators look for interesting action from either an individual player's perspective, some shots of actual gamers playing, and/or some "camera angles" so you can see large scenes within the game. Could easily be a 3-way splitscreen with a little of each.
You can come to watch the big screen (and pay), or participate in the actual game (and pay a lower fee or get in for free - maybe even get some love in the form of free concessions or something). Gamers play for some sort of prize at the end, and their picture up on a big effing theater screen holding their prize at the end.
Everyone who comes to participate has to buy a legal copy of the game. The movie theater only has to maintain a network and server and have a couple of people acting as mods/"directors". The theater probably doesn't have to pay licensing fees, since the game publishers are happy that the theater is encouraging people to buy legit copies of the game. In fact, the publishers would probably chip in for the servers. So the theater could probably have people pony up $5 a head for viewers and say $2 a head for gamers, offer a free pre-release copy of the next iteration of the game, and make decent money at the concessions to boot.
It's like reality TV, except all the "stars" are locals, they work basically for free (or may even pay a little for it), there's plenty of action and mayhem, and you never know what's going to happen in a particular showing.
I have no idea if it would work, but it's an intriguing blend of Hollywood and Gaming.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
A movie is a story; a game is a place you go. Too much story in a game makes the game a "track ride", where you ride along the plot track, mostly doing drive-by shootings. This has been the curse of most movie-licensed games.
Fortunately, the game industry has gone beyond that. Most major games are now large-area free-play games. There are plotted things to do, but you're not locked into the plot. You can start up GTA IV and just tour Liberty City if you like. Try that with early Star Wars games and you get nowhere; you're locked on the track and you will bomb the Death Star as ordered.
The free-play model breaks the Hollywood process, which progresses from plot to script to production in a very sequential way. Game development today is more about world-building. There are subplots, but often there's no overarching plot at all. Nor is there necessarily a story arc.
MMOs go even further in that direction. Not only are they free-play, but there are tens or hundreds of users all creating input. Those users have to be kept happy (they're paying by the month) and managed. Managing an MMO is a politician's job, not a director's. Hollywood types hate that.
World of Warcraft is run from Irvine, CA. (WoW staffers, you have my sympathy.) Everquest is run from San Diego. EVE is run from Bellevue, WA. Lord of the Rings is run from Westwood, Massachusetts. The big successes in the MMO area aren't coming from Hollywood.
In a world where MMOs and movies collide...one man comes forth to save humanity.
(Voice over) It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
"CUT! Where are the grues? What do you mean they need dark? What is this lame? Damnit, stupid game developers. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FILM THE GRUES IF I CAN'T SEE THEM?
What do you mean, infrared cameras? Oh. Nice. Carry on, dead voice-over guy."
Arnold Schwarznegger: "We've got to get out of heauh!"
Adam Sandler: "NO! They're all gonna laugh at you!"
Gary Coleman: "Whatchu talkin bout Willis?
Nicole Ritchey: "Like, wow. That's one ugly grue."
Jim Carrey: "I sped. I followed too closely. I ran a stop sign. I almost hit a Chevy. I sped some more. I failed to yield at a crosswalk. I changed lanes at the intersection. I changed lanes without signaling while running a red light and *speeding*! I changed lanes without signaling while running a red light and speeding while trying to hit a grue!"
Jack Nicholson: "I picture a man, then I take away reason and accountability."
One man, a team of flatulent horses, and a grue.
Gruesome. Coming soon.
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Remember when MXO started they promised that everything that happened in the game would become lore for any more movies. Too bad that the brothers(!?) screwed up the last two so bad that there never will be any others. Of course MXO bit the dust last month and no one even cared about the end of the Matrix.
The Poetry of Google Voice is very strange.
gv-poetry.com
I think I just rolled any eyeball out of joint.
Was the "invention" of letterbox. Now computer users cringe at those short computer screens. OK, with gaming industry taking the lead, can we have fullscreen (or 16:10, at least) back?
You are handily forgetting the important fact that movie ticket sales are an ever decreasing source of revenue for the film industry.,
Films usually make more on DVD/BluRay than they do in theater now, not even including pay per view and cable distribution. So quoting only box office sales is a big no-no.
I love articles like this. It is classic Slashdot, elevating something popular mainly only in geekdom to some kind of broad-market status that simply does not exist. For example - World of Warcraft has 11.5 million subscribers worldwide. Yes that sounds like a lot - until you compare it with the number of people who see at least one movie monthly worldwide, which numbers in the many hundreds of millions.
Comparing MMO to Hollywood is a total pile of BS in terms of money alone - don't even get me started on how much less relevant it is on a cultural scale.
The motion picture and television industry is cyclical. Which is why you see so many remakes, clones and sequels. But it has been willing to embrace every popular fictional genre.
The premise of most online games tends to read like a "Mad-Lib" generated from the stock elements of D&D, Stars Wars and GTA.
The open world allows you to disconnect from the storyline - but then its back to same old grind.
Advancement in the game is measured by the body count. Smarts and skill count for less than the time you have to invest in the game.
- and in a game like GTA, your willingness to beat up a prostitute.
That's a little cynical, of course, but I'd argue that there is more than a little truth in these sterotypes.
From the article: "With Hollywood operating a fully-functioning, movie-making machine throughout the two World Wars, it wasnâ(TM)t until Asian cinema blasted onto movie screens in the 1950s that we saw really poignant non-English cinema." The writer seems to have missed the influential pre-nazi German cinema industry that seriously challenged Hollywood in innovation and quality in the 20s and early 30s. Some of the stuff is still perfectly watchable today.
The article is about MMO gaming, not gaming as a whole. They are totally different beasts. In terms of sales and revenue almost all of the growth in gaming in the past two years is as a result of the explosion of casual gaming, popularised by the Wii. Casual gaming is about as far from MMO as you can get.
MMO is never going to become mainstream because most people do not become infatuated with their entertainment in such a way that they want to devote hours upon hours to it nightly. This is a uniquely geek trait. Every non-geek I know who has tried out WoW, has enjoyed it at first, but ditched it after a few months, because if you can't commit to it it quickly becomes not very enjoyable.