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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
Sent from your iPad.
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)
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.
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.
That analogy doesn't make sense. Lithographs vs photographs, and 16mm film vs video are cases of the technical medium being replaced, while the basic art form remains the same. Lithographs and photographs both serve the same purpose, to visually capture a moment in time (approximately), while film and video both serve to capture some interval in time.
Film, like physical film might all but disappear in 2020, but I bet that there will always be something analogous to it, even something as 'mundane' as digital video. To predict that gaming as a form of entertainment (or even artistic creation?) will completely replace film/movies is just silly. They are fundamentally different. One is active, one is passive. They give completely different levels of control to the creator(s). And it goes on and on. It's really like saying, now that we invented ways to record sound on wax, books will disappear in 60 years! And this is ignoring the ridiculousness of capturing moments in history (news and such) in GAME form, as a primary reference.
It's a fair prediction to say that films may recede in their... scale might be the right word. But for them to disappear? No way.
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.
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.
It wasnae meant to sonny.
"Wasnae"? What in the.. *squints*
Holy Gods, he's typing in Scottish! :O
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.