I guess EA is tired of being slammed as sequal whores? It sounds like this will be new IP no one has ever seen before, from EA, I'm shocked. It's not April 1st, there isn't a full moon!? Some call hell it must have frozen over...
Maybe they are going to try and retake the WW2 shooter market with a next gen version of MoH? Who better to bring cinematic quailty to a next gen ww2 game than the guy that made Saving Private Ryan. I would crap my pants with joy if they remade The DIG or did a sequal.
"Original Content" huh? It sounds as if we're in for some good stuff. Graphically, we're there. Wouldn't it be ace for Spielberg to raise the profile of game development - then we'd all be worshipped as the gods we are!! Or at least publishers would give original storylines and immersion a little more worth.....
i think its a horrible idea.. movies have nothing to do with videogames.. i think the history of game to movie , movie to game translations proves that.. i cant see s. chodeburg making anything but some crappy machinima.. get hollywood the fuck out of games..
man you just don't get it, the world NEEDS bigger and better titles, that will sell to everyone, slap steven spielber'g name on the box and ur guaranteed sales. have him create original game IPs and design an interactive storytelling experience, the world NEEDS bigger budgets for games, more sales, the people working on movies realized that a long time ago, we should learn from them, we should always aspire to be like the movie industry, strive for a more cinematic innovative storytelling experience, surely Steven Spielberg can get us there, if anyone can it'll be him. He will create the new franchises for the new generation of cinematic excellence in games.
when you get done giving spielburg that intense blowjob let me know..:p
the game industry dosent NEED anything from hollywood.. every year hollywood makes less and we make more.. people are tired of sitting there and not doing anything they want to interact with the entertainment.. video games are not movies.. never have been.. never will be.. 2 completly different expereances.. i dont want to see a music producer make a movie.. i dont want to see a game designer write a musical .. i dont want a janitor to cook my meals.. and i dont want a director making my videogames..
I don't know, this might be interesting. I must say I don't really mind if ea throws shitloads of money at him.
If it works it surely will be an interesting product because I agree with arsh on the seperation between games and movies if it doesn't it will be a valuable lesson learned for EA and other companys to that this games are movies hype is not the path to blindly run down for sucess.
arsh, you sound asthough you think "Hollywood" sits there and makes the models, sounds, and levels. They're not the actual people MAKING the game. Think along the lines of Peter Molyneux and Big Blue Box. It was Peter's idea for Fable but BBB made the game.
arshlevon, you are totally right! The only thing we need from games is better graphics screw game play, story telling, character development and inovative thought. I know when I am shopping for a game I want a game that uses tech specs to sell the game instead of letting the game speak for itself. I know I gloss right over the reviews that talk about how emerse a game is, who wants that crap. Have fun while playing a game, thats total BS. I look for the game reviews that use 1337 speak and talk about making Nvidia cry! YEAH! MORE TECH! LESS STORY! I enjoy being wow'ed for the first 30 seconds then borred for the rest of the game! HELL YEAH the game industry has nothing to learn from proper story telling, pacing, character development. Screw over 100 years of experience of pulling on peoples emotional strings, I want to smell my video card burning! WEE HA!
[/sarcaism]
I don't want to watch my video games, and I don't want to play my movies. But I think the game industry could learn a lot about telling stories and developing characters.
I think its not a bad idea in genereal though it would be much more interesting to hire some other directors or writers like the coen brothers, David Lynch, David Fincher, Tim Burton or the guy who made Memento. Spielberg is not THAT innovative and I think this is mroe a PR joke then an interesting collaboration.
the question is what kind of input a movie director can bring to a game. these people are used to control every little bit in the storytelling, aren't they? whereas the most fun games i have played have always been those which give you freedom.
personally, i like story- and cutscene-heavy stuff like MGS, which kinda is what i would expect from someone with a movie background. but it's not comparable by far with something like GTA which can keep you occupied for months because of all the possibilities. now that's an addictive game!
but yes, games need more recognition, more emphasis on other aspects than graphics and if that is achieved through big deals, hiring big names then i'm all for it.
as for spielberg, i do remember that the dig, while being quite nice, was actually rather non-interactive and had some rather stupid parts to lengthen the game - compared to lucasart's other adventure-titles of that time.
[ QUOTE ]
arsh: Sounds as if you missed Shotgun's sarcasm.
[/ QUOTE ]
its more like i missed shotgun alltogether! but i did miss rockstars.. i was taking it seriously..but i was also having a good time implying he was giveing spielburg head.. i am just frustrated at hollywood right now.. and i do kind of agree with shimmer.. burton, now that would be interesting.. but its really obvious what hollywood is trying to do. its more than obivious that the current generation of kids.. the ones that will in less than 20 years be driving the markets.. like to play games more than watch movies.. hollywood is scared cause that means less money for them.. so they need to do what every it takes to get their grubby little hands on us.. games will get bigger budgets,better graphics, better stories.. but i dont play games for stories.. if i want a story i read a book.. i like games because you create the expereance and its different for everyone who plays.. not so for a movie.. everybody hears and sees the same thing..and i cant see spielburg giving up that kind of control over the medium.. i see him wanting to make each shot comply with hollywoods definition of a "good shot" and i dont see him wanting artist like us to make the graphics..
Vig: I don't see where you get that from his post.
[/ QUOTE ]
I was illustrating a point that the game industry could take a few pages from Hollywoods play book and save itself some time. Or it can go about the way it has making tech the center piece of it's games at the expense of game play, story telling and character development. I think the games industry could pick up more people and hold their interest longer if stories and characters where more than 1D. Good guy gets gun, good guy shoots 2 million bad guys. Good guy wins! I think I just described THE leading plot behind almost every game out there. Go deeper, play with peoples emotions and see where it takes you. So far the only emotional tugging we get from games are shock, and the spontaneous affection for a character like "Barney" from HL1 or Aris from FF7. They had no idea until after the game shipped that Barney would be a hit and help to draw people into the game. They knew their AI would help immerse people but they didn't know what about Barney made him likeable. When they tried to exploit this in HL2 it came off kind of forced and no one really cared. Had they taken a page from Hollywood they might have done a better job.
Ash says the game industry doesn't need anything from Hollywood. I disagree, I there is a lot of things games could learn from movies. I don't think the game industry should sell out and make games one button adventures you watch. But I think ignoring or giving a cold shoulder to the experience of developing stories, plot lines, characters and environments, is a mistake. It's like the movie industry giving the middle finger to anyone that writes a story instead of showing it thru film. Drop the ego, shelve the pride, and learn from what they have to offer. It doesn't mean you have to like them, respect them or even include them in budget/profits. But there is knoweldge there that is stupid to ignore.
Ah, sorry, confused Rockstar and Shotgun. All I remembered was "that guy who never bothers with proper English".
Hollywood brings only the story, not the gameplay. In fact most movie directors seem rather clueless about gameplay and will compromise it to further the story. When you make a game with a Hollywood mentality you get something like most japanese RPGs: A movie interrupted with some shallow gameplay.
Adam: Actually it was BBB that came up with Fable, the only idea Peter had was to absorb them into the family of companies he is trying to tie together because he beleives, like many, that in enough years time , only the big EA type companies will survive.
the thing is you dont develop a charcter in a game like you do in a movie.. you dont tell a story the same way.. you are talking about apples and oranges.. you dont play a game for 2 hours and feel satisfied when it is over.. that is where every bit of hollywoods "magic" comes from. they found ways to develop a character and tell a story in 2 hours.. give you some kind of emotional connection probably with in the first 5 mins.. games are whole different story.. your playing the damn thing for 20 to 50 hours..i dont want 20 hours to 50 hours of will smith making dumb jokes, arnold making one liners, batmans scruffy voice.. i want to do something.. you cant compare a system of rules for 2 completley differnt mediums with completley different varibles.. it dosent work.. they have tried.. if there was anything to learn from hollywood you think they would of captured the magic already in one of the 2 billion hollywood based video games.. but somehow they all suck.. i wonder why??? you think it might be that the rules that work on a 2 hour movie might not work on 20+ hour interactive expereance? believe me.. everything hollywood does, it has been doing for more than half a century... any gamedesigner could go to borders and get the "how to make movies the speilburg way" book and try to apply these very old, not very secret techniquies to games.. and they have..to death.. it dosent work.. this is a business deal for ea to cash in on brand recognition..and speilburg to look like a renaissance man..
Lots of people love GAMES which are very heavy on the game play like Mario brothers and other people love games that are heavy on the narrative element like Final Fantasy ..given Speilbergs long history of great movies ( IMHO ) I think he could help make some great story driven games .
i think I might bring in chronicles of riddick escape from butcher bay as an example... that game was awesome, but mainly because as an interractive experience it was exceptional. I think it sold well too, I hope people learn from that. Movie tie ins are not necessarilly bad, in some cases they are cool because like with Riddick he is actually a kind of character you'd like to be, its more of a case of putting the player in the shoes of a certain character and letting them experience a world through that characters eyes. I think that has some merit, I think theres place in the world for those types of games, not everything should be played THE WAY YOU WANT IT, do anything type of games, sometimes a focused experience can have more impact.
A name on the box is just a name, maybe they were the person who came up with the original idea maybe they did absolutely nothing, I can't see anyone influencing a game THAT much, unless they were directly involved in the development and design day in and day out, with that said at the end of the day its all about the people that made the game more than anything else, and I'd like to see that being promoted more than some film maker or writer or a huge corporation.
just an opinion really. To me this whole deal seems like an attempt to make money, but most things are like that nowadays... whatever, theres going to be bad games out there no matter what so just deal with it.
I like the idea of movie tieins they're just god-aweful most of the time and or recreate the movie on rails and so it's just like watching the movie only less enjoyable.
i've been waiting for a move like this for a while now, i think games have gotten to a point of immersive storylines and belieaveable characters and past the mere generic physics (shoot stuff, move to waypoint b, shoot some more stuff) and into the world of emotional. In fact the japanese, namely hideo kojima have been incorporating motion picture like storytelling and character development into a game experience.
This however doesnt mean that we need games with cookie cutter stories and hours and hours of motion capture cut scenes that have no substance. It needs to evolve into a meaningful experience as well. Innovative interaction and gameplay features coupled with solid storytelling.
In the past, developers and filmmaker took the easy approach and turned games into movies or movies into games, which is basically branching out the same exact idea and story into another creative outlet, instead of really trying to create something meaningful inside a game experience itself. We've come to a point where we can spend longer dev cycles, bigger budgets and have immensve amounts of storage space and processing power to create a belieaveable experience through dialogue, soundtrack, motion cap etc. In fact, even rival that of some motion pictures.
I, for one, will be looking forward to what EA will offer
lol oxy, you realize how many people would start majoring in game design? And by that, I don't mean learning any game art or coding, just the fundamentals of what makes a game. The game industry would be overrun by the "idea guys" who we constantly see trying to get others to make their mods. Its bad enough in my film school, where everyone and his brother wants to be a director...
Yeah but on the other hand a lot of companies promote Coders or Level designers to do the gameplay design and you get a ton of shitty games I agree with Oxy we need more Will Wrights and Miyamoto's
Maybe EA liked all the posative feed back they got when SPORE was revealed , hopefully they will keep trying to do innovative stuff because they have a lot of talent there .
did The Dig even sell that many copies? I was a rabid adventure game player at the time, escpecially Lucasarts titles, and I wasn't too hyped about it.
I don't think the dig sold that well. I was a fan of it because it was one of the first games I played that gave me some freedom to make some choices good or bad. I keep a DOS box around just to play BioForge, The Dig, and wing commander.
[ QUOTE ]
i think its a horrible idea.. movies have nothing to do with videogames..
[/ QUOTE ]
That's like saying literature has nothing to do with movies.
[ QUOTE ]
hollywood is scared cause that means less money for them.. so they need to do what every it takes to get their grubby little hands on us.. games will get bigger budgets,better graphics, better stories.. but i dont play games for stories..
[/ QUOTE ]
If that were the case, wouldn't Spielberg be hiring EA instead of the other way around?
[ QUOTE ]
you dont play a game for 2 hours and feel satisfied when it is over.. that is where every bit of hollywoods "magic" comes from. they found ways to develop a character and tell a story in 2 hours.. give you some kind of emotional connection probably with in the first 5 mins.. games are whole different story.. your playing the damn thing for 20 to 50 hours..
[/ QUOTE ]
Ever seen "Band of Brothers"? It's a mini-series that pretty much plays out like a 10-hour-long movie.
[ QUOTE ]
if there was anything to learn from hollywood you think they would of captured the magic already in one of the 2 billion hollywood based video games.. but somehow they all suck.. i wonder why??? you think it might be that the rules that work on a 2 hour movie might not work on 20+ hour interactive expereance?
[/ QUOTE ]
Those aren't "Hollywood based video games" in the sense that any famous "Hollywood" director worked on them; they are just shitty licensed games. I think there's a big difference between Spielberg actively contributing to the design of a game, and a bunch of licensed games put out by second-rate studios.
kdr: yep. i played through it on scummvm a while ago. all the old classics except for full throttle seem to run on it (and who would dare to call FT a classic anyway ).
They gave him his own office in the studio but I doubt he'll be in there very often.
I imagine he'll lay down some story, world and character ideas as well as directing the cinematics and deciding on the type of game, but the same designers as always will be making the actual game.
I've become hugely cynical, so I'm not expecting much to come of it.
There's a small amount of hope in me that I get proved wrong though.
He may not be getting his hands dirty by hovering over the shoulders of the actual team. But if I was him I wouldn't let it go out the door unless it was good. Now his idea of a good game and ours still remains to be seen.
Interesting topic this is. I'm sure many film students have possibly become game designers and used that path to there advantage, not so sure about the opposite, but point i'm trying to make is that it's really all about the person and how they get involved. I'm a noob and don't claim to 'really' know how the game industry structure/hiarchy operates in a finite way, but I can't see budgets allowing a new position that we will plainly call 'game director'. Moreso what i'm saying is that if a film director really wants to contribute to the games industry they will surely have to pay their dues and do they're homework. Hopefully Spielburg can attempt this.
There are three types of games out there, those that are all about mechanics, games that are all about the experience, or games that are some combination of the two. Tetris, DDR, Contra.....these are the kinds of games that are all about the mechanics. You could probably toss most old school side scrolling games into this catagory as well.
There really arn't that many games that are all about the experience. Mainly because they tend to be harder to make, and usually don't sell too amazingly well. Ico and Shenmu are some of the few that i can think of at the moment.
Most games now days tend to be a blend of the two ideas. Usually they go for pure mechanics, then throw in some crappily written cut scenes to try and give the character some reason for running around and killing 500 other characters. but then there are mixtures that are the other way, almost pure cut scenes with only a few pauses for what passes as gameplay. The (slightly) interactice digital movie.
If hollywood wants to get into making games then they need to learn about the mechanics. While I doubt we will see a holywood director making a puzzle or rhythm game, they need to understand what makes these games fun if they want to make a decent game. Hollywood games might provide a promise of a better experience/story, but will anyone care if the gameplay elements and mechanics that are in the game are so horrid that you just want to turn it off. Can anyone say Enter the Matrix?
I find it hard to describe why i love some games. Take Ico for example. If someone pitched that game to me i would probably laugh my ass off and tell them to go somewhere else. But my experience of playing the game has stuck with me for much longer than most games. And i find it hard to describe why. I think some movie directors would be good at making games like these, but they are not the big name directors.
Replies
Maybe they are going to try and retake the WW2 shooter market with a next gen version of MoH? Who better to bring cinematic quailty to a next gen ww2 game than the guy that made Saving Private Ryan. I would crap my pants with joy if they remade The DIG or did a sequal.
"Original Content" huh? It sounds as if we're in for some good stuff. Graphically, we're there. Wouldn't it be ace for Spielberg to raise the profile of game development - then we'd all be worshipped as the gods we are!! Or at least publishers would give original storylines and immersion a little more worth.....
*sigh...
Where the hell is Warren Spector?
the game industry dosent NEED anything from hollywood.. every year hollywood makes less and we make more.. people are tired of sitting there and not doing anything they want to interact with the entertainment.. video games are not movies.. never have been.. never will be.. 2 completly different expereances.. i dont want to see a music producer make a movie.. i dont want to see a game designer write a musical .. i dont want a janitor to cook my meals.. and i dont want a director making my videogames..
If it works it surely will be an interesting product because I agree with arsh on the seperation between games and movies if it doesn't it will be a valuable lesson learned for EA and other companys to that this games are movies hype is not the path to blindly run down for sucess.
Give it a rest, it'll be fine.
[/sarcaism]
I don't want to watch my video games, and I don't want to play my movies. But I think the game industry could learn a lot about telling stories and developing characters.
Vig: I don't see where you get that from his post.
personally, i like story- and cutscene-heavy stuff like MGS, which kinda is what i would expect from someone with a movie background. but it's not comparable by far with something like GTA which can keep you occupied for months because of all the possibilities. now that's an addictive game!
but yes, games need more recognition, more emphasis on other aspects than graphics and if that is achieved through big deals, hiring big names then i'm all for it.
as for spielberg, i do remember that the dig, while being quite nice, was actually rather non-interactive and had some rather stupid parts to lengthen the game - compared to lucasart's other adventure-titles of that time.
arsh: Sounds as if you missed Shotgun's sarcasm.
[/ QUOTE ]
its more like i missed shotgun alltogether! but i did miss rockstars.. i was taking it seriously..but i was also having a good time implying he was giveing spielburg head.. i am just frustrated at hollywood right now.. and i do kind of agree with shimmer.. burton, now that would be interesting.. but its really obvious what hollywood is trying to do. its more than obivious that the current generation of kids.. the ones that will in less than 20 years be driving the markets.. like to play games more than watch movies.. hollywood is scared cause that means less money for them.. so they need to do what every it takes to get their grubby little hands on us.. games will get bigger budgets,better graphics, better stories.. but i dont play games for stories.. if i want a story i read a book.. i like games because you create the expereance and its different for everyone who plays.. not so for a movie.. everybody hears and sees the same thing..and i cant see spielburg giving up that kind of control over the medium.. i see him wanting to make each shot comply with hollywoods definition of a "good shot" and i dont see him wanting artist like us to make the graphics..
Vig: I don't see where you get that from his post.
[/ QUOTE ]
I was illustrating a point that the game industry could take a few pages from Hollywoods play book and save itself some time. Or it can go about the way it has making tech the center piece of it's games at the expense of game play, story telling and character development. I think the games industry could pick up more people and hold their interest longer if stories and characters where more than 1D. Good guy gets gun, good guy shoots 2 million bad guys. Good guy wins! I think I just described THE leading plot behind almost every game out there. Go deeper, play with peoples emotions and see where it takes you. So far the only emotional tugging we get from games are shock, and the spontaneous affection for a character like "Barney" from HL1 or Aris from FF7. They had no idea until after the game shipped that Barney would be a hit and help to draw people into the game. They knew their AI would help immerse people but they didn't know what about Barney made him likeable. When they tried to exploit this in HL2 it came off kind of forced and no one really cared. Had they taken a page from Hollywood they might have done a better job.
Ash says the game industry doesn't need anything from Hollywood. I disagree, I there is a lot of things games could learn from movies. I don't think the game industry should sell out and make games one button adventures you watch. But I think ignoring or giving a cold shoulder to the experience of developing stories, plot lines, characters and environments, is a mistake. It's like the movie industry giving the middle finger to anyone that writes a story instead of showing it thru film. Drop the ego, shelve the pride, and learn from what they have to offer. It doesn't mean you have to like them, respect them or even include them in budget/profits. But there is knoweldge there that is stupid to ignore.
Hollywood brings only the story, not the gameplay. In fact most movie directors seem rather clueless about gameplay and will compromise it to further the story. When you make a game with a Hollywood mentality you get something like most japanese RPGs: A movie interrupted with some shallow gameplay.
r.
A name on the box is just a name, maybe they were the person who came up with the original idea maybe they did absolutely nothing, I can't see anyone influencing a game THAT much, unless they were directly involved in the development and design day in and day out, with that said at the end of the day its all about the people that made the game more than anything else, and I'd like to see that being promoted more than some film maker or writer or a huge corporation.
just an opinion really. To me this whole deal seems like an attempt to make money, but most things are like that nowadays... whatever, theres going to be bad games out there no matter what so just deal with it.
This however doesnt mean that we need games with cookie cutter stories and hours and hours of motion capture cut scenes that have no substance. It needs to evolve into a meaningful experience as well. Innovative interaction and gameplay features coupled with solid storytelling.
In the past, developers and filmmaker took the easy approach and turned games into movies or movies into games, which is basically branching out the same exact idea and story into another creative outlet, instead of really trying to create something meaningful inside a game experience itself. We've come to a point where we can spend longer dev cycles, bigger budgets and have immensve amounts of storage space and processing power to create a belieaveable experience through dialogue, soundtrack, motion cap etc. In fact, even rival that of some motion pictures.
I, for one, will be looking forward to what EA will offer
Why can't we promote game designers more like Hollywood promotes directors?
Maybe EA liked all the posative feed back they got when SPORE was revealed , hopefully they will keep trying to do innovative stuff because they have a lot of talent there .
i think its a horrible idea.. movies have nothing to do with videogames..
[/ QUOTE ]
That's like saying literature has nothing to do with movies.
[ QUOTE ]
hollywood is scared cause that means less money for them.. so they need to do what every it takes to get their grubby little hands on us.. games will get bigger budgets,better graphics, better stories.. but i dont play games for stories..
[/ QUOTE ]
If that were the case, wouldn't Spielberg be hiring EA instead of the other way around?
[ QUOTE ]
you dont play a game for 2 hours and feel satisfied when it is over.. that is where every bit of hollywoods "magic" comes from. they found ways to develop a character and tell a story in 2 hours.. give you some kind of emotional connection probably with in the first 5 mins.. games are whole different story.. your playing the damn thing for 20 to 50 hours..
[/ QUOTE ]
Ever seen "Band of Brothers"? It's a mini-series that pretty much plays out like a 10-hour-long movie.
[ QUOTE ]
if there was anything to learn from hollywood you think they would of captured the magic already in one of the 2 billion hollywood based video games.. but somehow they all suck.. i wonder why??? you think it might be that the rules that work on a 2 hour movie might not work on 20+ hour interactive expereance?
[/ QUOTE ]
Those aren't "Hollywood based video games" in the sense that any famous "Hollywood" director worked on them; they are just shitty licensed games. I think there's a big difference between Spielberg actively contributing to the design of a game, and a bunch of licensed games put out by second-rate studios.
I imagine he'll lay down some story, world and character ideas as well as directing the cinematics and deciding on the type of game, but the same designers as always will be making the actual game.
I've become hugely cynical, so I'm not expecting much to come of it.
There's a small amount of hope in me that I get proved wrong though.
Of course, i'm sure he's a smart and experienced man in intertainment and imagine he could come up with something cool if motivated enough.
-R
I wonder If he'll eat shit pizza at his desk til midnight every night with the rest of the team?
[/ QUOTE ]
Words of a disgruntled employee.
Does that come with extra flies?
There really arn't that many games that are all about the experience. Mainly because they tend to be harder to make, and usually don't sell too amazingly well. Ico and Shenmu are some of the few that i can think of at the moment.
Most games now days tend to be a blend of the two ideas. Usually they go for pure mechanics, then throw in some crappily written cut scenes to try and give the character some reason for running around and killing 500 other characters. but then there are mixtures that are the other way, almost pure cut scenes with only a few pauses for what passes as gameplay. The (slightly) interactice digital movie.
If hollywood wants to get into making games then they need to learn about the mechanics. While I doubt we will see a holywood director making a puzzle or rhythm game, they need to understand what makes these games fun if they want to make a decent game. Hollywood games might provide a promise of a better experience/story, but will anyone care if the gameplay elements and mechanics that are in the game are so horrid that you just want to turn it off. Can anyone say Enter the Matrix?
I find it hard to describe why i love some games. Take Ico for example. If someone pitched that game to me i would probably laugh my ass off and tell them to go somewhere else. But my experience of playing the game has stuck with me for much longer than most games. And i find it hard to describe why. I think some movie directors would be good at making games like these, but they are not the big name directors.