A few weeks ago, I blasted the games industry for trying to find a solution in Hollywood, and Hollywood trying to find solutions in games. Yesterday, I read how
Galatica writer-director Ronald D. Moore is attempting to mimic James Cameron.
Moore:
"I've thought about doing something where you start a property across mediums, with Internet participation and role-playing video games. Not every show or property will lend itself to that type of hybrid environment, but if you set it up from the get-go to design it that way, I think that's a really rich and interesting place for the business to go."
Cameron:
"In my next film, I can only tell you what we're planning on doing, which is simultaneously developing a major motion picture and, hopefully, a major game title that coexists in the same world that shares characters. Going into that world will actually inform those watching the film and vice versa. I don't want to say anything more than that, because I don't want to give away some of the cool stuff that we're working on."
This is not what the games industry needs, and it's not what Hollywood needs. I understand the logic of Hollywood wanting to get into games -- they think that's where the money is, and they're right to a certain extent. There is money in the games industry.
The structure of games and movies are different, much in the same way that poetry and literature are different. They may use the same tools to compose the works, but fundamentally, they are two very different beasts.
Movies are a passive experience -- everything is experienced vicariously, while video games are much more an interactive experience -- everything feeds back directly. That difference in experiences is what makes a videogame/movie hybrid hard -- you need vicariousness in the movie, and you need a world interesting enough that the player wants to be there and take part in the events that are happening within the videogame world. And of course, things begin to break down when you start to realize that not everyone is going to start watching the show or playing the game at the same time -- so the timing of the flows of information will be different, which will affect how the player perceives the game.
There's a movement for games to be the new storytelling medium. I think as a storytelling medium, it's a relatively weak one.
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