It seems to me there's two main types of people in the video game business -- those who are in it because they want to be in the video game business, and those that are in it because they want to be in the movie business. Lately we've been seeing more movie people who want to be in the game business. These movie people are smart. They know money is drying up in the movie business -- it's been that way for a long time now. The video game business, on the other hand is thriving, and growing. So it's only natural that some of these movie people want to move into games.
The latest of these movie people moving into games is director James Cameron. In fact, he's got an new idea that blends games with movies. Cameron is working on Project 880, which, if approved, will be released first as a networked multiplayer game, and then as a movie.
Imagine Entertainment, the company run by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer that created the TV show 24, has teamed up with producer Jim Banister, Halo creator Alex Seropian, and others to develop a sci-fi reality show called XQuest. If it flies, contestants will occupy a cramped spaceship-like module for a month. Its flight simulators will subject them to rocket-like conditions, including six Gs of thrust. Players will ply the galaxy while following the rough contours of a plot. Outside the ship, online gamers will track the crew's mission and ultimately board their own PC-based spaceships to rendezvous with contestants in shared, simulated space. The next season's cast, in theory, is chosen from those who show the most skill playing the game at home.
What do I think about all this?
I think both creatively and profitibility wise, the money spent in developing a game without a prior IP is better spent elsewhere. When we were working on our project at Castaway, we were asking for a budget of 40 million dollars to develop a brand-new original IP. Publishers balked at these figures. Too expensive. Not a high enough profit margin.
My advice to James Cameron: Make the movie first, then make the game. I haven't seen T3: Rise of the Machines yet, so I don't know how the movie trilogy ends, but there's a license there that you can use to make a MMOG with. Or use Aliens even. These are worlds already established, rich with lore and possibility. A game, even with your name emboldened across the box cover isn't going to sell on its own, and unproven sci-fi licenses are the worst ones to try and make a sucess of.
MMOGs are not easy things to make a success of. There are more failures than successes in this market. While gamers can name the half dozen sucessful titles, there's more than several dozen that have failed for one reason or another, but mostly because game players simply weren't playing.
Movies based on games just don't work. There's a few oddball successes here and there, but for the most part, they are utter and complete failures. There's a reason for it too -- the emotions involved are different -- movies are experienced by watching, while games are experienced by playing. Try as we might, the way we sympathesize with characters in a movie is very different than playing as that character.
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