Friday, May 22, 2009

Beyond Good and Evil 2

Concept video leaked. Pretty cool parkour. Concept videos are interesting, I think as the engines get stronger and stronger it's coming more and more to the artists saying: "what would be the coolest game to play" and making a little video of it, and then the programmers figuring out how to do it from there. Star Wars and Assassin's Creed same thing. Video Games are always growing so fast it's fun to see the new possibilities coming, wonder how much longer until games are bigger then movies.

2 comments:

Ian said...

Wow this is interesting Alonso, and what fun from an animators point of view. Just make it look cool and then we'll see if we can make it happen.What a brief.

As I understand it, the problem with games getting bigger than movies is that games don't have all the other extra bits to go with them. In fact games are often one of the extra bits that go with a movie. Sometimes you will see comparisons that try to show games are able to make money on a scale comparable with movies, but they usually compare with box office takings and a successful movie only makes about a quarter of its money at the box office. Much more is made through second tear stuff like toys, dvd sales, broadcasting rights, games etc.

But I supose "bigger" could mean more than just making money. It is very true that games are reaching many more people every day. It cirtainly is where so much of the inovation is these days.

Alonso said...

It's interesting, because there are games out there, where the movie is the extra bit. Unfortunately so far it's been terrible directors (Uwe Boll being a very common culprit), but eventually things will swing over and there'll be decent flicks (Bioshock seems like a good possiblity) it seems to me that games have a bigger potential then movies because through the artistry of the movie makers you feel like your there part of the story, but you're silent and inefectual, where as in games, not only are you there and part of the story, but you are the star and the story is driven by you. (with the evolution of open world sand box games this will be more and more true) so a movie is 1 linear story that you vicariously particapate in for 2 hours, but a game will be as many different stories as you want that are created by you. It's estimated that soon game worlds will feel completely real, so no tricks, as if you're running around with a camera. It's the new form of story telling that is where games need to continue to evolve if they are to topple film, Bioshock being one of the frontrunners at the moment, the story draws you in but does not interfere with the main point of a game, which is having fun. It's a new kind of storytelling so it's still in it's infancy, how do you create meaningful characters and situations, when you have no control over what the main character (the player)does?
As for money as a judge of success, look at World of Warcraft(WoW), more then 10 million people playing, paying $15(US) a month, and buying expansion packs, and they don't even do that much extra merchandise schwag (which they could).

But from an animator's perspective. A film only lasts 2 hours or so, and chances are you've only animated a minute or two at most, so your stuff's not getting seen that much. But a short game will last 8 hours at least, and if you've animated the main character, they'll be watching your stuff the whole time. And a game like WoW never ends, because the player is making up new stories everyday with their online friends, and they become your animations in their minds. And with technology improving, higher quality and more emotive animations will be needed more and more.

So I guess I'm saying games are an interesting place to be because they are going interesting places.

wow I'm super rambly today, guess it's the long weekend.