The Convergence of Films and Video Games

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The Convergence of Films and Video Games

The Global Industry of Imaginaries 30380
Simone Autera

Elizaveta Sbitnikova (3048163)

Contents

Introduction        3

Studio Ghibli and Level-5 Case        6

Implications        8

Conclusion        9

Bibliography        10

Introduction

It is considered that media convergence is shuffling in from the buzzword wings and onto center stage. But what is media convergence?

According to Jenkins, media convergence is an ongoing process that should not be viewed as a displacement of the old media, but rather as interactions between different media forms and platforms (Jenkins, 2006). Thus, media convergence may take place in numerous ways. For the intents and purposes of this paper, the convergence of films and videogames will be investigated.

HISTORY OF THE CONVERGENCE OF VIDEO GAMES AND FILMS

During the evolution and development of any industry, at some point a new industry arises, and it becomes modern in the perspective of consumers. The emergence of photography has pushed the development of the new Cinema industry. Although cinema is quite a young form of art, existing for only about a century, it gave the chance for an evolution of a new form of art - video games. The concept "new media" (Salnikova, 2013) appeared – where cinema is considered as a synthetic type of screen art. Its various components formed the basis for new types of modern media culture. There are also new modern technologies in the sphere of entertainment – video games industry, which is developing exponentially around the world.

Today, the "symbiosis" of the cinema and video game industry is a hot topic for researchers, because they are closely connected with each other. Therefore, the modern development of this symbiosis gives industry businesses a chance to increase the profitability of movies in interrelation with video games. Video games is not an autonomous sphere standing separately in the sphere of media business; it is its active segment which not only submits to all laws of cinema, but also directly interacts with the media sphere. By investigating the process of convergence of cinema and video games, it is possible to identify three main stages:

1. Production of games on subjects of movies and series.

One of the first video games based on a film was ET. After the release of ET's film, Warner Entertainment concluded a deal with Spielberg according to which they should release the game in time for the Christmas shopping season. Thus, the production was rushed and the game was poorly designed.

Considering the success of the film, cartridges were overproduced. In reality, the target audience rejected this game, so the company was left with excess inventory. To clear the warehouse, they had to get rid of the cartridges in a desert in New Mexico.

"The failure of this particular video game was due to the fact that the experience of the game was far from the experience of the film. ET was a film to which many children had a strong emotional attachment, particularly with the alien who seemed to exhibit human characteristics. A video game portraying ET as a two-dimensional avatar with limited expression and limited movement did little to elicit such attachment or emotion". (Brookey, 2010)

1. Cinematographic elements such as the camera movements, close-ups, special effects, and in-game graphics began to be used in video games.

It began as soon as technologies allowed: since the beginning of the 1990s with the expansion of graphical capacities of personal computers (VGA, SVGA), distribution of CD drives and emergence of digital video compression technologies.

The first attempts to integrate videos and fragments into computer games were undertaken in the early eighties in the game “Rollercoaster” (1982, a platform of Apple II) where fragments from the movie of the same name (which appeared in 1977) were shown at some point.

The real technological diffusion, however, was in 1990s when the game industry produced a whole chain of "interactive movies" where actors acted performed either using a green screen or using alternative sceneries to convey a completely different setting. For example, “Mad Dog McCree”, “Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold”, “Drug Wars”, “Who Shot Johnny Rock?” were all video shooting galleries from American Laser Games. These games limited their interactivity to the players’ capacity to fire weapons intermittently between videos that advances the plot.

Also, there were many games where digital video was used instead of animating the game characters, such as Police Quest 4: Open Season”. Essentially, all graphics were digitalized and not animated.

“The Wing Commander” game series became famous for abundance of video scenes involving eminent actors such as John Rhys-Davies, Malcolm McDowell, Mark Richard Hamill. By the final part of the series, the game aspect was pushed by video fragments (which were not interactive) to the background. However, those videos were truly exceptional.

The fourth game of a series - Price of Freedom - had a previously unmatched budget allocation in the game industry of over $12 million. The previous game were thrice as cheap to create, yet it was considered to be expensive by industry standards. The majority of budget was used to compensate the actors, as well as on an animatronics for physical display of frightening muzzles of Kilrathi, a hostile cat-like race with which people of Earth densely are at war until the end of “Wing Commander III”.

Moreover, this video was very interactive: scene and plot development depended on the remarks chosen by the player (from the provided list). So, it really was a well-managed movie where from time to time it was necessary to show miracles of virtuosity of space fight.

However, videos with living actors from games were gone quickly because: the three-dimensional graphics proved to be cheaper in production than videos. Here it is pertinent to remember the introduction to Diablo, kinematics of Diablo II and Starcraft, a prompt to Hexen II or Heretic II: none of personal computers during that time could pull such graphics. Therefore, it was ferried in digital video and recorded with carriers in the form of AVI files.