A Tree Falling in the Forest

Every year I start to get calls around this time asking whether I am going to attend comic con. As you may have read in last year's post about the rise and fall of the con, I've been going for over twenty five years and have seen some change. This year I am noticing the change in the people who are calling and I am starting to wonder whether it is a good thing. I used to get calls from artists or comic fans who could not afford to pay the fee. Then I got calls from writers and directors who did not know where to look to get a badge. Now I get calls from game folks, agents, executives, all thinking I can get them a badge to the sold out show. Sure, hold on a second, I'll just lift Shakespeare's head, push the button, and pull one out of my ass, just give me a second to clean it up for you. Let's just stop right here for a second. Sold Out. For years, Pre-Hollywood Takeover, tickets were always unspokenly voluntary. By that I mean you never really had ...

It's been a while since my last game related post. Every time I sat down to write something it felt like groundhog day. Another developer shut down, take a look at these. Governor Schwarzennegger is trying to get the Supreme Court to review his video game bill even though his movies are worse than the game he is trying to block, look here. It just felt like I had written all the way through the news cycle and I would just be re writing myself in a new flavor. Then I saw this article in the LA Times http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-games-moguls1-2009jun01,0,4429125,full.story around E3 and it led me to like it was 1993 all over again: THE HOT TICKET two weeks ago was to Francis Ford Coppola's hacienda in Napa. Fred Fuchs, head of Coppola's American Zoetrope, pulled 50 people to the 1,600 -acre estate for a weekend summit on multimedia, complete with five meals and a tour of the vineyard. After Saturday morning intros, the afternoon was taken up with demos from...

A little while back I wrote about the failure to release a Batman game with the film . I argued there was sufficient time to make the game, and it was really surprising someone would not be riding the film's wave. Since then, rumors emerged of a game in development but missing the date, and SCi announced their Arkham Asylum game based on the comic books. This was a missed opportunity to exploit public knowledge of a license. Some game publisher, somewhere, lost out on free marketing. But what about Max Payne? The game supporting the movie based on a game? Sure, it's tough to come up with a good game from a film. The studio and actors have approvals. The scenes get added and cut, and players are split between playing the movie and playing an entirely new story line. But Max Payne started life as a game. What gives? I don't have any unique insight into this deal and any information I have is available to you as well through Google. I am just a simple guy looki...

Several times a week I get calls the help make a game from greatest movie, book, celebrity, song, musician, brand or something else genuinely recognized by millions of people. More often than not, the game business is just not interested. This is because games succeed based on the quality of the game play. Story, art direction, character development can all enhance a game and lead to incremental sales, but when it comes down to it, if it is not fun to play, it won't succeed.  There's not much story in Tetris, and unaltered from the game, Halo's story would not carry a linear narrative.  A license will not make the game mechanic any more fun. It will only assist in marketing. To do so, there must be an event around the time of launch which will let the world know the game is out. "Event" means something big, like a tent pole film which makes the license front of mind for the 120 million plus people who walk through Wal-Mart each week. Short of that, good luck...

I wrote this article a year or two ago to address a break down in Hollywood's distribution driven financial model.  I read it again recently and realized many of the market forces which are creating tension in the film business today are hovering above the game industry.  I thought it was worth reviving.  Here it is: Hollywood started as a creator of content; it ended as a gatekeeper over distribution. While it may feel a bit early to identify the end of a multibillion dollar industry, the dream factory perceived by the outside world is long gone and without significant change, the democratization of distribution and production arising from advances in digital technology will make the US steel industry look like a growth business relative to Hollywood. But what technology takes away with one hand can be restored with the other. In the early days of filmmaking, the producers, directors, cameramen and even talent were studio employees under contract. Over the years, through studio...

A little while ago N'Gai Croal was kind enough to publish a rant of mine which compared Halo 3 sales numbers to film . I received a lot of feedback regarding my position that Halo should not be made into a film. Unfortunately, that was not my premise. If anything, I said that Halo should not be made into a shitty movie. My point was simply, games sales alone do not say the film should be made. A film can be made about anything, look at Pirates of the Caribbean. However, like Pirates, the film will live or die on its story. Unless a great script with a great director and a great producer come together, the film won't be made. Sometimes this happens right away, sometimes it takes years, sometimes it never does. The evolution from game to great script is a harder one than a comic book, a novel or a life story. In the case of Sin City and 300, brilliant directors figured out how to shoot the films directly from the pages. Novels have strong stories and a number of writers ...