Posted on Fri, Apr. 09, 2004

Hollywood, gaming forge closer ties

SOARING REVENUES GIVE VIDEO GAMES GREATER INFLUENCE IN INDUSTRY DEALS

By Maureen Fan

Mercury News

    LOS ANGELES - As gaming companies move to Los Angeles and Hollywood agents broker deals between gamers and filmmakers, the two industries are growing closer, this time with gamers holding the upper hand.

    One of the surest signs is the opening of Electronic Arts' new studio in West Los Angeles, a combination of several properties to share technology and reduce overhead. The new studio in Playa Vista, just south of Marina Del Rey, includes the former Dreamworks Interactive of Bel Air, acquired by Redwood City-based EA in 2000, Virgin Interactive of Irvine, which had been renamed EA Pacific, and Westwood Studios of Las Vegas (acquired in 1998). About 350 people work there, a number the company says will grow to 450 by the end of 2005.

    ``This studio is the first new studio to be built in L.A. since Warner Bros. in the 1930s,'' EA spokeswoman Tammy Schachter said.

    ``We like to call it EA Hollywood,'' said gaming analyst James Lin, of the Simba Group. ``There's a very serious and very real convergence happening between Hollywood and video games.''

Expertise required

    As video games have become more cinematic in their scope, developers increasingly require expertise traditionally found in Hollywood:

        • Powerhouse Hollywood agencies such as Creative Artists Agency, Endeavor and International Creative Management have in the past year and a half hired stars in the gaming world such as Xbox creator Seamus Blackley to help them pitch projects, build up interactive departments and produce films and games at the same time, in the hopes of creating blockbusters and educating Hollywood.

        • Lighting artists, sound engineers, animators, scriptwriters, voice actors, cinematography directors, motion capture and storyboard artists are finding work among gaming companies such as EA, Turbine and Konami, which have set up shop in Los Angeles, joining companies such as Activision, Atari and Sony.

        • Gaming technology has rapidly improved, to the point where games look more like movies, and tools used to capture the motion of a character in a computer game are being eyed by the movie industry.

        • In a $10 billion to $20 billion industry, the top 10 gaming titles last year were licensed from movies or other intellectual property, analysts say. And the success of films such as ``Tomb Raider'' (originally a video game) and games based on the Harry Potter and the Matrix movies have not gone unnoticed.

    Soaring revenues are looking good to Hollywood players in search of the next big intellectual property to market or license.

    ``What's happening now is the games are now going to Hollywood. EA has the hottest licenses they can lay their hands on, with the Lord of the Rings and James Bond,'' said gaming industry recruiter Robin McShaffry, who left Electronic Arts in 1998. ``Games have been made from movie licenses for years and years, but they're actually using movie footage in the games now and creating brand-new James Bond fiction for the game.''

New royalty

    Earlier, studios could be more demanding. It took years for Paramount Studios to allow a Star Trek game where any killing took place, but now gamers and their expertise now seem to be the new royalty.

    With EA's ``Battle for Middle-earth,'' New Line Cinema has not demanded to see and approve every step of the game, said EA Vice President Mark Skaggs, executive producer for the new Los Angeles studio. ``But we've gone to them and said, `Here's what we're thinking about.' And they've said, `Make the game.' ''

    New Line did insist that Hobbiton stay pristine. ``We pointed out that Hobbiton is destroyed even in the book,'' Skaggs said.

    So Bag End remains untouched. The oliphants crash and thunder about, just like in the movie. But in a preview of a working version of ``The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth,'' to be released this Christmas, Gandalf the computer game character wields even more power than in the film, immediately cutting down his foes with sharply focused lasers and flashes of light.

    Nowadays, a screenwriter such as John Milius, a military expert who co-wrote ``Apocalypse Now'' and adapted ``Conan the Barbarian,'' gets hired to write a sequel for an established computer game title and make sure it has more film-like nuances, said Fiona Cherbak, a marketing and recruiting consultant to gamers and Hollywood writers.

    Even the actor Vin Diesel is starting his own gaming company called Tigon Studios. Its first release is ``Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay,'' based on the ``Pitch Black'' movie franchise in which Diesel stars. The movie, ``Chronicles of Riddick,'' opens in June.

    Film studios' forays into computer games in the '90s were semi-disastrous. Now, EA is funding -- to the tune of $8 million -- a master's degree program in video games at the University of Southern California.

    Another reason gaming and movie making have forged tighter partnerships is a new generation of filmmakers familiar with and passionate about gaming -- as opposed to an older generation that barely understands e-mail, said McShaffry, vice president of operations of industry recruiter Mary-Margaret.com.

New generation

    The Wachowski brothers who directed the Matrix movie, for example, worked closely with game developer Shiny Entertainment in scripting, directing and planning last year's Enter the Matrix game, released at the same time as the movie sequel, ``Matrix Reloaded.''

    ``The fact that the game business is so big helps, but the real reason this is happening is because there's a new generation of people coming into power at the studios who recognize games as art,'' said Blackley, the Xbox founder.

    And as gaming consoles become more popular and more powerful, ``everyone's realizing that this is a major form of entertainment and Hollywood creatives see they can have a platform where they can add value,'' he said.

    ``Game technology has now advanced to a point where top Hollywood creative talent -- writers, visual artists, actors and musicians -- can fully express themselves and participate in the medium,'' said Gordon Bellamy, former executive director of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, which produces an annual industry summit and awards show. ``Actors can now act in games, visual artists can use the same techniques in movies and have them realized in games. When you see the Lord of the Rings games, they look just like the movie.''

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