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Postcard From GDC 2003: At "Convergence: Feature Film and Games," a sponsored session by Electronic Arts, EA producer Bob Nicoll spoke at length about the growing similarities between traditional film production and cinematic game production. Using recent (and not-so-recent) EA titles as examples, Nicoll demonstrated the exponential growth of gaming technologies, and showed that this growth is finally leading to the convergence of cinematic and interactive media experiences. With interactive entertainment revenues quickly gaining ground on those seen at the box office, more and more attention is being given to "cinematic" gaming. To illustrate just how far the industry (and EA in particular) has come in recent years, he played clips from big EA titles over the last decade, wowing the crowd with impressive cinematic graphics. He then pointed out the exponential technological growth that gaming has undergone in the last few years, meaning that the games are only going to get better - much better, in his opinion. With even a modest projection of how this might shape the development of next-generation games, Nicoll foresees unthinkable levels of realism and believability in the next five years. He said that we've now finally reached the point where developers can start thinking of their games as truly cinematic experiences. To Nicoll, the most interesting thing that has come from the convergence of gaming and movie-making is the structure within which cinematic games are produced. Nicoll showed that games developed at EA undergo a development process similar to what's seen in the film industry - including scripts, storyboards, concept art, pre-viz animatics, and even camera blocking diagrams. He pointed to the increasing specialization of talent within the industry, similar to that seen in the film industry, with various people dedicated to areas such as lighting, camera movement, character design, and so on. However, in spite of what many people in the audience may have expected him to say, Nicoll actually believes that cinematics will slowly disappear from gaming - precisely because cinematics will become integrated into games themselves. To demonstrate, he showed clips from a number of EA titles, such as 007 Nightfire,The Two Towers, and FIFA 2003, all of which feature gameplay that is becoming increasingly cinematic. The skills currently being developed in the production of cut-scene cinematics, he said, will soon be transferred into the area of cinematic gameplay - which, in his opinion, is the future of the medium. And the biggest catalyst for this, according to Nicoll, will be the arrival of the next-generation game consoles. (He was specifically referring to the PS3, but indicated that the name of the console doesn't really matter.) Nicoll indicated that with the next generation systems, we're looking at:
So what does it all add up to? According to Nicoll, it's not just increased realism - it's increased believability. Pretty soon, the industry will hit the benchmark of being able to produce graphically realistic games. The question, according to him, is what do we do once we're there? What kind of experiences do we want to create? At this point in the "infancy" of the industry, Nicoll says, we're coming out of the 'movies' and into the 'talkies.' "We're only just now learning how to tell a story," he said, and we're learning that to compete in the market of cinematic gaming, companies need to take a fresh look at the design process and see where the process can be informed by the film industry. Nicoll admitted that this would be easier for a big studio such as Electronic Arts, but also pointed out that it was a structure that could scale in both directions. As a hint
of the potential inherent in an interactive medium in which graphics are
growing to the level equivalent to high-definition broadcast resolution,
he posed the following question. On a given Thursday night, you can turn
on Friends, and know that 10 million other people are doing the
exact same thing. So what will it take before producers in the interactive
entertainment industry can say the same thing?
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