Interaction and Entertainment Not the Same, Pioneers Say : Technology: Narrative must be reinvented, studios told.
Now that Hollywood has discovered interactive entertainment, many of the studio executives who attended last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago seem convinced that they are uniquely qualified to enliven and expand an industry dominated by bland cartoon personalities and lackluster plot lines.
But those who have labored in the realm of interactivity since before it became trendy say Hollywood may be engaging in a bit of self-delusion. The gap between being entertained and being part of the entertainment is vast, they say, and bridging the two genres may not be easy.
“A lot of people in Hollywood think interactive means there’s more than one end to a story,” says Trip Hawkins, chief executive of 3DO Co. “Or else they think it’s pay-per-view.”
3DO, which developed the technology for an “interactive multiplayer” due out this fall, is backed by Hollywood heavyweights MCA and Time Warner, and other studios are anxious to develop software for the machine. The allure of the still-unproven technology is testament to Hollywood’s newfound fervor for interactivity.
Nonetheless, while Hawkins believes the entertainment industry will contribute to the new medium, “the real leaders of interactivity are going to be the people that love it first and foremost,” he says. “There’s a certain amount of arrogance in Hollywood, thinking they’re the only ones who understand storytelling.”
That attitude was apparent at a recent gathering that director Francis Ford Coppola hosted at his Napa home for Silicon Valley and Hollywood types to brainstorm ideas about interactive multimedia, recalls Ron Martinez. He is executive director of software manufacturer Spectrum Holobyte’s new entertainment division.
“I was thunderstruck,” says Martinez, who has been working with interactive software for a decade. “That’s how you lose a lot of money, by assuming you know everything because you know what works in your own world.”
Universally understood “film grammar”--the sequencing of images to impart narrative--is key to successful interactivity, says Martinez, who is developing an interactive version of Paramount’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation” at the Alameda-based company. But what makes or breaks it is how effectively the audience is drawn into the action.
And, Martinez and other software developers insist, the technology must involve more than having people click on a button to elicit one predetermined response and another to make a slightly varied selection. True interactivity must reinvent the narrative form, placing the audience on stage with characters that may respond to it in unexpected ways--a shifting structure difficult to create and one with which Hollywood may not be comfortable.
Still, if Spectrum’s interactive “Star Trek” is successful, much of the credit will belong to Paramount for creating the pop culture icon in the first place. The same holds for the “Aladdin” video game, which Disney said last week it has infused with more plot, character and humor than any previous game.
But Tom Kalinsky, chief executive of Sega Enterprises, which developed the game with Disney and Virgin Games, took affront at studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg’s contention that “until now, video games have not generally offered a sense of story.”
“I didn’t tell Jeffrey when he said that, but we always write stories,” Kalinsky says. “I don’t want to shoot arrows at Hollywood because I want to build bridges, but Sonic the Hedgehog does have a personality. We sold over 4.5 million Sonic cartridges last year; that’s over $450 million--no movie even came close. I’m going to tell that to Jeffrey, just so he knows.”
The blockbuster financial success of video games has not gone unnoticed in Hollywood, nor have analyst predictions that sales of interactive CD-ROM titles--compact discs containing compressed video clips, text, sound and animation--could reach nearly $2 billion over the next five years. Both games and CD-ROM programs are seen as stepping stones to the potentially far more lucrative market for interactive television programming expected to transpire over the next several years.
Such figures represent a strong incentive for Hollywood to master the new form. And while the studios may not have it down yet, they are beginning to reach out to experiment with new ways of constructing stories.
In cases involving Sony, Paramount and Time Warner, the parent companies set up separate divisions to tackle interactive entertainment and include the studios. MCA is working with 3DO to develop an interactive movie version of “Jurassic Park.” And Virgin Games producers taught Disney animators some key differences between movie and interactive animation during their collaboration on “Aladdin.”
Even 20th Century Fox, which has so far done little in the direction of multimedia, is beginning to join in. Scott Walcheck, president of San Mateo-based software publisher Sanctuary Woods, said Fox this week agreed to license the interactive rights to “Once Upon a Forest,” due out this summer.
“A few months ago we went and explained to the top Fox people what we wanted to do, and they just didn’t get it,” Walcheck says. “But all of a sudden they got very interested. And when they came around (the 3DO booth) today, they sat and talked to us for a long time.”
