Hoping to Make the Show Go On in Video Games

Get ready for Silliwood, the sequel.

In 1994, headlines proclaimed the marriage between Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Experts promised a brave new media world, and consumers appeared eager to buy computer games based on films or television shows.

Hundreds of companies jumped into the fray, hoping to make millions. But few succeeded.

“The problem was that so many of the games looked absolutely terrible and were really boring to play,” said David Perry, president of the Laguna Beach-based game development firm Shiny Entertainment. “You had these gorgeous, effects-heavy films and people expected the games to look the same.”

But they didn’t, because the tools used by film studios to create digital images were more powerful--and much more expensive--than the tools used by artists at the game houses.

Yet all that’s changing, insist software developers attending this week’s 12th annual Game Developers’ Conference. The event at the Long Beach Convention Center is expected to attract thousands of people who actually build computer and digital arcade games.

This time, artists insist, the personal computer is making their job easier.

When it first became possible to create special effects on a computer, most studios relied on expensive machines made by Silicon Graphics Inc. to handle the heavy computing.

As more television and cable shows incorporated special effects, the crews began turning to PCs to generate models that were rendered digitally but had a lower resolution than those used in film.

Take Sierra On-Line and its current effort to make a game based on the sci-fi television show Babylon 5. Sierra staff insist they rely on the show’s digital archives--compiled and created by the show’s production team at Netter Digital Entertainment Inc. in North Hollywood--to round out its game line.

“It’s a tremendous advantage for us, cost-wise,” said Craig Alexander, general manager for Sierra Publishing. “The studio has at least four years’ worth of music and digital models, a huge archive of material that I could never afford to create on my own. If I tried, I’d bankrupt the company.”

This archive swapping has long been practiced by houses with strong studio ties, such as LucasArts Entertainment, Sony Online and Disney Interactive.

“Paramount Studios has always been really smart too, because they’ve only given their Star Trek license to developers who can make the Enterprise look like a starship, not a doughnut,” said Jason Rubinstein, games evangelist for Intel Corp.

But some developers warn that even a good-looking game can fail if it doesn’t hit the retail shelves in a timely manner.

“The complication still arises with the amount of time it takes to make a really good game,” said Steve Dauperman, director of development for LucasArts. “If the game’s not out when the film is booming, you’re going to fall flat. Our market is too competitive for companies to survive too many missed opportunities.”

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P.J. Huffstutter covers high technology for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com