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Bobby Kotick: Games Can “Eclipse” Film And TV
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has said that the games industry has the potential to “eclipse” the film and television industries.
Kotick believes that the feat could be realised within five years when the next generation of hardware enables developers to master the art of facial animation. This, he said, would bring characters to life and provide an emotional connection allowing for better storytelling and character development.
"I view the medium as having the potential to eclipse film and television," he told Barron's, before noting that all businesses will face economic challenges over the next few years.
"It's not a trivial investment for people," he said of console adoption, speaking shortly after Microsoft and Sony lowered the prices of the PS3 and Xbox 360 to $299 respectively. "Part of my concern over the next couple of years is when you look at an economy that's not growing and you look at all the economic challenges we face, not just for videogames but for all businesses."
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
I wish that this idiotic executive would stop spouting half-witted garbage, and, when he inevitably can't keep his gob shut, it would stop being reported. Censor him for all of our sakes!
Doesn't he realise that it's badly thought through bubbles of hype and mindlessly inconsistent pronouncements like his (cut the price of this! we should charge more! boohoo for tightening our belts! everything's going games!) that are exactly the kind of things that get in the way of furthering the industry. No wonder gaming is looked on so childishly by much of the business world.
PS Isn't it a lovely picture of the man? Imagine him lurching towards you looking like that. Does it make you want to (a) play an exciting Activision game with him, or (b) run like stink while sobbing in fear?
Oh the guy must be happy now that PS3 had its price cut. Might not be complaining anymore, but still making questionnable comments. Games will not eclipse movies and tv... people will always need to sit back and relaxe. The same way people will always want to read or listen to music, they need to switch off and watch some tv. Playing a game involves an extra level of activity that you don't always feel like doing. As if this was a contest anyway!! As far as replacing actors go, this won't happen either. I would guess that at least half of the people who want to see a specific movie are doing it because of the actors playing in it over the actual story of it. A part of that same half also like all the gossip around the stars. Society has become dependent of the star system to sell magazine, clothing, cars, perfume and so many other things that videogame characters can not do. People also relate to the stars, which can't be done with a virtual character. I am not saying the star system as we not it is all good, but we have to admit that it is huge.
I agree that movies and books will never fully be replaced but that doesn't mean games cannot outdo them in certain quarters and already probably have.
The general consensus is that reading has gone up if you combine book sales with e-books and casual reading on the net. This doesn't surprise me as people tend to look to the halcyon days of old when everyone was reading when in fact novels as a mainstream entity aren't all that old, post World war 2 in fact.
It is also it is hard to imagine Million Dollar Baby the game for example. So films are safe in some respects.
However the one area where gaming is 100% guaranteed to succeed is in its ability to include the audience in the spectacle. So instead of watching some overpaid primo like little Tom cruise mince around pretending to be an action hero you get to be one. Instead of watching some dodgy manager take your favourite football club to relegation you can take the mighty Newc...I mean your favourite team to the league title. This is where no other medium can compete and is going forward gaming's primary strength.
I understand and agree with pretty much everything you say. Games are already making more money than any other medias. I just don't see that as competition between these medias. I firmly believe that movies, games, books and music cds exist to fullfil specific needs. None of them can be compared to each other, simply because they don't required the same mindset, they're not all talking to same audiance and are not enjoyed in the same ways.
Kotic's comment is simply irrelevant. My mother doesn't want to be a hero, my daughter is too young to play a hero and my girlfriend doesn't care about being a hero. These overpaid primo, and some are talented, are making you feel emotions in ways that is not possible with games or books.
Each media has its strenghts and weaknesses, but to say one is superior makes no sense at all and how much money they make can't be the only argument to decide that. Games make more money because they are a lot more expensive to begin with. Also games are like BIC razors, people buy them and then get rid of them, meaning that basically the same item can be sold 2 or 3 times and make money each time. Usually, when you buy a book, you keep it.
There are so many things to consider to make such statement that it's almost impossible to compare and come to the conclusion that yes game will eclipse the others.
Financially but when I first saw this statement I thought about on an artistic basis and how that wouldn't make sense as each medium is better at certain things. Aren't a lot of games achieving massive financial success already comparative to film and television? Hollywood/most of the film biz often cashes in on a game tie in and recently they've been turning to games for a few of their movies however we all know how that's turned out so far.
However there's a crapload of people out there who need to be introduced to the new side of gaming we're seeing emerge, the cool casual games that people uninterested in playing fake guitars, blowing peoples heads off, jumping on the heads of goombas and swinging imaginary tennis rackets would enjoy. A few people who I think represent a fairly large demographic have said that Flower and LittleBigPlanet changed their perspective on what they thought gaming was/could be yet none of the marketing I'm seeing really conveys that new depth games are beginning to have. I'm not meaning the casual stuff Nintendo throws out, I also got these people to play Super Smash Bros and the other casual Nin games which they got bored of fast because they lack depth (in the case of Smash Bros they just kinda sucked and the classic Nintendo appeal is more for fans over the years and kids I guess). Hopefully that entry point will lead them on to further games which require more skill and effort as gamers but as the Wii crowd has pointed out that doesn't generally happen.
I sort of agree with him which is amazing as he's already said enough in previous interviews to come across as a corporate arse. If you look at Mass Effect for example the facial expressions are far superior then many other games and if Bioware can harness and improve that side of their games it would make their characters more personable.
To say that people just want games is not quite true and perhaps wishful thinking. Games CAN be sold almost entirely on the basis of their pretty graphics e.g. Crysis, Halo series, Killzone 2, Gears of War and many more as they offer nothing new in game play to previous iterations of their genre. I'm not saying this is right I am just pointing out that there is a healthy chunk of the gaming audience who see games as an extension of the action-movie genre and not upgrades of Chess.
I suspect that what Nintendo did with the Wii is bring in a lot of new gamers, I bet the core of the XBox/PS2 fan base did not jump to the Wii, they either shifted to the PC or stuck with the PS2 or adopted the new consoles high-def consoles.
This guy is either saying stuff like this for publicity or he actually doesn't understand what's going on.
The hardware hasn't prevented high-quality facial animation for a long time. They could have done it on the PC back in 1998. Conker's Bad Fur Day was on the N64.
It's the programmers, not the hardware. Yes, the hardware defines the limits, but within those limits are many possibilities that are entirely dependent on the programmer and the drive of the company. Facial animation is usually ignored because it requires an immense amount of time to do it well, and most development teams prefer to stick to the elements of the game that, I dunno', make it a GAME.
And about his belief that games will eclipse movies and television, I bet Roger Ebert would love to argue that. Games and non-interactive media are entirely different things. One cannot eclipse the other.
Everything he says seems to go against the success of Nintendo. Nintendo implies that many people want a game to be just that: a game. People have not yearned for a graphically amazing chess experience, because all they want to do is play the game.
I think he may be referring more specifically to the "uncanny valley" effect. People are unable to connect to 'near'-perfect CGI models the way they connect to real people in movies...yet.
I, personally, don't think he was. Knowing Kotick, I think he would have taken the chance to use the word "uncanny valley" and sound intelligent. That's not just him, that's all executives.
The uncanny valley affects even the most advanced CGI we have available, rendered on super-computers and render farms. If he was referring to that, CGI movies with basically unlimited hardware are subject to the valley. We would be decades away from video game hardware capable of exceeding it. Toy Story was nearly 15 years ago and current hardware can't do what it did. It's just not viable.
I'm not attacking you, I think your Devil's advocate was well made, I just think you're giving Kotick too much credit.
I don't understand. Is he saying that within the next five years, our consoles will be able to produce video in real-time that matches the likes of Pixar's render farms, which take hours for a single frame?
This guy must have some sort of crystal ball that lets him tap directly into 2007.
Haha. More like 1999. I remember reading articles like this in reference to new graphics tech in PC Magazine before the freaking millennium.