Ever since the birth of the computer/video game industry it has been compared to filmmaking. It's in many ways an apt comparison with some strong connections. We've often heard predictions of an inevitable convergence between the cultures of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. But of course there are significant differences between these entertainment forms and their respective industries.

Over twenty years have passed since Pong made electronic games a big business. That's long enough to provide some perspective on this comparison, relate lessons about what has and has not worked, and hopefully to project the future convergence (or divergence) of these two industries.

Others have made a more scholarly and theoretical approach to this comparison. I am indebted to the work of Brian Moriarty and Hal Barwood in particular for their insights on the past and current film worlds and how they relate to the interactive industry. But this paper (and the accompanying lecture at the 1998 CGDC) takes a more personal and pragmatic view.

Some introductions are in order. First, I have to express my bias: I programmed my initial computer game in 1976, and I've been professionally employed as a game developer since 1980. My roots are firmly in the computer and video game industry. That said, I have always been fascinated by movies and have been one of the more enthusiastic proponents of contact between the two fields. I've spent two thirds of my career making games for companies owned entirely or in part by movie companies, and worked with writers, producers, directors, and agents as I've created games. Currently I work as a freelance designer and producer, living in Northern California, and frequently commuting to L.A. to serve Hollywood clients. Accordingly I've had my share of relevant experiences, exploring the new territory between the two cultures. I've been lucky enough to have had some remarkably satisfying and fun times on that frontier, but I've found myself taking hostile fire too.

One person's perspective isn't enough to encompass this topic, but it's a start. Compared to my interactive industry knowledge, my experience in Hollywood is perhaps superficial (forgive the pun, but if the industries were reversed I'd describe my interactive knowledge as cursory). Accordingly I'm aware that many of my perceptions about the Hollywood system and its people may be very subjective, but in new territory even sketchy maps can be useful.

Throughout this document I'll be using several terms interchangeably. In general, Silicon Valley, Interactive, and Games will refer to one industry, and Hollywood, Linear Media, and Film/Movies/Television refer to the other. Most points made about computer games apply equally to educational and informational software. These may be oversimplifications, but no slight is intended. General attitudes towards the merging of these two cultures has followed some fairly consistent patterns. Here's a rough layout of the typical reactions that have characterized each side over the years.

Of course the truth is somewhat more complex than that, but this fairly reflects conventional wisdom over the years. But who wants conventional wisdom? Four years ago the Wall Street Journal said that a lot of companies had lost money investing in CD ROM games only to find that it was a hard field in which to make money. OK so far. The article went on to say that many of those companies had learned their lesson, and had now realized that the big bucks lay in developing Internet based titles. That's conventional wisdom!

One of the first problems that comes up is language. Here are a few terms that often have different meanings to the different businesses, or even to different groups within the same business.

Development and Production - Dreamworks Interactive is a joint venture between Microsoft and Dreamworks SKG. When the company started up there was a mix of people from Microsoft, the film industry, and the game industry. To someone from Microsoft (and a gradually increasing percentage of the software business) development means programming, and a developer is a computer programmer. To someone from the film industry, development means the initial process of starting up a movie, working on the script and making deals. Once the decision is made to start a movie there is a pre-production phase, production (where the filming is done), and post-production where special effects, dialogue replacement, and sound are added. Many people from the games industry use the terms Development and Production interchangeably to mean the process of actually making a game from start to finish, and a developer may be anyone who has a role in making games. We had a lot of confusion over the term development before these basics were clear to everyone. It is also useful for people from Hollywood to realize that the interactive industry does not have clear and well-defined breaks between pre-production, production, and post-production, although it is possible to impose them arbitrarily.

Action-Adventure - To someone in the film business this is a movie genre. Most interactive people know that, but they also know that in the computer game world Action games and Adventure games are two very different genres. Very simply, Action games (also sometimes called Arcade style) have their interactivity focused on constant, rapid, real-time choices, and require good hand-eye coordination to play. Adventure games (perhaps better termed story games, but named after the first of their type) are story-intensive, slow-paced games where the major interaction is puzzle solving, and typically there is no real-time fast interaction. This distinction is muddled by the fact that there are a few games (the Wing Commander series as an example) that link some of the Adventure game elements of storytelling and linear sequences with a fast-paced action game. It's also worth noting that there are interactive genres and story genres in a game, for example an Adventure game with a Horror story plot, or a Strategy game with a Comedy theme. But if you're from the film industry, it is often a sign of unfamiliarity with the games industry to refer to an action-adventure game inappropriately. Also note that game genres (e.g. role-playing games) can mean slightly different things in a console system game and a home computer game. Do your homework!

Video Game/Computer Game - This is a tricky one. Sometimes these terms are used interchangeably to mean any game that uses a microprocessor to run, e.g. from Tetris to Myst. Other times there is a distinction made, where Video Game refers to a dedicated console like Nintendo 64 or Sony Playstation (hence also called Console games) and Computer Games are games that use multipurpose home computers.

Arcade Game - also confusing, sometimes this means one of the dedicated games you find in bars or arcades (better referred to unequivocally as coin-op games), or sometimes it is used to describe a genre of game interchangeable with action games that may apply to a home computer game based on a game from a coin-op system. Related to this is Location-Based Entertainment (LBE), a term describing the high-end installations and simulators like Sega GameWorks or FASA's Battletech Centers.

The interactive industry is now officially old enough to have learned some lessons that are generally accepted and well proven through experience. Here are a few of the more useful:

Branching Movies Don't Work - I'm a little reluctant to state this, since it seems to be something that almost everyone working at the juncture of these two industries has to try once and fail, if only as an exercise on paper. It seems like such simple solution to reaching the holy grail of true interactive movies. As a parent, I've often found that when dealing with a toddler, saying not to do something is tantamount to daring the toddler to do it. All I can say about this is, No, Don't Touch, This Will Hurt!

Respect works, Arrogance fails - Perhaps in another ten or twenty years there will emerge a person equally talented as a game designer/producer and a film director, who will single-handedly merge the two forms through strength of will, consummate knowledge and skill from both disciplines, and a fierce passion that scorches all who approach. But so far the best successes from people moving between these two businesses have followed those who are willing to work with and learn from each other. Even when working with film industry luminaries like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (actually, especially with them) I've been impressed with their respect and sensitivity to people from the interactive world, and their unwillingness to impose their will upon others. On the other hand, some filmmakers who shall remain nameless have insisted that they know so much about creating entertainment that their view must be the only one, and anyone from the interactive world can serve as a mere technician to implement their grand vision. Guess who's been more successful? Sometimes the good guys do finish first.

Interactive Titles MUST Be Interactive At Their Core - Sounds self-evident, doesn't it? Yet every year there are titles released that are essentially linear, with interactivity tacked on as an afterthought. It's easy to see that if a consumer wants to be entertained with just a story or a series of images or both, books, TV and movies are much cheaper and more satisfying forms. But computer games are popular when their interactivity is used to evoke a deeper sense of immersion and entertainment. Many successful games have been made that focused on the interaction as the primary source of entertainment. Tetris and Civilization are great examples. Other games have succeeded by blending great interactive game play with impressive graphics, like Doom and its brethren, Myst, and many hit Nintendo games. But titles based on story and graphics with minimal interaction have repeatedly floundered. In games, at our current state of the art, many of the storytelling skills of linear media are secondary to the entertainment experience.

Participatory immersion - Interactive entertainment is an active medium. Interactivity means participation, and the person enjoying the entertainment is a participant and not an observer. This means that to create for the interactive medium you must take advantage of the participation to enhance the experience and not fight against it. With the transition from stage plays to film techniques such as cross cuts and closeups created a new language that filmmakers gradually learned to use to their advantage. There are similar techniques with interaction. One fundamental technique is giving the player freedom of movement, or more properly the illusion of freedom within a subtly restricted space. Some have faulted Myst for not being very interactive, but when one plays the game most of the time is spent in wandering around the environment and clicking on things. It's a simple form of interaction, but it goes straight to basic human instincts. A study was made years ago of kittens. Some kittens were driven through a maze in little carts, while others were allowed to explore the maze on their own. Not surprisingly, the first group was almost as bad at subsequently finding their way through the maze on their own as kittens who had never seen the maze at all, while the ones who had walked through it learned it quickly. Writers and directors are trained to grab the audience's attention and lead them from one point to another. Interactive entertainment doesn't work that way.

Here are a few personal views of some Hollywood fixtures, pointing out aspects that may be of use to the interactive industry.

Agents - The typical stereotype of a Hollywood agent is an unscrupulous leech. I'm happy to say that although there are plenty of such creatures, in my experience, with a little luck and perseverance you can actually meet Hollywood agents who have more of the pussycat in them. As with most Hollywood stereotypes the truth is often both worse and better than you can imagine. For the most common analogy in the interactive world, think of headhunters. Some are effective, honest, polite and useful, while others may lack one or more of those traits, but most people find them at worst a necessary evil and at best a real help. I've found that for the purposes of game developers, the easiest way to find out if an agent is likely to be helpful is to quiz them on their familiarity with the interactive field, and to see if their knowledge goes back more than two or three years. If they don't know our field even if they're tops in their own they'll face a stiff learning curve before being effective in the interactive world. The majority of the agents I've met who are truly interested in working with interactive professionals are both pleasant people and very helpful. It's the opportunists out only for a quick buck that you have to look out for. Also, realize that in the studio system agents are a fully accepted piece of the landscape. At Dreamworks I had to convince some of the movie people not to use representation by an agent as a first pass filter in deciding whether to talk to a possible interactive development team. It's well known to interactive professionals but surprising to many from the linear world that representation is a rarity. In fact, the majority of interactive teams or individuals represented by agents I've met were essentially film and TV people who moved into the interactive arena. But later I found that when looking for screenwriters, going through agents saves tremendous amounts of time. A good agent may handle many different possible writers and be able to fill you in on their respective specialties. They can explain what you need to their clients and save you from repeating the same material.

Studios - The big studios (Disney, Universal, Warner, etc.) serve much the same function as the major software publisher/distributors, funding development and creating their own titles and keeping stables of independent development groups that provide many of their releases. I've seen many of the basic business structures common in Hollywood percolate slowly into the entertainment software industry over the years. As games have become more expensive and hits more profitable and the teams have grown larger, the business models TV and Filmmaking have developed become more applicable. This is disappointing on the one hand as it has paralleled the slow death of the one-man games (I don't think I'm being sexist, I just never heard of a one-woman game) and a loss of some of the openness and camaraderie of the small club atmosphere that used to be common. But it's encouraging on the other hand as it has made it possible for many independent development groups to form, and the solid ones have flourished as the market has grown. The current system of Hollywood studios and independent creative and technical workers has a lot to offer the expanding interactive business. Studio accounting practices are another matter!

Artists - As many people have realized, Hollywood and Silicon Valley are drawing from the same pool here. As computer tools become prevalent even in bastions of linear media, there is increasingly less distinction between a good artist for an interactive title, and a good artist for a movie. This is perhaps the one truly "integrated" constituency between the two fields. Working effectively with artists is a long topic in itself, but suffice it to say that if you have learned how to do it in one arena, those skills will apply in the other. A possible exception is that in film and TV production the artistic process tends to be much more stratified and consistent than in game production. Specialization is easier, often desirable in feature animation, and it can be a career blocker in the constantly changing world of interactive animation.

Writers - Probably the second biggest overlap in talent pools next to Artists, the distinctions here get more interesting. If you're making a title that uses filmed or taped actors speaking dialog, using established screenwriters is absolutely the best way to go. If you want to hire a consultant for brainstorming story ideas, it might make sense to get a writer. If you're hoping to save money by hiring an expensive Hollywood writer who says he can also do your game design, be careful. For each of the handful of writers who have taken the time and paid their dues to become game designers, there is a horde of often mediocre screenwriters who are used to hedging about their abilities in order to get a job, then picking up what they need to know along the way. If you're asked to write a screenplay set in Italy in the 1500's you can probably exaggerate your knowledge in an interview and then pick up what you need to know in a week at the library. Understanding how to design interactive titles cannot be accomplished by cramming for a week. Check out credentials, talk to references (hopefully from the games side of the business) and proceed with caution.

Directors - Here is a profession with as yet little or no overlap in the interactive arena. If you're adding a linear filmed sequence to a game, going with an experienced director can save time, money, and hassle. If you're trying to create a fairly complex interactive structure using filmed actors, you'll probably run up against some road blocks as only a few directors have taken the time to really consider the basics of what makes an interactive title work. One interesting fact is that directors from the computer graphics, special effects, and stunt worlds often have an easier time adapting to interactive production than feature directors. As the first films to be directed by established interactive developers are now in the works, perhaps we'll soon be able to learn just how hard it is to go in the other direction.

Guilds - All the Hollywood guilds have created contracts that allow their members to work in the interactive field under fairly reasonable terms, but have made little other accommodation, with one exception. The Writer's Guild, WGA, is taking an active role in educating their current writers about interactivity and is actively reaching out to game designers. Their motives for this have an element of self service, in that by expanding into the interactive world they increase their own income, but at present the money in interactive is so much less than in movies and TV that the WGA is really investing in the future, and from their point of view giving interactive designers and writers a very good deal. Is membership in the WGA a worthwhile prospect for someone from the interactive field? It's an individual call. If you're a writer who has found regular work doing writing for games and educational titles looking to eventually write for film and TV, it's a wonderful way to get in the door and learn from the experts. If you're a game designer, it's a tougher choice. For all the work they've done, most of the people I've met in the WGA still don't really understand much about game design, and tend to look on it as a special kind of writing. In reality that's about as valid as considering an architect to be a special kind of artist. There are certainly some skills that overlap, but there are others that are essential to each profession and at best irrelevant to the other. On the practical side, joining the WGA confers certain benefits in terms of health and retirement plans, but the costs of those plans must be picked up by your employers. If you are a game designer working mostly for Hollywood studios with interactive divisions, you probably won't have much trouble getting them to pay the additional 12.5% to the guild and not have it impact on your own wages. But if you're working for interactive publishers far from Hollywood that percentage may have to come out of your own pocket, or at least out of the deal you make. It's interesting to note that nearly all of the current "writer/game designers" in the WGA are people who began as screenwriters and have taught themselves game design along the way. Nothing wrong with that, but there's a reason there are few members who come purely from the interactive industry.

There are many aspects of the interactive industry that take Hollywood people by surprise. Here are just a few things I've found often need explaining.

Email - It's important to realize that email has been in general use in the interactive industry since its inception, although before Internet connections began to become common in the mid-80's it was often only on company-wide networks. But to most of Hollywood, email is a very recent addition to the scene, in an industry that communicates by telephone. At Dreamworks we found people from Microsoft horrified that the Hollywood people were used to getting and making dozens of phone calls a day, and the Hollywood people were horrified at the several hundred email messages a day that some Microsoft people received. Most of the interactive industry is somewhere in the middle of both ranges. Email is a great tool for coordinating disparate schedules and passing on messages that can be referred to later at will, or messages that can wait. Phone messages are better for time-critical communications and communications of a potentially touchy nature. The lack of emotional inflection in email can cause great problems, even to people used to dealing with it every day. Producers and Project Leaders who must deal with both marketing departments and programmers have to be equally facile with phone and email communications.

"The Person in Charge" - in a film, this is the director. But the interactive industry has no standard term. That's because there's no standard role. Someone has to coordinate the project, decide what goes in and what gets left out, manage the budget and schedule, and ultimately be responsible for delivering the final title. I myself have worked in companies that call this role Project Leader, Project Manager, Producer, Executive Producer, Director, and Project Director. Even within a given company there are sometimes different titles, and almost always different divisions of responsibility among projects. At the bottom line, there are always certain jobs that must be done to get the title out the door, and how those jobs are divided among the team members makes a big difference in whether the process is a smooth or rocky one. The topic of roles in an interactive production is a very complex one, but suffice it to say that it is vitally important to get clear on exactly who is doing what before a project starts.

Programmers - I've found that many filmmakers look at programmers as yet another technical discipline, much as they already deal with electricians and carpenters. In the interactive world, programmers wield tremendous power. Managing programmers is an art that takes practice, and the closest analogy I've found in Hollywood is dealing with actors. It's by no means a perfect correspondence, as programmers are as typically introverted as actors are extroverts. But a lead programmer can make or break a game in much the same degree as an actor can influence a film. Failure to treat programmers with respect is a fatal error several film studio groups have made to their detriment.

Interactive (Game) Designers - Everything stated about programmers goes for game designers, with some modifications. Hollywood people tend to think of game designers as equivalent to screenwriters. In fact they're both less and more important. They're less important as a title in that there are some games created with no designer credited, designed by people with titles like programmer, producer, or project leader. The game design (or interactive design if we're talking about an educational or informational title) is still there, but occasionally it grows out of the work of people who have their main focus elsewhere. In this there is some analogy to the rare films that are created without scripts through improvisation between the actors and the director. But the role of game designer is more inclusive than a screenwriter in that it is absolutely critical to the interactive title, drawing on aspects of both writer and director of a film. Game design is by definition the core creative act of making a game, the decision making process of what goes in and what is left out. The confusion of importance of the role results from the way the it is often split among different people. If one person is both running the project and designing it, you have a role much like writer/director of a film, and the fact that they're credited primarily as (perhaps) Producer doesn't detract from their design contributions. Often, and increasingly as games grow in complexity, you have separate people handling the design role (game designers and assistant or level designers), the day to day project management role (project leaders or producers) and the role of monitoring budget and schedule (executive producers, producers, directors of development). Finding the right combination of people so that all the various roles are covered well is a very difficult process.

Why Games are Late - The habitual tardiness of games is a frequent annoyance to people from the film industry (not to mention game company executives). Even the very successful game companies are plagued by games that come out months or even years behind schedule. There are many theories about this, but several things have become apparent. Software engineering is inherently hard to regulate, but techniques have evolved to manage schedules. But those techniques invariably involve defining the specifications up front and then building to those specifications. The trouble arises when specifying "fun" (or when conveniently leaving it out of the spec!) This is exacerbated by the fact that most top sellers push the technology in one or more ways. Filmmaking has managed to get pretty good at setting schedules and keeping to them. But film technology has changed little in the last 100 years compared to computer games in the last 20. It's interesting to note that in recent cases like the film Titanic where it does go significantly over budget and over schedule, computer graphics and specialized engineering and technology are a major contributor to the overruns. As long as the interactive platforms keep changing as rapidly as they do now and success is dependent on the elusive fun factor, it will remain difficult to keep on track. One ray of hope is experience: as the interactive industry ages and accumulates more experienced people, there is a slow but steady trend towards more timely releases.

Here are a few musings about where the future path of these two industries may lie.

Some hybrids, many teams - Although there are people successfully making the transition from one industry to the other, there is enough to learn about either games or filmmaking to make it rare for single people to encompass both disciplines (not to mention the complexities of educational software, TV production, etc.!) But there are increasingly people from each industry who have grown used to working with the others, for example independent video producers specializing in creating sequences for interactive clients, or game designers working primarily with games based on movies. I think that there will continue to be hybrid (or as Hollywood calls them, hyphenate) game-film creators, but the majority of collaborative work will be done by people with expertise in one field with a fascination and respect for the other.

Synthespians - William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and coiner of the term cyberspace has suggested this new term to denote a kind of artificial actor. We're already seeing dead film stars resurrected for beer commercials, or computer-generated dinosaurs and animals taking to the screen alongside human actors. It's not very long until technology allows us to bridge the gap between CGI and human figures. Imagine what it will mean if actors no longer have to be selected primarily for their looks or age when a grand old actor can lend their style and timing to an apparently younger image. What will happen in computer games when we can have the emotional impact of a real person moving, emoting, and reacting on screen with the immediacy of video, but with the flexibility and reusability of a computer sprite? This may be a path to true mass market appeal, breaking out of the twin binders of non-interactive FMV and "those little plastic computer characters".

Research - As the interactive industry grows in size and importance, more serious study is done of its underpinnings. These studies are likely to reveal new insights into the inner workings of interactive entertainment. One such study underway is called Act, React, Interact, conceived of by Harvey Harrison of the Catalyst Talent Agency. Harvey is putting together a study of actors and others from the film and theater business to try to learn if the fundamentals of their craft can be applied to the interactive world. This is the sort of research that could help make synthespians possible.

Online - The first time I experienced online, multiplayer gaming, I was blown away. I was sure that this was the future of computer entertainment. In no more than ten years, I figured, multiplayer gaming would be the dominant form of computer games. The game was called Airfight, on the PLATO network, and the year was 1974. The intervening years have done little to shake my belief that using computers as a way to connect people is much more compelling than as a standalone entertainment system. But they've done a lot to adjust my predictions. Still, however long it takes, I continue to believe that online entertainment will eventually be the heart of interactive gaming. I'm just not holding my breath!

Interactive Entertainment, not Games - We're starting to see some forms of interactive entertainment that are not at all gamelike, particularly in the online world. Chat rooms, for all their banality (because of it?) are tremendously popular. Online soap operas, pioneered by The Spot a few years ago, seemingly came and went, but they'll be back. Interactivity is very open-ended and all-inclusive, and ten years from now there are likely to be very successful forms that are technically feasible today, but we just haven't thought of them yet. I think that as with online soaps, some of these new forms will integrate the lessons of the interactive world with those of TV and film production.

Perhaps the analogy of scouting a frontier between games and film has had its day. The first settlers have established their homesteads and have lived there long enough to learn the lay of the land. It's still a pretty rugged area, with plenty of dangers, but also with a promising future. But there's plenty of important work to be done before we can ride off into the sunset (complete with CG lens flare).

Noah Falstein

The Inspiracy

Professional Interactive Design Services

(415) 461-0157

nf@theinspiracy.com

http://www.theinspiracy.com