Second Annual Hollywood and Games Summit - Opening Keynote with Clive Barker
Hollywood and Games Summit, June 26-27, 2007. It’s interesting, one of the first things that the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, John Kilkullen said here at the conference is that games are a larger industry than movies. I think we’ve known that for a while, but I think it’s interesting that it would be one of the first things mentioned here in the heart of Hollywood by the Hollywood Reporter.
Clive Barker was fun to listen to. The big thing I took away from what he said is: “I believe in games. I believe in what games can be.” After his presentation I talked with CanalPlus and one of the things they asked seems to be something that people who are less familiar with the games world seem to worry about: Will games kills Hollywood? They didn’t ask it like that, but that seems to be the underlying theme. Well, I think there are some analogies with ‘new media’ and ‘old media’ back in the early days of the Internet. How I see it is that discovering strawberries doesn’t mean the end of banana smoothies, it means the beginning of strawberry banana smoothies. Yes, maybe people will spend less on bananas as the strawberry craze gains steam, but it doesn’t mean the end of bananas, and there is actually a real opportunity to grow the whole market for everyone.
Since the days of Virtual Vegas I have been saying: “If content is King, then context is Emperor.” And, I think the exciting thing here is the MMO aspect of giving people a fantastic, exciting and compelling context within which they can play and create their own content as they make their choices. I see this as being the ‘interactive movie’ people were tying to capture back in the day. But, rather than letting the audience vote on which way to branch at some scene or another in the movie the MMO game context allows for Massively Multiplayer collaboration in the creation of an ‘interactive movie’ ongoing and in real time.