The story below has created much debate on forums and email lists. I worked in games for 6 years before crossing over to film in 2000.I have animated for the "artist-type game studio" whose philosophy was "art and storytelling are king!"
My time at Oddworld Inhabitants taught me that you should spend as much time on cinematics and storytelling as you do on game play when creating a successful video game.
I ALSO led teams on games and prototypes at studios like Angel Studios, Rockstar and CAPCOM/Japan that were more concerned with the game play and argued cut scenes should really be cut game play to have a successful game.
The big debate online and in this article involves whether or not FX artists can make the transition to making video games?
This argument is poppy cock in my opinion and is propaganda produced by other game studios and 3rd party developers who are worried about the competition.The only thing I can imagine holding a film artist back from being able to work in games??? - will be their desire to work within a much more escalated schedule.
The challenges of creating economical assets that look good within the resources provided...are issues ALL artists in commercials, games and film, face every day. The FX artist is ready to create the assets, but are the willing to do it in half the time and with a programmer outlining how it should be built?
My experience in the commercials division at DD has shown me that every single artist in that department understands an escalated schedule. These artists can produce amazing images within deadlines that I have not experienced in games, much less film. These artists are constantly creating tools to help their pipeline work more efficiently - simply out of necessity because the entire schedule of most commercials is 4-6 weeks!
Which ever philosophy the new DD games division adopts regarding story driven games or gameplay driven games...I am confident that the artist and talent pool at FX studios like DD can create successful games. Film FX artists understand economy of building props, models and animations for games. Today's meshes for film are built at an equally economical level the same way they are built for games because its subdividing and the renderer that define the LOD (Level of Detail) in a character - not the mesh. There for the artists have had to create these meshes for film where an animator can quickly animate on the lo-rez version of the mesh and still have a mesh that accurately subdivided into a model that will hold up on the big screen. The storytelling and content will simply be an extension of what has been done in film and applied to another medium.
I look forward to seeing the storytelling, art and game play that this new division creates. DD and Michael Bay certainly already have the content to develop internally with past productions as well as the hope of working on intellectual properties and new content!
Good Luck!
And this just means MORE JOBS!
~Angie
Special-effects house aims to make video games more cinematic
With a movie director as co-chairman, Digital Domain is poised to accelerate the blurring of the two media.
By Richard Verrier,
Times Staff Writer May 14, 2007
A budget of about $25 million may not be much for director Michael Bay, maker of such mega-budget movies as "Armageddon" and "Pearl Harbor."
But it's enough to get him launched on a new passion: creating a video game that matches the quality of a feature film.
Bay's first-person shooter game is part of a larger strategy to transform Digital Domain Inc., where he is now co-chairman, from one of Hollywood's elite special-effects houses into a full-blown production studio, capitalizing on the convergence between games and feature films.
That was a key inducement for Bay in leading a Florida-based investment group, Wyndcrest Holdings, last May in its $35-million purchase of the Venice company.
"I make world-class images," Bay said. "Why not put those images into a game?"
Over 13 years, Digital Domain made its name with computer wizardry that created memorable scenes for "Titanic," "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Flags of Our Fathers."
But differences among the former owners, and a lack of investment capital, hampered the company in recent years. That allowed rivals such as Sony Pictures ImageWorks, Rhythm & Hues and Peter Jackson's Weta to cut into Digital Domain's core effects business.
Compounding matters, Digital Domain and other U.S. visual-effects houses have been squeezed by rising labor costs and competition from rivals in Europe and Asia that are able to produce effects at a fraction of the cost.
Enter Bay and Wyndcrest Holdings. The partnership bought out owners that included IBM Corp., Cox Enterprises Inc. and the company founders — director James Cameron, effects legend Stan Winston and then-Chief Executive Scott Ross.
Former veteran Microsoft Corp. executive Carl Stork, a principal of Wyndcrest, was tapped to lead the turnaround. He hired three top executives from George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic.
"We see ourselves being the next-generation digital-content studio," Stork said. "It's like we're a new, start-up company."
Beyond fixing leaky roofs and buying ergonomic chairs for the company's 500 workers, the new owners bought a new computer network. They've also worked to improve Digital's relations with major studios, building up feature effects work that helped return the company to the black last year after a loss in 2005.
Company executives won't disclose finances but say Digital Domain will post a double-digit increase in revenue this year, helped by a thriving business working on commercials. Profit, however, will be flat as Wyndcrest pumps up to $100 million over the next three years into equipment purchases, acquisitions and about 100 hires, many of them video-game programmers, Stork said.
Digital Domain plans to develop four or five games over the next two years, tapping into a lucrative industry whose sales in the U.S. climbed 19% to a record $12.5 billion last year, according to research firm NPD Group. As video entertainment becomes more sophisticated, the line between video games and movies is blurring.
Mindful of that trend, Digital Domain is building its own games unit and plans to acquire one or more game firms this year. The games would mostly be tied to Digital Domain's visual-effects projects, appealing to a range of styles and genres.
"We're not just talking about the convergence of film and video games," said Ed Ulbrich, president of Digital Domain's commercial division. "It's no longer a theory."
The video game industry, however, is fiercely competitive, dominated by such established players as Activision, Electronic Arts and THQ Inc.
"It's going to be very difficult" for Digital Domain, said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. "The skill set of a game maker is very different from the skill set of a graphic artist."
Nonetheless, company executives say they have a competitive advantage: a network of A-list directors that includes David Fincher ("Fight Club"), Rob Cohen ("The Fast and the Furious") and, of course, Bay, whose latest movie, "Transformers," is one of the summer's most anticipated releases.
Most film-based games are developed through third parties, and filmmakers often have little or no creative control. By contrast, Digital would let filmmakers direct their own games.
Beyond video games, Digital Domain also wants to make computer-animated feature films, following a path of other effects houses such as rivals Rhythm & Hues of Los Angeles and Sony ImageWorks. ImageWorks helped spawn a new animation division last year at Sony Pictures, which releases "Surf's Up" next month.
Unlike Sony, however, Digital Domain won't compete in the crowded family market but will make animated films targeted to teenagers and young adults that cost $30 million to $50 million.
To keep costs down, the animation will be created using video game software in real time, rather than the slower frame-by-frame technique. Creating digital characters used in both a movie and a video game also would reduce costs.
A recent TV ad that Digital Domain made for "Gears of War," the popular Microsoft science-fiction game for Xbox 360, showed off the new direction.
Instead of relying on conventional software, Digital Domain's visual-effects artists created the 60-second spot using the same software that the game runs on. The commercial featured realistic effects and took only five weeks to make, about half the regular time, said Jay Wilbur, vice president of business development at Epic Games Inc., developer of "Gears of War."
"It was a massively successful campaign for us," he said.
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