Game and Film

    Summer is the most important season of year for Hollywood studios, film and video game industries.  Summer is important to film and video game industries because their targeted audiences are mostly male and are age of 25 and under. During this season, these predominant audiences are mostly students who would have summer vacation.  Therefore, the industries can earn the most revenue during this period because the audiences would spend more time and money on games and films. The two industries agree to work together to create the product that people most want and most appealing. Therefore, they need to work together to maximize their production and sale. However, when the two industries first worked together, it was not quite successful. 

    One of the earliest video games that were made based on actual movie was ET. It was produced by Warner Entertainment. They rushed to create game in order to deliver the game in time for the Christmas shopping season. Since they did not spend enough time on designing the game, the ET game turned out to be a complete failure. With its 2D terrible graphic, it was rejected by the children for whom it was marketed. Soon after, the Super Mario movie was released based on the actual Nintendo game, Super Mario Bros. This also came out to be a fail because its storyline and setting is nothing like the ones in actual Super Mario Game. Like these two examples, there have been many failures when the two industries first worked together, but later on there are some successful products created in 2000s. Pirates of the Caribbean, X-Men, 300, and The Lord of the Rings are some of the successful examples. With advanced technologies, games created in today are more like an actual film, which includes advanced graphics, cut-scenes, narratives, and storylines.

    There are games based on animations produced by Disney studios, such as, Sleeping Beauty, The Rescuers, and Pete’s Dragon. Actually these animation based games gained more popularity than The ET. Since the game was based on animation, the game looked very similar to an actual Disney movie and thus attracted a lot of teen gamers.  According to the reading, “The game allowed players to interact with a fully animated avatar and navigate him through various scenes. The interactivity was rather limited and game play could be frustrating.” I disagree with interactivity was rather limited and game play could be frustrating because when I played Beauty and Beast game I did not find interactivity was limited and game play was frustrating. I rather enjoyed playing the game because it was like watching an actual movie with protagonists whom I can control freely. Thus, animation based games provide players with a new and exciting visual experience.

    After reading the article, I learned that in 1980s there has been lack of advanced technologies for example; The ET came out to be a total failure in design and graphic. Also, back then, the movies created based on the actual game are too different from each other in terms of graphic, storyline, and setting, and vice versa. In order for the game and film to be successful, they need to be similar in many ways.