Hollywood and video games have for years had close links, with popular movie franchises being translated to computer screens around the world. But at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, the premier event in the games industry's calendar, there was evidence that the two worlds are fusing.
While the movie industry still dwarfs games thanks to sales of DVDs, television rights and merchandising, the latter is becoming more difficult for cinema to ignore. Games are worth an estimated £6bn a year, and big titles such as Halo and Grand Theft Auto can pull in first-weekend sales that put them on a par with blockbuster movies. As a result, video games are exerting an increasing influence on the business of cinema.
"I think creatively that gaming is moving towards movies, but commercially movies are moving toward gaming," says Ian Baverstock of Kuju Entertainment, which is working on a game based on the work of the cult horror director George A Romero, famous for movies such as Night of the Living Dead. "Studios are realising that games can add value, that they're not just a licence."
Some developers have decided the best option is to resurrect movie classics for the gaming generation. A title based on Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy will appear in the autumn, while Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry series is also making the transition. Some top-selling games, such as Tomb Raider, Street Fighter and Mario Bros, have been transferred in the opposite direction, though nearly all have been considered flops.
Forward-thinking developers are also creating single entities rather than translating from one format to the other. One blockbuster franchise that has been pushing the envelope is The Matrix, the science fiction epic starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne. During shooting of the movie and its sequels, the directing duo, the Wachowski brothers, filmed not only for the movie but also for the forthcoming games. More recently, they launched The Matrix Online, an internet-based multiplayer version of the films which allows subscribers to roam freely around the Matrix world - and even interact with the virtual cast, played by actors.
Some fear that the "Hollywood effect" could end up with too much money concentrated in too few areas. "The games industry believes it is following the Hollywood model, but they're not," says Gonzalo Frasca of the games website Watercoolergames.com.
"They're just seeing the glamour. What they don't see is that movie studios fund independent films, knowing that just one Blair Witch Project would pay for all the rest. That still doesn't happen in games."
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