Del Toro sees a better future for games

Unfortunately, I’ve found in my videogame experience that the big companies are just as conservative as the [Hollywood] studios. I was disappointed with the first Hellboy game. I’m very impressed with the sandbox of Grand Theft Auto. You can get lost in that world. But we’re using it just to shoot people and run over old ladies. We could be doing so much more.

Guillermo del Toro in an interview with Wired

The rest of the article refers to games in the typical broad strokes of an executive -as opposed to somebody who has actually created software- but I was happy to read that some film directors share the dream of the potential of this medium (and don’t fall into the trap that Spielberg and Cameron are falling into: embracing videogames as if the current fare is all there is to them).

We all know what del Toro is talking about. I’ll be interested to see if somebody with such economic (and cultural) power will be able to pull it off. It’s doubtful, since he seems to be thinking BIG, but at least he is trying. Which is more than can be said about most people within the games industry.

And I wish more film directors would stand up and speak out against the game adaptations of their work. So many great opportunities have been lost in the process of making cheap commercial games out of movies. It really shows the embarrassing contrast between an industry manufacturing product and a creative industry which at least pretends to respect creative vision and artistic expression. We shouldn’t let Hollywood out-art us!

Thank you, Alice, for pointing this out. Though I wouldn’t have called del Toro “extremely arty”…

7 thoughts on “Del Toro sees a better future for games”

  3. Oh, right. I forgot you don’t like it when people enjoy things. Well, I enjoyed The Path very much, so I guess you’ve failed miserably as a game designer. 😛

    Sarcasm aside, Boom Blox is not like other videogames out there. Spielberg saw the Wii’s controls, and saw how they could be used differently. That’s admirable, and to criticize him just because his idea of what’s a good game is different from yours is unfair.

    I don’t know what you have against James Cameron; I personally haven’t seen anything videogame-related about him.

  4. I’m not criticizing. I’m lamenting. Lamenting the fact that the medium is being used only for games. I would like the medium to become one that can be used to communicate. Communicate things that can not be talked about in any other medium. Because that is what this medium is capable of. Games can be made with scraps of paper, a few rocks and some sticks.

  5. Last year, I went to a game developers’ conference in Australia, and the subject of movie-games was brought up by the CEO of Animal Logic. He asked the room at large what they believed was how to make a good movie-game. A number of issues was presented by developers from different studios, the largest of those being that the studio is given a relativley small amount of time to throw together a game so that the film producers can capitalise on the film as much as possible. The solution was the suggestion that the game and film be developed together. This is highly possible for a film-cum-game studio like Animal Logic, but not so possible for the other game development studios who are commissioned and need the exposure of a license like that to promote themselves and get more work.

    Unfortunately, there is a lot of baggage from a number of angles that prevents more “art,” or even just more designer exploration from occuring. Even Will Wright lost Spore to EA.

    Anyway, thank you for your game: we all find what we look for, even if we find the absence of it. Keep exploring :)

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