What's in the future?
HEXUS.gaming: Ok, fair enough, so can you tell us something that you’re working on right now?
Rosanna: Have you heard of the movie Crank, starring Jason Statham?
HEXUS.gaming: Er… is that the one about some guy who’s been poisoned or something?
Rosanna: Yes, that’s the one. Statham plays the part of a hitman who’s been injected with a poison that will kill him and the only way he can keep alive is to keep his adrenaline levels high. So as he tracks down the people who gave him the poison, he has to do more and more outrageous stunts to keep his adrenaline up. Of course, each stunt has to be more extreme than the last to keep his adrenaline pumping again all whilst trying to get the guys who did this to him. It's quite a ride.
HEXUS.gaming: So what’s your involvement in the project then?
Rosanna: We have been working closely with the film directors and producers for some time, looking at the film in terms of interactive content. Obviously the subject matter is pretty ripe for a game, there ís lots in there that we can use for gameplay, from doing the stunts shown in the film through to taking the basic premise of having to do more stunts to keep your adrenaline up. We are starting with the launch of a simple mobile game which mimics the premise of the film - to keep alive - and is basically just really fun to play. And we are planning on launching more crank interactive content in the future. Amazingly, the mobile game is actually featured in the film itself - another first for collaboration!
DJ: Obviously we’ve had to make a few concessions to the premise for the sake of gameplay, what we’re trying to do is not make a carbon copy of the film, that’d just be boring. What we’re doing is using the film for inspiration to create a game that’s familiar to those who’ve seen the film but also has plenty of original sequences and bags of playability.
HEXUS.gaming: I think that the key to a successful film tie-in is to do just that, take the film as inspiration and then go off and do your own thing. Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was a good example of that. Traveller’s Tales took locations from the film and expanded upon them in the game, creating whole levels from a part of the film that might have only been on-screen for a few seconds.
DJ: Well that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, to get people involved in other media to understand the possibilities of computer entertainment. For example, in most films, there are deleted scenes. These might have been cut due to time constraints but there’s no reason why they couldn’t be included in the game as part of the plot or gameplay.
Rosanna: Yes, if you take Enter The Matrix as an example, the game was related to the films but focused around a whole subplot and storyline that was only mentioned in the films and you never actually saw. Playing the game gave you that back-story, which fleshed out the films and made it a more enjoyable experience as well as giving a sense of the Matrix itself in blurring reality and computer worlds.
HEXUS.gaming: So what’s for the future then? A game with exclusive content, streamed into the game over IP? A game that interacts with a TV show in sort of real time, so players can affect what happens?
Rosanna: Well we’ve done exclusive content with all the extra stuff we shot that went into Enter The Matrix, but let’s just say that there are whole new areas opening up as people both inside and outside the industry start to realise the possibilities of what can be done with the media we have now.
DJ: I think that the cliché of ‘Watch this space’ probably works best here. Many people in the games and film industry are just now starting to realise what they can do with the medium they work in. Other than technical innovations for sound and image quality, the film industry has explored just about every option within film itself but the computer industry is far more flexible and open, online content delivery over fast connections is available to just about everyone now, which just opens the whole thing up… It’s a very exciting time to be in this industry.
HEXUS.gaming: Guys, just promise me one thing… please, no re-make or Mortal Kombat!
Rosanna: (laughing) Ok, sure.
DJ: (laughing) Yep, no problem.
HEXUS.gaming: Rosanna, DJ, thanks very much for your time, it’s been great.
