Who:<\/b> Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Executive Producer of the Halo movie and co-founder of Wingnut Interactive<\/i>Where:<\/b> X06 Post Press Conference Debrief, Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, Barcelona
\nWhen:<\/b> Wednesday 27 September<\/p>\n
When did your plans for this announcement start?<\/b> <\/p>\n
The Halo movie was the catalyst that actually made this all happen. Because we\u0092re working on that we\u0092ve been spending a lot of time with Bungie<\/i> and Microsoft<\/i>, talking about the movie. But after hours we found ourselves still talking about bringing games and movies together, as a completely separate thing to Halo. We were really talking about the future of interactive entertainment.<\/p>\n
What exactly is it you\u0092re working on?<\/b><\/p>\n
It\u0092s not a game, it\u0092s not a movie, it\u0092s a combination of the two. It won\u0092t be like a traditional game experience, but it also won\u0092t be like watching a DVD where you passively sit back and let it all happen in front of you. It\u0092s going to be an interactive experience, so it\u0092s not just about the characters, the plot and the storyline \u0096 and Bungie are obviously helping us a lot with this in the Halo series \u0096 but it\u0092s about the technology we use to implement it. The most interesting thing about this for me has been working closely with Microsoft Game Studios<\/i> and the guys at Bungie to start thinking about the kind of technical system we\u0092re going to create to make this happen.<\/p>\n
How will it differ from a traditional movie?<\/b><\/p>\n
Movies rely on certain things that are actually counter-intuitive to games. Movies rely on a build-up of momentum and a narrative pacing, a process of characterisation and a creation of tension. It\u0092s up to the filmmaker to control those elements closely if the film is to be engaging. The interesting part of this will be continuing to do that if the experience is interactive and thus some control is taken from the director and given to the person having the experience.<\/p>\n
Could you give us a concrete example of how this could work?<\/b><\/p>\n
I don\u0092t really want to do that right now! We\u0092ve talked about it for so long and we\u0092ve got some really interesting ideas, but I don\u0092t want to reveal them until we\u0092re ready to release the content. I know how to make films. There is a structure and a technique, and I\u0092m going to continue to make films because I love doing it. What intrigues me with this is that it offers a new and totally unique way of telling a story. We have so many ideas for stories and this particular medium is possibly a much better way of telling this stories. I\u0092m not going to make these to tie in with films. We\u0092ll either make a film or one of these new experiences.<\/p>\n
Will it be along the lines of letting the viewer choose an action for the characters?<\/b><\/p>\n
That\u0092s some of what we\u0092ve discussed. The trick is for the director to retain a level of control. You can\u0092t just let the player take control of that because then it loses the essence of what makes a movie an emotionally engaging experience. I will say that I think what we\u0092ll end up doing is very different to the kind of things people are thinking of at the moment.<\/p>\n
You\u0092re drawing on the Halo universe for the first of your projects. Why Halo?<\/b> <\/p>\n
Because we\u0092re taking a huge step to create this new interactive experience we thought it would be easier, and cooler, to use a universe that already existed. I\u0092m Bungie\u0092s biggest fan and the Halo universe is so compelling and well-designed we thought it would be a perfect place to start. What we\u0092re talking about here is a new way of telling a story, but it\u0092s not related to the Halo film at all.<\/p>\n
You\u0092ve also formed a new development studio called WingNut Interactive. Are you already working on games and which platforms are you developing for?<\/b><\/p>\n
I think it would be a mistake to think of it as a traditional games studio. It\u0092s more of a partnership between us \u0096 and when I say us I mean myself, Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens, who as a team write scripts, develop our stories and produce our films \u0096 and Microsoft Game Studios. I\u0092m not thinking about having specific games in development or constraining them to particular platforms. It\u0092s more about exploring how we can create an interactive movie-style story along with the technology Microsoft has with the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. I think we can take that style of storytelling \u0096 which is very different from storytelling in games \u0096 and make it more interactive. At the moment it\u0092s just myself, Fran and Phillipa sitting down with Microsoft and working out what we need to do to make our desires reality.<\/p>\n
What did you involvement with Ubisoft\u0092s King Kong teach you about the games industry?<\/b> <\/p>\n
Well I can\u0092t claim much authorship of the game because I helped with it but I was still working on the film at the time. At the end of the day it is a videogame and it\u0092s certainly not the same kind of thing that I\u0092m talking about now. This is about a new way of telling stories, and the fun is going to be how we figure out that mechanism. <\/p>\n
Many thanks for your time Peter!<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Renowned director\/producer Peter Jackson talks about Halo and the future of interactive entertainment. An interview by XCN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livegamers.fi\/api\/wp\/v2\/articles\/1039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livegamers.fi\/api\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livegamers.fi\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livegamers.fi\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livegamers.fi\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livegamers.fi\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livegamers.fi\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livegamers.fi\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}