In a recent interview, Silent Hill scribe Roger Avary gushes, we mean gushes about gaming. He says,

I've long been a Silent Hill fan — since the PS1 days. I've been gaming since the 70's, when I built my first computer, a Rockwell KIM-1. My first program was a modification of Wumpus, which I had seen on mainframes at Hughes Aircraft. It was machine coded with a hex keypad, and an LED readout. No storage, when you turned it off your program vanished. Before this time I was privy to be one of the first people to play the original Pong at the Dutch Goose in Menlo Park, which had begun my love affair with videogames. Nolan Bushnell, the inventor of Pong, has long been one of my heroes...right up there alongside Kubrick. It was my love affair with the Atari 800 that nearly diverted me from my future as a film maker. But the fact of the matter is that there's less math in film, and I'm kind of a people person...so I followed cinema. Little did I know that the two worlds would converge for me. I love movies, but I also love videogames. I collect and restore vintage Atari XY monitor games like Lunar Lander and Battlezone — only vector, only Atari. I also have a massive collection of Atari computers. Gaming is in my blood — so it's only natural for me to adapt games into films and vice versa.

...and...

I hope the fans love it. I have been a little concerned with the build up. I mean, some people make it seem like the future of game to film adaptations rests on the success of Silent Hill. When there's so much expectation to nail something that so many hold beloved — well, you can imagine the anxiety. I'd like the movie to be judged by the fans as a movie. Cinema is a passive experience, and the interactivity of a game is an entirely different experience, with its own strengths and weaknesses. The gamers need to remember that they give up control in a movie theater, "we control the vertical..."

Holy mackerel! If the film is half good (and the film is not butchered by studio bigwigs), Roger's our boy. Kick Uwe Boll from his throne of clay and tell the gaming gods, we've found a new king. Avary is currently adapting a video game for himself to direct. "It's for Atari," says the writer/director. We're hip just as long as Marc Ecko is not involved.

Full Interview Here [FiringSquad]