Gaming's Citizen Kane Moment. Don't roll your eyes just yet! Director Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Cronos) is here to tell us how its going to happen: convergence. And it's starting now with gaming's Model T.
"In the next 10 years, we're going to see all the forms of entertainment-film, television, video, games, and print-melding into a single-platform 'story engine'," the director tellsWired. "The Model T of this new platform is the PS3. The moment you connect creative output with a public story engine, a narrative can continue over a period of months or years. It's going to rewrite the rules of fiction."
So...if the PS3 is the Model T, what does that make the Xbox 360? The Ford Model N, we guess!
Del Toro is optimistic about the chances of not only total convergence and melding of the forms, but also any future breakthroughs of form for games. "Go back a couple of decades to the birth of the graphic novel — I think we can pinpoint the big bang to Will Eisner's A Contract With God," he adds." Today, we have very worthy people doing literary comics. I think the same thing will happen on the Internet-gaming side. In the next 10 years, there will be an earthshaking Citizen Kane of games."
That doesn't mean del Toro views the gaming industry as bastion of creativity. Far from that, actually. "Unfortunately, I've found in my videogame experience that the big companies are just as conservative as the studios," says the director. He does add that he is "very impressed" with the Grand Theft Auto sandbox. "You can get lost in that world," he explains. "But we're using it just to shoot people and run over old ladies. We could be doing so much more." Exactly! Like we could be shooting old ladies and running over them.
Oh wait. We can already do this. Never mind!
Q&A: Hobbit Director Guillermo del Toro on the Future of Film [Wired via Gamasutra via GoNintendo]