Games success influencing movie industry, says MW2 director

The high-profile success of titles such as Modern Warfare 2 and Grand Theft Auto IV has turned around Hollywood's perception of videogames, as the film industry looks to alternative mediums for new movie content.

That's the view of Keith Arem, director of the Call of Duty and Modern Warfare series', who said that both industries can learn from one another as they continue to grow as the leading entertainment mediums.

"The success of the games industry is going to benefit those other movie industries. It's providing more work, it's providing more content," said Arem, speaking in an exclusive interview published today.

"Finding new content in the games industry is going to absolutely expand into the movie industry and vice-versa. By expanding these franchises out the film industry is going to re-seed stuff into games. As much as people are threatened by the fear of the unknown, it's going to be a huge benefit to both industries as they grow hand-in-hand.

"It's amazing to see the difference between what it was a few years ago and what it is now," he added. "Games were always the bastard step-child to the film industry and what's interesting was games were always considered a secondary property. There's been a complete 180 in the past several years with games like Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto, and these have shown that these can change perceptions."

Arem, who also writes graphic novels for Image Comics and is about to begin work on his first feature film, Frost Road, hopes that as a games creative in Hollywood he can influence the future direction of projects that are looking to combine multiple media.

"I'm really excited about bringing all these industries – games, movies, graphic novels – together and changing the way people perceive a franchise so it's not just a film or just a videogame, but a better integration of story and content," he said.

"So it's not just an ancillary product derivative of what that tent-pole property was, but it actually goes hand-in-hand and can tell backstory or other trans-media elements through the internet, or other mediums that are converging. If you can tell a compelling story in each medium - and what's proper to that medium - as opposed to just regurgitating a story you've already seen in a better format. That's my goal as a director, to fix that world and come up with a new way to look at franchises."

The full interview with Keith Arem, where he discusses the differences between directing movies and games, can be read here.