Playing With Fire
Ninja Theory's Tameem Antoniades on IP creation, transmedia and the rise of creative
I don't know. There are some weird differences between the industries. For example, if you release a cartoony style game nowadays on console, it's pretty much death. It simply won't get funded, won't get considered, unless it's a Disney or Pixar property, it just won't get considered. So no developer is likely to take a pitch from a movie company who say 'we're going to do a new IP which is a cartoon style film and we want you to make it into a game'. But, the only CG movies that seem to be working are cartoony style ones. There's not really an adult CG movie out there that's broken through.
That's the most natural fit, to do a CG game and a CG movie and share a lot of assets in production. When we do the performance-capture for our games we do it alongside people like Steven Spielberg and James Cameron who are in adjacent studios. They come over and have a look at what we're doing and we have a look at what they're doing and we're doing exactly the same things. So there is a crossover in this kind of CG space, which is ripe for it.
All the guys who are doing those movies are gamers as well. A lot of the guys behind the scenes, the technicians, even the directors, writers, they're all secretly gamers and they would love to make a game. I think it's got to happen, it's just some cultural barriers need to be broken down.
I think what makes London, and the UK, one of the most creative places on earth is that, even since the Roman times it's been a gathering point for different cultures and different people and ideas.
They are, and I think in one sense technology is on this march to become invisible in some way. If you think of the complexity of programming a VCR in the late '70s compared to the simplicity of doing extremely complex world navigation and booking of flights, these kinds of things, on your iPhone, it's amazing how much has become simplified.
The process of creating believable characters is a process of removing all the barriers, the technological barriers so that we use our most natural instincts, our eyes and ears, our senses, to see what people are thinking. So there's a removal process going on with technology to try and make things more natural, more simple. Paradoxically it's making our world much more complex as well.
I think it allows more types of artistic impression. Constraints are good for expression, you can do an 8-bit game now and still make an artistic statement out of it, but it allows you to do a lot more. I'm not really concerned about whether games are art, I'm more concerned about whether they're affecting and entertaining. As the march of technology has gone on, drama and emotion has more kind of human stimulations come into play.
It's not replaced the old mechanical, puzzle solving, pattern matching gameplay but there are whole new levels available now.
Yes, I definitely do. Just looking around GDCE you're seeing a very uniform demographic of people, largely young, 25-35 year old white males, very comfortable in life. Insular, very immersed in hobbies, basically, creating games for other people like themselves. In music, a lot of the best music comes from difficulties, from people who've overcome. People who've come from the outside, that weren't comfortable, that have had to fight their way in in some way, from all sorts of diverse backgrounds.
The cynical interactions with transmedia just destroy things. Those projects generally just fall apart and people never want to cross that line again.
I think what makes London, and the UK, one of the most creative places on earth is that, even since the Roman times it's been a gathering point for different cultures and different people and ideas. I've worked with Andy (Serkis) and Alex for years now, my instinct was that I would learn from them a huge amount, not that they were taking over huge parts of my job. I was happy to co-write with Andy and Alex and really understand their craft. In return they became my gurus, took me under their wing and I learned so much from them.
With the latest game, Devil May Cry, I wrote it and directed it myself for the first time with utter confidence that I knew the right way to do it. Basically I was an apprentice to them. Equally they took away a lot from working with us. Alec is very keen to work on games and find a way to apply his creative interests in video games. Andy's the same, he's a total evangelist for games.
It's starting to spread just by those creative interactions. The cynical interactions with transmedia just destroy things. Those projects generally just fall apart and people never want to cross that line again.
Yeah, often a video game movie is bought by a studio and handed to some director as a way to make money, from the studio's perspective, for that director it's a gig to get going before he starts doing what he really wants to do. There's probably no interest in games, there's no interest in the arts, and if there is there's probably a horrible misunderstanding. There's no co-operation between those directors and the game directors and creators.
It's not a good way to do things.