How games can go where movies never can

Jun 5 2008 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

The producer of one of the coolest British films in recent years has turned his back on the movie industry for now to join the North East’s global video games revolution. Andrew Mernin talks to American Todd Eckert to find out why games are set to blow movies out of the water.

WHEN actor Sam Riley and his backing band gave a frighteningly accurate rendition of Joy Division songs, it brought to an end years of hard work for Todd Eckert.

The producer had spent four years helping to create the movie Control – the profile of Joy Division’s enigmatic lead singer Ian Curtis.

And, as the lights were switched off and sets dismantled, the cast performed Curtis’s songs note for note in an on-stage performance to celebrate the end of filming.

But while such memories clearly bring much joy to Eckert in his career as a film producer, he has seen the future and left that world behind him for now.

The American believes video games are set to take over movies as the world’s dominant medium, and so has joined Newcastle-based games firm Eutechnyx to lead its expansion into the US.

nedigitalbusiness crossed the pond to find out why the producer has so much faith in the video games industry.

nedigitalbusiness: How long will it be before the games industry becomes the world’s dominant entertainment medium and what are the indicators that this shift is already under way?

Todd Eckert: Grand Theft Auto IV is the evidence. Regardless what you think of its sensibilities, it is the largest media release ever – bigger than any movie or album. To me it’s also a tech issue. When people are able to identify with characters in a game on an emotional level, then make decisions that will impact those characters’ actions, they’ll become real participants in their own entertainment and therefore have meaningful relationships with the games. Film could never do this by virtue of the medium’s constraints. It has the power to move, but not the potential to move “personally”.

What mistakes have been made by the movie industry that the games industry can learn from?

Film is a giant industry and there are great films made every year. Unfortunately the industry today is frequently more focused on making money than in making features worth two hours’ dedication.

The conventional wisdom is that the lowest common denominator of entertainment will sell the most tickets, and therefore you have this sort of rehashed, senseless goo getting made as the norm. It’s easier to green light something like a reworking of The Dukes of Hazard than to cough up even a small budget for anything new. To the public, a game’s success is still experience-based.

Which is the more lucrative industry to be involved in?

There’s money to be made in both but I think owning a successful game IP has the potential of being far more valuable in the long-term than film. It’s certainly more difficult to pirate a game, which is awfully helpful today, and that includes the viral piracy that exists over the internet with film. I was talking to a band after a gig a couple weeks ago here in the States, and they said they loved Control, in fact they had watched it just the night before on the tour bus. Of course, the DVD hadn’t even been released in the States at that point, so their appreciation was emotionally gratifying yet financially meaningless.

Comedian Ricky Gervais has a bit part in the new GTA IV game – do you think we will increasingly see big actors getting involved in games?

I’m a huge fan of great acting, but I don’t believe in the “name” system when it comes to games. If games go the way of films, meaning that they concentrate on the name above the title more than the title itself, the medium will become nothing more than a marketing device for film companies to promote whatever they feel will best boost their stock prices. I would be mortified if that happened, and it doesn’t need to. Game companies just need to realize that their products will sell themselves if they’re good, and nobody cares at all if Tom Cruise is in there or not.

Have you completely turned your back on the movie industry?

Oh no, there’s a great many things I wish to do in film as well as games. But I think Eutechnyx is the right group with which to do that. We have some original projects in the works which will translate well to both film and games, and I anticipate being involved with both, as well as other forms of episodic content and large-scale experiential entertainment. That’s one of the benefits of working with an independent company –if something makes sense the Joblings [two brothers who own Eutechnyx] will probably try to find a way to do it.

How did your involvement with Eutechnyx come about?

I came back from a trip to Japan with this urge to understand the games industry and whether or not there was a place in it for independent finance, which is where I was working at the time, only in film. A banker friend introduced me to Darren Jobling of Eutechnyx and I found him to be refreshingly egoless for a really high-powered guy.

I’m a huge fan of great acting, but don’t believe in the ‘name’ system when it comes to games