Game Cutscenes Might Lead to Movies Directly Distributed to Gamers

Bobby Kotick, the Chief Executive Officer at Activision Blizzard, has suggested that publishers might be interesting in creating video games based movies that will be delivered to fans without the use of traditional media channels.

Talking at the audience at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference, he said, “If we were to take that hour, or hour and a half, take it out of the game, and we were to go to our audiences – for whom we have their credit card information and a direct relationship – and say to them, ‘Would you like to have the StarCraft movie?’… and say we have this great hour and a half of linear video that we’d like to make available to you at a $30 or $20 price point, you’d have the biggest opening weekend of any film ever.”

The meandering quote can be interpreted in two very different ways.

On one hand the CEO could be saying that Activision will aim to package the cutscenes and narrative content in its games, like Starcraft 2, and then deliver them to gamers for a price (presumably those who do not have the game).

But the more probable interpretation is that the publisher could use the same techniques used to create the in game custscenes to create parallel stories or prequels that can be sold for about half the price of a game and distributed via Battle.net or other channels.

It would be interesting to see how the same people who developer the video games might handle creating, essentially, television movies based on their series.

Presumably they might stay closer to the lore than big movie studios that are more interested in the mass market but it's unlikely that they can craft narrative worthy enough to occupy a gamer for an hour and a half minimum.

And, of course, the suggested 20 to 30 dollars price point is far too high.