Guillermo del Toro's inSane Needs Sales to Create Trilogy

Guillermo del Toro might be already thinking of his upcoming inSane video game project as a trilogy, but publisher THQ will only create all the three games that are part of it if the first one managed to impress gamers and generate sales.

Speaking at the Game Developers Conference Danny Bilson, who is the vice president in charge of core games development at THQ, stated, “We have aspirations to make a trilogy. If the first game doesn’t work, there won’t be a trilogy. It’s not complicated.”

Bilson says that the mentality that he brings to video game development is very similar to that of movie producers that are creating blockbusters for Hollywood, taking chances on big projects and hoping that they deliver the quality needed to get sequels.

He says, “If Avatar had been a flop then there wouldn’t be two more sequels. And if the first Matrix wasn’t a success there wouldn’t be two more sequels. We have to succeed on the first one, and then we have to succeed on the second one, and then you can make the third one.”

One major difference between video games and movies is that a development studio cannot actually make two games at once and then push the release date for one of them back by a year or so, as Hollywood now does when big series like The Matrix are involved.

Guillermo del Toro revealed inSane late in 2010, saying that the title is designed to explore the depths of horror that a video game experience can deliver, and THQ says that the first game in the trilogy will be launched in 2013.

Neither the movie director nor the video game publisher have offered any actual details on how the game will be played and how it will benefit from the movie-making experience of del Toro.