14 DAY TRIAL // The gaming industry is evolving rapidly alongside the entertainment one, the two slowly converging and creating complete experiences for everyone to enjoy. As such, things will soon get to a certain point where a Citizen Kane moment of video games is imminent, at least according to reputed movie director Guillermo del Toro, who was responsible for titles such as Hellboy or Cronos.
He recently talked about entertainment and revealed a very interesting fact, which might get a few Xbox 360 fans angry at him: the PlayStation 3 is like the Ford Model T, as it will soon encompass everything entertainment is all about and it will power innovation in future games made for it.
“In the next 10 years, we're going to see all the forms of entertainment-film, television, video, games, and print-melding into a single-platform 'story engine',” said del Toro. “The Model T of this new platform is the PS3. The moment you connect creative output with a public story engine, a narrative can continue over a period of months or years. It's going to rewrite the rules of fiction.”
He went on to compare the state of the gaming industry and its creation process with the one of graphic novels in its early years, saying that as time would pass, creativity would give birth to some genre-defining titles. “ Go back a couple of decades to the birth of the graphic novel — I think we can pinpoint the big bang to Will Eisner's A Contract With God. Today, we have very worthy people doing literary comics. I think the same thing will happen on the Internet-gaming side. In the next 10 years, there will be an earthshaking Citizen Kane of games.”
But at the same time, the reputed director says that developers also need to take into account the influence they have on people when they create an experience. “ Unfortunately, I've found in my videogame experience that the big companies are just as conservative as the studios,” said del Toro, adding that he was “very impressed” with Grand Theft Auto IV. “You can get lost in that world. But we're using it just to shoot people and run over old ladies. We could be doing so much more.”
It's quite nice to hear that even famous entertainers like del Toro are beginning to see the gaming industry for what it really is and not just as a source of easy ideas for movies.