14 DAY TRIAL // Dead Space is a survival horror game from Electronic Arts. More than 5,000 years into the future, the player is cast as an engineer, named Isaac Clarke, alone in a shuttle heading for the vast depths of space where the mining ship Ishimura has gone missing. In classic space horror fashion, the ship, when found, is without its crew and apparently you have to find out "why" and "when". Weapons will be plentiful and enemies will range from mutated humans to deadly aliens.
Electronic Arts has revealed that it's entering into a partnership with Starz Media aimed at developing a movie based on the intellectual property of Dead Space. The same partnership will produce at least two other animated movies based on EA games, but Starz Media declined to comment on what games the movies will be based.
The film will be animated using state of the art technologies by Film Roman, a specialized movie unit within Starz. The plot will heavily feature the mining ship Ishimura as it heads deep into space on its mining mission. A strange artifact is brought on-board and the movie explores the consequences to the ship and its crew. It will serve as a prequel to the Dead Space game and will be released at the same time as the game, on Halloween. Starz is in talks with major television networks which plan to air the movie and is also preparing a DVD release.
Electronic Arts seems to really be turning Dead Space into a project that spans different media types. In addition to the game and the newly announced movie tie-in EA has commissioned a six-part comic book based on the Dead Space universe that will be published by Image Comics prior to the launch of the game. Details regarding the plot of the comics have not been revealed.
Can such media add-ons enhance the value of a videogame in the eyes of the gamers or of the general public? Is there a chance that such efforts will backfire and the game will sell poorly because some people will rather watch the movie without playing the game? The Halloween release of Dead Space is likely to provide the answers to these questions.