Jackson Comments On Gaming, Kong Sequel

GameDailyBiz has a piece detailing comments from Peter Jackson on next-gen gaming, and the possibility of another King Kong title. From the article: "'It'll be very interesting when a filmmaker creates a video game-based film experience that goes beyond what people thought it could be,' continued Jackson, who is executive producing the Halo film with special effects from the brilliant WETA team. 'For example, music videos were originally just musicians playing music while being recorded on video so people could watch them, but now they are elaborate short movies that do everything from interpret the song through the medium of visual art to communicating political statements.'"

maybe games have reached a critical threshold...

[BewireNomali]

The difference between current and next-gen games is significantly reduced relative to the leaps of generations past. It's possible we've reached a critical juncture of gaming evolution, where the next step in video games require not so much advances in rendering graphics and quality sound, but in interfacing specifically.

That's why Nintendo's experiment with their controller is risky and interesting. Ultimately, gaming has matured - for the most part, genres are cemented and experience evolutionary tweaks that refine a preexisting gaming experience. The next step involves interfacing, i.e. how the gamer interacts with the game.

We respond with our eyes, ears, and tactile sense now. But what happens when we can control our characters the way we control our own bodies - i.e. with a direct neural interface? When we feel the pain of a bullet or are rewarded with a rush of endorphins? The next step in gaming is to eliminate the obvious disconnect between the real experience and virtual one. The direct neural interface - brain-gaming is going to be the next killer ap. brain-gaming - brain-teaching - how quickly can you teach a child using direct interfacing mapped onto their brains?

I'm not sure how many generations away from this we are - but I can imagine that this world is an amazingly different place.

How about this: imagine a company that makes its money by inserting a neural interface in free ranging tigers - the neural interface can be mapped to any person so you can briefly experience what it feels like to be a tiger - or another interface that allows you to control the tiger remotely, become the tiger.

Re:Music videos - wrong

[Golias]

Not to mention that the very first music video on MTV was the very high-concept "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles.

The very first video I ever saw (before NBC got off the ground with "Friday Night Videos" IIRC) was the Talking Heads video for "Once in a Lifetime", in which David Byrne was doing his famously quirky dance moves in front of a white background, with the aid of various cheesy video effects.

DEVO's first album was intended to be a video art project, sold on VHS. It never got off the ground, but they managed to use their material to create some seriously messed-up videos on MTV.

Peter Jackson is clearly remembering it wrong.

Heck, you could even go back to the Elvis & Beatles movies.

Back even further, to black & white footage of Leadbelly playing his guitar by night while wearing a prison uniform.

Video Games Love Sequels

[UberMench]

I know King Kong was hyped... the video game was hyped... and they both lasted about the same amount of time, but I enjoyed the few hours I got to play King Kong. Sure, spearing your way through 16,712 bats, caterpillars, and tiny-dinos got repetitive and was ridiculously easy, but I like to think of it as foreplay. You spend the majority of your time doing a tedious repetitive action and then as a reward, you get some quality time with your furry prize. In this case, that just so happens to be a 25 foot gorilla. But man, was using flying elbow drops and shoulder charges to kill "V" Rexes awesome. And smashing through a city, although brief and linear, was tons o' fun. So Petey, if you'll give us more monkey in the sequel, and less whiney screenplay writer, we'll keep playing.