In a move that’s certainly smart but will also add to his reputation as an evil bastard, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick plans on selling discs containing cutscenes from Activision games. He recently told GameSpot:
If we were to go to our audience and say we have this great hour-and-a-half of linear video that we would like to make available to you at a $30 price point or $20 price point, you’d have the biggest opening weekend of any film ever. Within the next five years, you are likely to see us do that. Now that may be in partnership with somebody; it may be alone. But there will be a time when we capitalize on the relationship that we have with our audience.
Would you buy a disc filled with cutscenes? There are a number of gamers I know that would love to watch Final Fantasy XIII’s cutscenes without playing the game. A lot of those gamers would also publicly denounce this practice simply because Kotick brought it up. Is it an ingenious move on his part? Or is it eeeeeeeevil?
Years ago I owned the Blizzard DVD that contained everything up to Frozen Throne. It was pretty good.
This guy can blow me if he thinks I'm paying $20-$30 to watch Prototype cutscenes.
My first, knee-jerk reaction is that it is evil, of course. After all, this is Bobby "milk-gamers-for-all-they're-worth-while-doing-as-little-as-possible-to-innovate-and-move-the-gaming-industry-forward" Kocklick. Coupled with the fact that most game cut scenes do not make sense when strung together since a HUGE part of the story is the actual gameplay that you are doing, and I see this as a recipe to turn a quick buck without having to do any extra work. (Case-in-point: When I was playing Alan Wake, my wife was mildly interested, but did not see me playing through the majority of the game. After I beat the game, it gives you an option to watch all of the cut scenes of the entire game, so I played them all back for my wife and I found that I had to fill in a lot of the blanks because the story "skips" quite a few key parts that you have to actually play out. In the end, she didn't really like it since the whole thing didn't make any sense to her. The same would be true of the average person watching the cut scenes from most games.)
HOWEVER, if I think about it for a bit, it could work if either the "gameplay blanks" were filled in by brief moments of edited gameplay footage that would piece together the story in the cut scenes so that what you are watching can be better put into context OR putting in a little more effort to create animated scenes that replace the actual gameplay of the game that would be able to connect the different cut scenes together. At a $20 or $30 price point and a little bit more extra work, I can see people "watching" the game for maybe an hour if they are interested instead of buying the game (and/or console) and playing for multiple hours.
The potential is there. I for one would like to see the story of Metal Gear Solid or Kingdom Hearts since I know I'm not going to be playing those games any time soon, but I want to know what all the fuss is about.
-M
If it is just cut scenes then there is no way in hell I would pay for that.
Now if they want to sell me something like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, or Advent Children on DVD and have it producedby the video game developer, more like what Valve has mentioned before with a Half-Life movie- then I would consider it. Just for the cut scenes of a game though…no way. I cannot think of one game that I would want to re-watch all the cut scenes of instead of playing through to get to the cut scenes. They would really have to add something great to get me interested.
I will admit the idea sounds cool in theory. I don't have a PS3 and everyone talks about God Of War or Heavy Rain, etc. And sometimes I almost wish I could see something like this for those games, but I know in the end I would not be satisfied with that and I would rather just play the games myself to get the full experience.
Gabe Newell has the best idea with concern to video game movies though, which is to keep everything in house and have the developer make the movie themselves, come up with the story, animate it, cast it…it is their creation anyways so they would know best how to keep everything accurate and authentic enough for the picky audience that gamers are known to be.
"This guy can blow me if he thinks I’m paying $20-$30 to watch Prototype cutscenes."
LOL! Somebody has to post that quote on the Activision message boards.
-M
I sometime wish the government would get rid of this Guy as a move to make society better
Lol
@bsukenyan Why not watch God of War and Heavy Rain clips on YouTube?
@Ray
I've thought about that, and that also seems like a good alternative to paying $20-$30 to Activision for the same thing packaged together on DVD. But I think I would rather play them someday instead because that would be a more complete experience. Perhaps sometime I will check them out though.
I love cutscenes, but I don't see this as a $20 additional expense. I would put it below soundtracks, and I've only bought about a dozen of those in my day. Lots of games have theater modes anyway, and that's how it should be.
Do you have any idea how often I lobbied to have a cutscene viewer in SVR's Road to WrestleMania mode? After all, I worked hard writing and directing them, and am very proud of both the talent who mocapped them and the Superstars who voiced them.
Year #1: THQ sez, "Yuke's can't do it." I ask Yuke's, and they're like, "If you'd asked us sooner, we totally could have."
Year #2: I put it in the feature set, and it's given a C priority. C priority stuff basically never goes in. I even wanted you to be able to put different created wrestlers in the Created Wrestler storyline cutscenes.
Year #3: Again, nobody's on board. At least we slip in a "Time Machine" in the Christian story that allows you to go back to any previously-played week. Better than nothing.
I own zero Activision games.
I absolutely CAN NOT STAND CUT SCENES. When I played through Reach I watched them all and that was fine, but on my second play through I want to be able to skip them all, and you can't. For the most part you can skip cut-scenes on Reach but there are several ones that you can't and that drives me crazy.
Most games have the worst cut-scenes and story lines ever. There are very few games in which I enjoyed cut-scenes. But even on the best games I would like to have the option to SKIP them when I want.
i agree with Slicky, you should have the option to skip the cutscenes on your second go around. I think that's what i like the most about FF13 right now, even on your first playthrough you have the option of skipping the cut scenes.
I just don't get it. Cutscenes are the way the game's developers bridge the gap between gameplay sequences. They allow you to do things that would be impossible during gameplay. I guess some people only want gameplay, no story. It's unfair to say games have terrible storylines if you skip over the cutscenes. That's like going to a steakhouse, only getting a salad, and then complaining that the restaurant sucked.
@Justin I totally get it. Kotick knows that he can make money by selling something that doesn't cost any extra to create. Whether that's smart or evil…well, that depends on your point of view. There are a number of gamers that would love to watch the cutscenes of games for a console they don't have or games that look cool but don't fit into their gameplay wheelhouse.
I think it's smart business…and a little evil (not Jens Pulver).