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Pixar's Andrew Dayton

The leading studio's tech director looks at the similarities between games and films

GamesIndustry.biz Interactive is the key word, and I don't think anybody underestimates the challenge of presenting an immersive story, plus the illusion of genuine choice. It's almost an impossible task, isn't it?
Andrew Dayton

It is - for films it's hard enough to come up with an 80-minute story, where you're basically following the characters along an arc. That's hard enough as it is, and it's a linear progression - you go from point A to point B to point C, and the audience doesn't get to change or choose that path.

Once you start creating these immersive games you need to be able to give your player unlimited choices, tie them all together - and then if you're crazy enough to add a multi-player online game you then have to interact with every other player who's going along their own storylines, and exist in the same world.

It's massively intricate, and I think that's why games, to a larger degree than films, are very hit-and-miss. For one successful game, how many bad games are there? There are so many places to fail at in the process of creating a game - the story, the interaction or the technical aspects.

GamesIndustry.biz One solution to that problem is the path followed by CCP in Eve Online, which is as much sandbox with player-generated content as possible. Maybe that's the best idea?
Andrew Dayton

Right - the thing is that on paper that probably sounds like a great idea, but the actual construction of it is probably extraordinarily hard. Saying: "Okay, let's just let everybody do their own thing!" is fine, but how do you tie that together so that it's seamless?

It's tough, all the way around. If you talk to some game designers or artists, they're always probably butting their heads against a wall trying to figure out how to create a world that's entertaining, but not just for a couple of hours - something that you want to keep going back to again and again.

Look at what Blizzard's done with World of Warcraft... how many years has that been out?

GamesIndustry.biz Over five years now.
Andrew Dayton

Over five years - the shelf life of that game is historic.

GamesIndustry.biz And the Cataclysm expansion looks likely to reinvent the experience again.
Andrew Dayton

We've met quite a few of the Blizzard people actually - some of the cinematics team. Blizzard and Pixar almost seem like mirror images of one another: The same sort of philosophy; the same sort of work ethic; the same attention to detail.

They're basically the biggest company in the games industry, and we're the biggest company in the 3D film industry - it's interesting talking to them, because we always come across the same sort of problems and it just comes down to the philosophy of what you're trying to do.

Their philosophy has always been trying to make the greatest game they can make, and for Pixar it's about trying to make the greatest film we can make. It's never an easy process - every film has its own slew of nightmares and production problems, and it is almost like giving birth with tonnes of complications in the process.

Nothing is guaranteed, or goes as planned, but if you keep yourself grounded in what you're trying to do - which is make a piece of artwork that people would love to watch - it touches them. And that's the same thing that Blizzard and Bioware do - they're making games that, when you turn the computer off, you're still thinking about the game. There's an important place for that.