Turning Dreams into Reality

The debate surrounding the role of graphics in videogames, and the relation between visuals and the concept of gameplay, has been around for a long time - at least as long as EA's senior VP and chief visual and technical officer has been working in the videogames industry.

Glenn Entis, co-founder of Pacific Data Images, which then became part of the DreamWorks set-up has his background in animation and art, and has worked with some of the biggest names in the film industry - winning an Oscar along the way.

Following on from his talk at Imagina this year GamesIndustry.biz spent a little time with him to talk over the issue, as well as the problems surrounding film license games, expectations surrounding ever-better visuals, and the genius of Steven Spielberg.

I think that the right way to think about it is to recognise that the suspension of disbelief is as strong as the weakest link in the chain. So the character might look great, and move great, but the interface might be poorly designed, awkward and unsatisfying, or the controls might suck.

What's interesting is that they've done experiments in movies where they've degraded the image but the sound quality was great, and people put up with it. Then they had perfect image quality but degraded the sound, and people would leave the theatre.

And in games it's the weakest link - but obviously the most important of those is going to be control. I can't imagine a situation where a character looked good, behaved well, then the interface wasn't well implemented, which didn't lead to a horribly dissatisfying experience.

So, for games, control is as important as - or more important than - anything else for that emotional believability.

Not necessarily. I can think of games situations where that's really what's called for, so there are certain cases where it will help, but I have a really hard time believing that that is somehow the culmination of our art.

If you look at just about any other form of art it's not the striving towards seeing the same thing we see every day, certainly not in painting, not in music, not in a lot of areas - so no, in itself it won't guarantee a better experience, and in some cases I think it can yield a less satisfying experience.

Well, it does - but remember - you're talking to a graphics guy, and I always try to differentiate. I love the graphics, I always respond to the graphics - but at the same time, even as someone who grew up in graphics and had my original training as a digital artist, I still recognise that a great game with mediocre graphics is going to be a more satisfying experience than a mediocre game with great graphics.

Gameplay über alles. That's the reason everything else is there, so in that context I think I agree - where visuals take on a disproportionate influence is that they're the first impression. You can see a game before you can touch it.

And ultimately, if touching is more important than seeing, but the only way if you're going to touch it is if the look draws you in, it means that those graphics will take on a disproportionate element.

And they have been used to sell consoles as well - one of the most compelling ways to get people to buy a new piece of hardware is to show the amazing images.

A very interesting counter-example is that which Nintendo have had with the Wii, a very smart and very definite decision that they were going to focus on innovative gameplay and that they would allow the graphics to be relatively less important than the gameplay.

That was a contrarian move, but I think they've proven out extremely well.

Well it is, and I think the other thing is that it's easier to go on the Internet and try to address people who already identify with games - and of course what Nintendo is doing is giving information about the Wii gaming experience and the DS gaming experience and communicating to people who don't necessarily identify themselves as gamers.

So it's truly remarkable what they've done, and it's good for the whole industry. At any given time you may find players who are locked in a zero sum game, but at the end of the day the tide that will raise all the boats is going to be growing this market.

And what Nintendo set out to do is grow the market in a radical way, and I think that is spectacularly beneficial for everybody.

I've definitely seen it, and there are a lot of different ways to think about it, but one thing is clear - when you have more complex graphics, higher density graphics, higher resolution graphics, the simple fact is that you're just giving the user more information to deal with.

And if it's somebody who either wants a very simple game experience or who is a novice and is feeling unsure, it makes sense to do for them what we tend to do with graphics for very young children - they tend not to be very complex or hyper-real, they're simple and friendly.

What simple graphics do of course is make the implied interface with those graphics clearer, because there's less information, there are fewer things you can imagine you might be controlling or interacting with, and so as a result by definition it's friendlier, you have a better idea of what to do.

I think one of the challenges for our industry is that if you really tease it out of people you'll find that they somehow co-mingle the idea of great art direction with the idea of photorealism or with extremely high-end graphics. But of course that's not the case at all - you can have great art direction with very simple graphics.

In fact I'd say those three things can be independent. Photorealism is independent from the quality of art direction, which in some ways is also independent from the sophistication of the graphics.

In that 3D space of possibilities there are some corners that aren't getting enough attention, and I would love to see some more games that have phenomenal art direction and make full use of the power of an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, but without worrying about photorealism.

It's very difficult to pull off. It's a troubling area, because the only thing that matters at the end of the day is great product. That's the only thing that matters.

There's no reason why almost any film - and I say almost because there are some filmsâ¦My Dinner with Andreâ¦I just can't imagine what the game if that film would be like - but for most action films it's hard to imagine why they shouldn't in principle be able to generate great games.

It's hard in principle to imagine why any great game shouldn't be able to spawn off some great movies.

The problem though is that the logic of cross-licensing in a sense supersedes the logic of taking the time to get a high quality product out, so licensed product has suffered when it's just raced out the door because it has to be.

And I think that gamers have learned to be at least sceptical when licensed product comes out. I don't think that licensed automatically means for whatever reason you can't build a good game - but it's a signal that there might be other forces at work in getting it out the door.

I think the industry is getting better at it and that's really the key. What's most exciting to me are those cases where directors are working with game companies in developing a core property and then the movie and the game are in a sense being developed simultaneously.

We've had a couple of experiments where we've really looked at that, and it's a complex path but potentially a rewarding one.

I think the short answer is yes, but the longer answer is that it kind of makes sense - I mean, if you're a hardcore gamer the only thing that's going to count is the game experience, and it's not just the quality of the game experience but it's going to be the depth of execution, you're going to look for a certain amount of innovation - nuances and qualities that aren't as important to somebody who's not such a strong game player.

Everybody wants a good game - you can't give bad controls or sloppy execution or poor feedback to any gamer, whether hardcore or novice, and have them enjoy it - but a novice gamer doesn't necessarily look for all the richness of modes and depth of gameplay.

What a novice is more likely to look for is an opportunity to carry on the fantasy that they enjoyed with the movie.

Well, any time you get strong creators collaborating there are potential benefits. For example, in our partnership with Steven Spielberg, he is the Steven Spielberg of directorsâ¦it's hard to get a better, more creative personality than that.

But he's also of course a hardcore gamer. This is a director who is not simply coming to gaming as another product category - this is a strong creator who's coming to gaming because he loves games.

Back when I was at DreamWorks Interactive I was just continually impressed at first of all where he found the time to play through games - there were games that he played beginning to end several times.

He loves games, he's gone deep inside games, and he's got a lot of ideas about games, so in that sense it makes for a great collaboration.

And then of course I think that when you have those collaborations there are so many fresh ideas and perspectives that come in, because although he's a strong gamer, he obviously has a very strong point of view from film. There's just a whole other set of associations and images he can bring in.

Plus there are other benefits as well - I think there's always going to be interest in anything that Steven Spielberg does - but there are pitfalls that people have to watch out for too.

I think the biggest pitfall is if people think they're making a game and it turns out they're making a movie that has a couple of branch points - but no strong game team, or director who really understands games is going to let that happen.

There are situations where that has happened, but I think that's more the exception that the rule.

I think he has the potential to be the creative force behind some blockbuster games, but of course his role is different - when he shoots a film, he has cinematographers, but he's constantly going and looking through the camera and setting up his own shots.

I don't think he'll ever be quite as hands on in games design, because he grew up in film.

But for example, Medal of Honor - there was one conversation with Steven back in 1997 where the core idea for Medal of Honor, the setting, the mission structure, the title, the fact that it's one person on a progression towards the end for which the Medal of Honor is awarded - that was all Steven's.

Now, there was plenty of game design that happened afterwards from people who spent their lives designing games, but the core creative direction, everything about what really defines the overall shape of that property - that was pure Steven Spielberg.

And I don't know that he ever gets enough credit for that, even if it took a very receptive team to field that idea and execute it. And what I find, because I have lots of conversations with some very talented movie directors is that because they don't play games, they'll have lots of ideas, but you find yourself scratching your head and wondering how to explain that they simply won't work.

When Steven laid out the whole structure for Medal of Honor we were aware of three things. One, we were talking to Steven Spielberg and we had tremendous trust for his creative instincts.

Two, we were talking to the guy that at that time was in the middle of shooting Saving Private Ryan and had tremendous insight into the World War II military experience, particularly from the US perspective.

And three, as he's laying all this out, we were talking to a hardcore gamer. We came away from that meeting just beaming. Everything he said made total sense in the context of the game.