Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994 TAG: 9404070286
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAVIDBANK SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But ``The Horde'' is a video game, not a television show, and it comes from Crystal Dynamics Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif., not from a Hollywood production company.
The production, a medieval action-strategy game, is the latest evidence that the convergence between Hollywood and Silicon Valley is fundamentally changing both.
The immediate competition on the information superhighway is over hardware: to install fiberoptic loops, build the cable TV set-top boxes, or be first with the fastest video game system. For the moment, the incompatibility of the various platforms means that titles available in one medium can't be used in another.
But when the hardware wars are over, attention will return to those creators able to tap the wells of human emotion, or at least give consumers a good time.
In the information age, content will be king.
Computer software designers working in multimedia are learning to think about ``audiences,'' not ``end-users'' and to associate the word ``program'' with dramatic story lines and compelling characters, not lines of computer code.
The entertainment industry's unions - the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild - have all developed contracts for their members to work in the new interactive media. Major talent agencies such as the William Morris Agency and International Creative Management have begun to sign up multimedia clients.
``Consumers don't buy boxes. They don't care about specifications,'' said David Riordan, creative director for Philips POV, a producer of interactive programs on CD-ROM. ``They buy entertainment experiences.''
The defection to Palo Alto from Hollywood last summer of Strauss Zelnick, who had been in charge of Fox's business side since 1989, made Hollywood take notice of the huge potential in interactive media. At $7.5 billion and growing, the market for video games is bigger than the market for theatrical films.
But Zelnick's arrival at Crystal Dynamics, a start-up that produces titles for 3DO's video game systems and home computers, was also a warning to video game makers and other multimedia producers that mindless action games and stilted story lines were no longer enough.
``It's time for Hollywood to step in and work its magic,'' said Robert Tercek, creative director for 7th Level, another producer of interactive multimedia, which decided to locate in Los Angeles, not the San Francisco Bay Area, to take advantage of the entertainment industry's talent pool.
``I think it's going to be folks down here who take this stuff, blow it up into something really big and simple and make it work,'' said Tercek, who is working on an interactive CD-ROM with the Monty Python comedy troupe.
Tercek said that every CD-ROM project from 7th Level is viewed as a pilot for a potential television show. Indeed, the CD-ROM market is a test bed for the kind of interactive programming that will be possible when the new two-way fiberoptic networks are completed.
The immense capacity of those networks is fueling an explosion in the demand for creative content - movies, television shows, video games and interactive media.
In the near term, cable companies plan to offer 500 or so channels of more-or-less conventional television, said William Airy, president of Vision Group Inc., the programming subsidiary of cable giant Tele-Communications Inc.
The selection will consist of the basic and premium services such as those available now, along with 250 channels of pay-per-view movies and sports and 150 specialty channels such as the ``War Channel,'' the environmental channel ``Planet Central'' and lots of shopping.
That has pushed up demand for the existing content that resides in film libraries and archives, as evidenced by the $10 billion bidding war for Paramount Communications. In Hollywood lingo, that material can be ``repurposed, repackaged and resold'' to fill the increased capacity.
But when the promised new networks are fully operational and interactive, demand will soar for the type of content now available only on CD-ROMs or video game cassettes. And that will push the production quality - and budgets - for those titles closer to that of movies and television.
One early effort is ``Voyeur,'' a CD-ROM starring Robert Culp that is loosely based on Alfred Hitchcock's ``Rear Window.'' Players attempt to collect enough evidence to have Culp arrested for murder, although some simply search the disk to find the few erotic scenes.
``Voyeur'' cost about $750,000 to produce, said Philips' Riordan. Newer titles, with better visual quality, cost as much as $2 million. At that price, a producer needs to sell about 110,000 copies to break even, he said. The advent of a market for interactive games over the network is making the market bigger.
``Bell Atlantic has been to us and said, `Can we take Voyeur and do an adaptation of it?''' Riordan said. ``Why? Because they have all this bandwidth and they don't know what to do with it.''
Major Hollywood studios have been slow to respond to the opening of the new markets, said Trip Hawkins, president and CEO of 3DO in Redwood City, who is seeking titles to boost sales of his company's game system.
``It's a challenge to get Hollywood to do anything other than traditional film,'' Hawkins said. ``That's why the entrepreneurs are doing it. They get the concept of interactive.''
Still, none of the current CD-ROM offerings have broken out of the game mold to become true cinematic experiences. Interactive media is still in the experimental stage when it comes to the basics of storytelling such as narrative and character development.
That's why Hollywood studio executives believe they will be able to swoop in and dominate the new markets as they mature.
``They are taking a show-me attitude,'' said Joyce Schwarz, a multimedia marketing consultant in Los Angeles. ``But there's no reason to think they won't thrive with this. They do own the stars, and they do make the stars.''
by CNB