Hollywood and Games meet at DEW

February 2015 – The 2016 Digital Entertainment World event featured a track on gaming and its current interaction with Hollywood. The two paths have been separate in the past, as gaming was interactive and Hollywood was a passive experience. The mix of platforms these forms of entertainment are now available on has shifted the separation and brought these areas together.

In many ways, the licensing for the entertainment properties has changed, they are all transmedia based and include both the Hollywood and interactive experiences. The Hollywood entertainment properties – Cinema, TV and direct to IPTV for streaming are still the core of the licenses. To support them there are stand-alone games for the consoles & PCs, on-line games, mobile games and now promotional games. These promotional games are often tied in to loyalty programs and social media programs.

In this set up options, the F2P format is problematic for a full release. It brings the challenge of not only the timing of the game release, but also what DLCs, what in-game purchase, and what player retention systems are to be used to both differentiate the game play and the game content/theme. This is further challenged by the primary entertainment property being supported by multiple gaming experiences that are not exclusive as to characters, story, platform or release timing.

The content for these joint properties is both enhanced and challenged by sharing digital assets with the entertainment property. This creates a close marketing association and player familiarity with the game elements, however it creates a huge restriction on differentiation between games. If the look and feel of the game, as well as the character design is the same in multiple games, it is hard to tell them apart.

This is a problem for the market targeting of the games. Stand-alone games for the consoles/PCs and mobile are supposed to have a product life that starts before and extends beyond the release of the entertainment property. The promotional games are designed for a life from a period before and up to the release of the entertainment property. These promotional games are also usually integrated with an advertising campaign. When assets are shared, it is hard to separate the type of game from a visual experience.

The track also touched on VR opening up in this space. This was for both VR interactive games and VR passive (360 movie) products. The key question is what is the business model that is driving the VR? Is it a tech angle, is it to complete the ecosystem, it is to derive new revenue, is it to differentiate the product in the gaming space or fundamentally WHY is this an experience that is being created? The marketplace and Hollywood have not made up their mind on how to answer this question as yet for VR.