Video Games vs The Hollywood Industrial Complex

I’ve just returned from my first trip to the fabled E3 Expo. As a television and movie producer, video games make me feel stupid. I don’t get the obsession, and I’m not good at playing them, but that’s not why they make me feel stupid. I feel stupid because video game developers and console manufacturers are implementing really cool technology like motion capture, voice commands, and facial recognition while the TV and movie business fumble around with Nielsen ratings and shiny plastic discs. While we sue The Pirate Bay, and prop up the value of interruption marketing (aka TV commercials), the video game industry is producing innovative products to teach kids that TV is boring, and movies are for old people.

My company, Halo-8, produces niche video content for taste maker audiences, so our movies and shows don’t compete so directly in the entertainment marketplace with the big game consoles and the huge $200 million games. Now, if there were cooler, niche video games produced by smaller taste maker game developers, that would be tougher for us to compete against. That can’t happen, can it? All video games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce and market, don’t they?

I admit that directly comparing TV and movies with video games is a flawed argument. They are two very different mediums, and there will always be a place for the passive viewing experience of TV and movies. But consumers only have so many hours per day to be entertained, and the gaming industry is giving them a lot of cool reasons to spend less time with TV and movies. As producers of video content, how much audience share do we give away before we start to win them back with innovations of our own?