March 4th, 2010 @ Sway Bar, London
UK studios converge to battle over who's the cleverest - have you booked your place yet?
Thursday April 22nd, 2009 @ The Brewery, London
The countdown to the MCV Awards 2010 has begun – with date, venue and categories announced.
July 14th, 2010 @ The Hilton Metropole, Brighton
The Develop Industry Excellence Awards is the only event which rewards the work done by Europe’s leading games development companies.
Hollywood guru's team will kill off 'confusing' licensed IP and change how games are made
Jerry Bruckheimer has hand-picked key names from Ubisoft and Microsoft to run his new games studio - and now the team are promising to introduce a new way of making games.
Today the MTV-backed Jerry Bruckheimer Games Studio announced the appointment of former Microsoft man Jim Veevaert as president of production and Ubisoft man Jay Cohen as president of development.
In their respective former roles, the two oversaw big franchises such as Spliter Cell, Assassin's Creed, Ghost Recon, Halo and Gears of War.
At their offices in Santa Monica, however, the two will be working on devising and signing original IP that will have the same impact in games as Bruckheimer's productions Pirates of the Caribbean and CSI have had on film and TV respectively.
"We are going to create content that challenges the way things are done and the experiences gamers have today," said Bruckheimer.
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Speaking exclusively to Develop, Cohen and Veevaert explained that they are pursuing a new business model to produce these new IPs. The plan is to minimise the 'disaster' other firms encounter when trying to create big franchises, or the 'confusion' created when working on licensed properties.
Said Cohen: "We have a very thin model; a shift in creating blockbuster triple-A franchises. To minimise disaster we’re frontloading experience and putting together a thin model with executive-level talent that is unencumbered by heavy process in order to be able to nurture and cultivate ideas that work efficiently and effectively.
"We want to leverage the expertise and brand values that Bruckheimer brings to storytelling and that he conveys in television and film – and the way he has successfully been able to connect with broad audiences repeatedly, from Pirates to CSI. Every time they come out you’re looking at an audience in the size of ten to fifteen million people in North America alone – that’s what we want to focus on. Big audiences, broad audiences, and connecting big experiences across multiple mediums.
"In the past studios had a challenge to bring the film experience right into the game or the game experience right into the film – that created a lot of confusion for consumers"
He added: "The traditional large publishers today, just by their nature and size and multitude of activities, find it a bit more difficult to move and act as swiftly and focused, and nurture and cultivate, a number of ideas and react as efficiently."
Instead, the Bruckheimer studio will make sure all the talent work closer together - and quicker, too: "It makes a big difference when you are trying to bring a creative experience to successful fruition by not having to go back and keep going to through layers and layers and layers of discussion, which really just make it more complicated."
Veevaert added: "We want to combine our energies in a way that has never been seen before, and when we bring a product to market we plan to deliver on all cylinders – meaning something that uses the talent that’s available to us in a creative aspect, as well as when we come to market we will be able to execute on things that people haven’t been able to do before in terms of how we deliver the entertainment experience and how that allows consumers to connect with the experience in an interactive and non interactive manner."
Just what we need - another bunch of over-paid executives with no coding talent.
Pirates? CSI? Yet more examples of Hollywood's vapid output.
EA, Actizzard, Valve et al must be quaking in their boots lol
As much of a necessity as it is - surely there's more to bring to the table than coding talent?
I'm positive there are things to be encouraged by when a big Hollywood player joins forces with two games industry veterans. I mean, Jim and Jay aren't exactly nobodies.
Joolz, that's exactly what these guys are - executives. They're not going to be getting their sleeves rolled and doing the coding are they? Do you not think that they will set about hiring a whole raft of talented coders, attracted by the lure of an exciting new studio, headed up by a dream team of industry vets and probably the most successful producer of film and TV in the world? Don't forget the certainty that any projects will be fully bankrolled to completion - something that no one is certain about these days with all of the venture capital being pulled from the industry.
I say any new studio is good for the industry, it encourages competition, innovation and diversity. Just don't expect us to swallow any CSI games Jerry.
I have to say this idea is very ambitious and idealistic, but I hope it comes off for them.
The one comment I picked up on was "It makes a big difference when you are trying to bring a creative experience to successful fruition by not having to go back and keep going to through layers and layers and layers of discussion, which really just make it more complicated."
It is just so true.
Good creativity comes from self belief and self editing where necessary, but most importantly it comes from momentum. Retaining the momentum in the creative leaders is key to keeping the buzz going so it can be spread throughout the team during production. This is in fact a very old model of working. The only difference here is they will be using huge teams.
To make this work properly they obviously need to get into position and back (without question) the following very experienced staff.
* a lead producer and assistant producer (project manager)
* a creative director (lead designer) and lead level designer
* a team of 3 highly experienced programmers (preferably who are known to work well together) one of whom must be able to lead the whole programing team.
* a lead artist who is experineced with licensed properties and a technical artist to interface with the programmers.
* a brilliant sound man (or team)
As long as they spare no cost on this and pin the game around these guys and the protocols that they set, before they throw 50 artists at it, they will be OK. Otherwise the inevitable communication breakdowns and compromises will occur again and they will probably revert to the current model of over management in order to cover for the problems of poor quality decision makers in too powerful positions within the team and general problems with inefficuent communication between team members.
For pity's sake people, have none of you actually seen any of Bruckheimer's output so far?
High brow it is not.
Admittedly Joolz, Bruckheimers general product is not particularly highbrow. But how much content in the games industry is? Bruckheimer is known for his high production values and if he can bring that to the new studio then it can only be a good thing. Add to that his huge reputation worldwide and ability to bankroll large projects, and we have potentially a very successful studio. I wouldn't imagine that he will have too much creative input into the studio, which is why he's hired these top guys. Any new foray into the gaming world should be lauded, particularly in today's hard times. We shouldn't be hasty in shooting them down in flames when the studio is barely embryonic. Let's reserve judgement until the first shipped title.
Maybe he is just saying (in buzztalk) that the films and games will be done under one roof, so ending the weeks of back-and-forth about the exact shade of blue of a flowerpot that happens when you deal with Disney etc.
That would actually be beneficial. But the talent would all have to move to $$$ california (or be stolen from local companies).
Not necessarily, Cog - I think the Bruckheimer team are willing to consider non-California products, as they said they were open to all studios. They'd probably just want to pick somewhere they could travel to easily/have any appointed leads based at directly.
