Scott: ‘Target renders do matter’

Only a few weeks ago, a small storm erupted when Evolution’s Nigel Kershaw defended the company’s use of concept videos, saying: "The end result might not look like the render that you did – but who gives a shit?"

RealtimeUK, the company behind the original MotorStorm movie and the more recent Motorstorm Pacific Rift movie, has come to Develop to defend the practice. MD Tony Prosser said: "The Motorstorm X-movie did create a lot of controversy – it was a pre-rendered movie but both Sony and Evolution Studios agree that the movie drove the quality of the game to be much higher than it might have otherwise been."

Another company involved in the game visualisation field, Axis Animation, has also written a piece for Develop in order to put its side of the argument across – with MD and executive producer Richard Scott saying that not only are target renders an important goal for a developer, but also that they can be released to the public in order to build up early hype for a title.

"Should these movies be released to the consumer?" writes Scott. "My first reaction is yes, of course. If you want that same level of excitement that is being felt internally at the developer and publisher to transfer into the gaming community then it makes perfect sense.

"We live in a world where everyone is hungry for content of any type and if you have great content and an exciting product people will be all over it. Are there some risks? Yes. There is the much-discussed matter of making sure you don’t misrepresent the animation as any type of in-game content but, if we have both done our jobs correctly on the creative and the trailer works delivering on all fronts, people will be too busy salivating at the thought of what the playable experience will feel like to get caught up in that."

For more on the subject, and how the process of creating concept movies can inspire developers, check out the full opinion piece here.

[UPDATE: We mistakenly referred to Axis as the creators of the original Motorstorm movie, whereas it was actually RealtimeUK. We apologise for the error.]