Strange things are afoot at the Circle K. Time was that the relationship between film and videogames was one of extremes: games poached the narrative framing devices of film in an effort to grow as a medium and film poached the intellectual properties of games to make garbage movies and a quick buck. However, this relationship is morphing into something far more powerful: artistic collaboration. Even beyond Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s consulting work on titles like Boom Blox and King Kong, filmmakers and game designers are now working directly with one another to produce videogames with sophisticated design alongside the sophisticated so often missing in games. Terminal Reality’s upcoming Ghostbusters game, a true sequel to 1989’s Ghostbusters 2, is going to be one of the first games to truly benefit from this crossover. Not only have all the principal characters agreed to resume their roles, but Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis are penning the script themselves. In an interview with our esteemed colleagues over at Gamasutra, Terminal Reality president Mark Randel discusses the benefits of partnering directly with the creators to produce superior work.
Harold Ramis is co-writing the script. And Dan Aykroyd is really the main guy behind the script and the equipment in the Ghostbusters video game. He's been a really big facilitator, helping bring all of the parties together.
Multiple people own the Ghostbusters intellectual property, so he's been a really big facilitator in getting everybody together, getting Harold and the other guys back to discuss it, and bringing him onto the project and working on the script, and making sure the game is [on track].
Ghostbusters has a very serious tone, and that's something that Dan pointed out to us when we were making the game. The comedy is funny because the characters are very serious about what they do, and then they have deadpan comedic timing. And we just would not have that without Dan's involvement.
Plus he's been really helpful in coming up with and naming all the equipment in the game, so all of the story, the characters, the equipment you use in the game - we hate to say 'weapons', because they're more than just weapons - is directly created by the original creators of the Ghostbusters franchise.
At this point, Ghostbusters is looking beautiful, capturing the distinct aesthetic of the source material and early word from anyone who’s played it is that its feels as good as it looks. The writing, acting, and narrative are still unknown quantities but it’s pretty much a guarantee that it will be better than Ghostbusters 2.
Head over to Gamasutra for the whole shebang and, for more discussion on the future of filmmaker-game designer collaboration, check out N’Gai Croal’s discussions with Cory Barlog and George Miller about their upcoming Mad Max project.