I have see how the last few Call of Duty titles, Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops come out and how Modern Warfare 2 had Zimmer (noted for doing movie soundtracks) doing the score. I had seen Activision also ask in a survey if people were actually most excited about the "epic single player storyline" that Black Ops had (Zombies won thaty survey). And I have seen Kotick of Activision come out and say the cutscenes were so beautiful in Starcraft 2, that he could repackage them and sell them on a DVD (in short, a movie).
In all this, I have to ponder if Activsion, EA, and the other major studios think they are movie studies and their job is to produce blockbusters, the way Hollywood does. In this, I am not just talking about generating huge sales numbers, but trying to produce storylines that are seen as epic. In this, I saw what looked like a cool storyline in Modern Warfare 1, about the west and Russia battling some extreme nationalists, turn into World War III. EA decides also to morph Bad Company into the same Red Dawn, Russia invades America. I see them trying to reach for what they think is the Hollywood blockbuster as far as storytelling goes. And, for my money, they seem illequipped to even approach Hollywood in terms of delivering a coherant single player storyline. They can deliver games that play fine, but hardly in the storytelling arena. Ok, off my spin there and back to the question:
Do Activision, EA, Ubisoft see themselves as movie studios in need of producting games that are considered on par with blockbuster films?
