Ubisoft CEO Yannis Mallat is at GDC this week, and spent some time talking to some developers about the differences between video games and movies, and how they can embrace those differences.
Ubisoft which acquired visual effects studio Hybride Technologies 300 Sin City in July is helping with previsualization of movie scenes while soaking in “tools and processes to help us make better games … and crafting storytelling ” Mallat says. But rather than the game developers serving as secondary citizens in the relationship they are “embracing all the content to see how we could contribute on the worlds and characters in Avatar ” Mallat says.
It seems a logical step to start developing pre-vis tools for movies, since so many movies these days eventually migrate to consoles as video-game tie-ins, and a collaboration to share assets would reduce time and cost on both sides. Plus, they’ve (Ubisoft) obviously got the expertise and skillsets to build interactive real-time tools.
