The Player

Taking a cue from games, Hollywood is ready to go interactive, says JOE GRIFFIN

Imagine an interactive DVD of a beloved film noir, with numerous outcomes for every single scene, and each decision eventually leading to one of dozens of endings. Heavy Rain, the Game of the Week, is an attempt at that - a mystery narrative in a videogame that tries to create a Venn diagram between gaming and films.

The Paris press junket for Heavy Rainwas a lavish affair, benefiting not only from Sony's extravagance, but from some heavyweight endorsements. Film-maker Martha Fiennes chaired a discussion debating the links between films and videogames, with a panel consisting of Matthew Kassovitz, Terry Gilliam, Neil LaBute (who made a short film inspired by the game) and Heavy Raincreator/director David Cage.

I expected Cage to be in awe of his heavyweight company, but instead it was the big names who garlanded him with gushing compliments. Gilliam joked that it was "the first adult game I've ever played . . . except for porn," before going on to rave that Heavy Rainis like a movie that players "edit as they go along [ as] you build your own dramatic moments".

Kassovitz, an icon in France (he directed La Haineand starred in Amélie), enthused that the game "kicked ass", and pondered aloud the idea of making a film with multiple alternate takes, plot points and endings. (Cage himself couldn't remember how many endings were in Heavy Rain.)

The next morning at a press conference, one of the game's actors said that these film-makers were "foaming in the mouth" at the possibilities presented by gaming. He wasn't really exaggerating.

Interactive film-making has been attempted before. The Czech film Kinoautomatpremiered at the 1967 World's Fair, though the results were quite clunky. At several separate points in the film, the action shudders to a halt, at which stage an on-screen host asks audiences to vote for the next scene - they had a choice of two.

The film was quite well-received, but the Czech government didn't allow it to be distributed internationally. Following that, interactive films proved costly, rare and went largely unseen.

Flash forward four decades. With gaming technology accelerating exponentially, interactive narratives have become much more fluid and fast-paced. Cage had numerous Hollywood meetings where, he says, film-makers were in awe of how much consumers will pay for a videogame, how many copies are sold, and how the industry is relatively unaffected by piracy.

At the Paris event, Guillaume de Fondaumière, the CEO of the game's developer, Quantic Dream, said that Heavy Rainreceived no pre-launch market research. "I believe in the vision of David [ Cage]. Besides, when you ask people what they would like, most of the time they tell you about what they have already enjoyed."

Although role-playing games are nothing new, the depth and ambition of Heavy Rainis an important step forward, and Quantic Dream is open to the idea of collaborating with established film-makers and studios.

"We can take the talent from wherever," de Fondaumière said, "but they have to understand how it works. We've worked with some Hollywood writers in the past, and sometimes it didn't work out. Writing a linear story and an interactive one are not the same thing.

"To take [ screenwriting] and go into the interactive world is a step further, and not all scriptwriters can make this step. There is education to be done and we're starting to do it."

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