It’s Unreal: Triangle Game Industry Presence Felt in Monaco

MONTE CARLO, Monaco — The global reach of the growing video-game industry in the Research Triangle area is on display this week at an international conference in Monte Carlo.

Electronic Arts, which opened a studio in Morrisville last fall, is among the high-profile exhibitors at the Imagina 2008 conference, which focuses on 3D technology.

Glenn Entis, a top executive at EA Worldwide Studios, touted the technology provided by Cary-based Epic Games’ 3D game-development engine Unreal.

Video games are truly a global phenomenon, with worldwide sales closing in on $40 billion. The growth of the industry led Imagina organizers to incorporate a full day of video-game keynotes and panels into its four-day schedule.

In addition to EA, Sony Computer Europe, Ubisoft (which owns Morrisville-based Red Storm Entertainment), Crytek, and Autodesk (makers of Maya—the software many game developer use) all either had booths or had representatives on the various panels.

Entis, senior vice president and chief technical officer for EA, was on hand for both an opening keynote talk and a later panel discussion on the state of creativity in game development.

Unreal Engine Is ‘Great Technology’

EA licensed Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 technology last year for multiple game franchises, including the WWII game, "Medal of Honor Airborne," which shipped last year, and the upcoming shooter, "Army of Two."

“It’s great technology,” Entis said of the Unreal engine. “The big change at EA was that we basically recognized that it made practical good sense. We have lots of studios building lots of games in different genres and there are lots of different technologies and technical cultures in EA, and there were clearly games and teams where the best technology we could get was Unreal.

“It also lowered production time and technical risk,” he added. “It’s different than saying there was a wholesale change in the company over to that engine, but we’ve been very happy with it.”

EA to Push Consol Development

Entis oversees all technology at EA, working out of its massive Vancouver studio in British Columbia. Before joining up with EA in 1995, Entis won an Academy Award for his technology work at PDI, which is the company that created Shrek. He left Hollywood CGI for games because of the challenges he saw in interactive entertainment. Entis is excited about how much further even the current consoles can be pushed from a technology standpoint.

“We still have a long way to go with these consoles,” explained Entis. “They’re extremely powerful. Once you identify an opportunity, there’s developing the technology and then being able to get it spread throughout the studios.

"As these games get bigger and more complex, the sheer effort it takes to create one of these games, that even if you have the new technology it still doesn’t mean people will have time to change what they’re doing and get a new level of content into their game right away. That, in a way, is a frustrating thing.

"It’s arduous and potentially very expensive process to upgrade technology paths and asset types and animation and so forth. Things even that we talked two or three years ago … like procedural awareness and inverse kinetic animation … will take some time to really be deeply integrated into gameplay.”

During his presentation, Entis showed a video clip that followed the "Need for Speed" franchise from its Genesis 16-bit days to the most recent "Need for Speed Pro Street" on Xbox 360 in high definition. He said that while Hollywood CGI is still far ahead of games, because it’s pre-rendered on computer farms while games are limited by the consoles and must play out in real-time, the gap the consumer sees has never been narrower.

Fun, but Simple

EA is working with Steven Spielberg on a new Wii game called "Blocks," which requires players to build elaborate structures and then destroy them by swinging the Wii Remote. Entis is excited about the growth in casual gaming that the audience has seen over the past few years with Nintendo DS, Wii, mobile games and casual online gaming like EA-owned Pogo.com.

“If you remember things you really enjoyed as a kid, you’d make games out of the garden hose like how fast can you fill up holes in the yard,” said Entis. “A lot of the things that you really enjoy over your life are really simple and really accessible. We recognize that there is plenty of fertile ground, as games have gotten more complex, for very simple and very accessible game mechanics.

"There are millions of people playing games and billions of people not playing games. There’s the opportunity to draw in so many more people to gaming. Nintendo has really set things into motion.”

With the growth in casual games, the game industry has also seen a wave of new business models develop. EA is to release "Battlefield Heroes" this summer under an all-new Play 4 Free, advertising-based business model. The new cartoon-style take on the best-selling "Battlefield" franchise would traditionally have been released as a boxed product at retail.

“If you look at EA right now, there’s a tremendous openness to new business models,” said Entis. “We had the subscription-based FIFA in Korea, we’re looking at micro transactions, advertising-supported games. You name it and I think there’s someone at EA exploring that business model. The world’s changing so quickly, we’re planning for and experimenting for a very dynamic world.”

Regarding the conference in Monte Carlo, Entis, who was making his first visit to Monaco, said that this is just another example of how far-reaching the game business is. He pointed out that students in the audience will be future game creators and these types of events are good for the future of the video game industry.