general media Should there be animated movies with videogame-level production values?

[GuillermoGage 246]

Something that I have noticed about modern video games is that the cutscenes have such high production values that they are just shy of having the level of detail of a mainstream animated movie... enough where people are watching them online all by themselves in lengthy YouTube playlists, usually with the gameplay included, but also usually with the person playing the game doing it as swiftly and smoothly as possible.

 

Okay... now video games are actually getting more and more at the level of Hollywood budgets, but just barely.

 

That Tomb Raider game from 2013 apparently cost $100 million to make. Grand Theft Auto V was like $200 million, and stuff like Watch_Dogs, The Last of Us cost about $60 million to make.

 

But when you take into account the fact that these video games essentially include animated segments that total up to, for the big-budget games usually at least two hours, but often-times something like six or eight hours... then simple math indicates that if the same people making animated segments for these games produced two-and-a-half-hour animated movies, standalone, without any of the actual video game... then you basically have a product that costs... something like one third of sixty to one hundred million dollars.

 

In the fully-animated movie industry, that is actually very modest.

How long is your typical DreamWorks or Pixar movie? usually around the 100-minute mark, or maybe 110 or so minutes. Kids usually don't have the endurance for a two-hour-plus movie.

For a fair stylistic comparison, consider the 2011 film The Adventures of Tintin. Very realistic graphics, kind of had a AAA hardcore video-gamey vibe to it. 107 minutes long. Cost $135 million to make.

 

There are a lot of us out there that want certain books and stuff to get turned into either movies or TV series... but the subject matter doesn't appeal to that broad Hollywood demographic, or has subject matter with kids in danger or some other taboo subject that would be way too controversial or impossible in live-action (The Hunger Games and Ender's Game had to tone down their stuff a lot)

 

However, if we utilize the animation and motion-capture standards of stuff like Tomb Raider or The Last of Us, then that stuff would be more economically viable, a lot more. Slightly less detailed animation is distinctly cheaper, because two hours worth of Tomb Raider or The Last of Us cutscenes probably cost like $30 million at the most.

 

Anybody else want a larger, more diverse and adult line of animated drama movies to get made with these economics?

[Admiral Regulus 2,769]

Hell yeah!

 

To be quite honest, I enjoy playing a lot of games just for the story factor. Take Bioshock Infinite for example; on it's own, it's not that good of a game. It's the story that makes up for it.

[simply creative 696]

Of course there should be.

 

I would like to see a story for call of duty zombies.

[Megas 28,095]

That'd start giving movies a bigger budget than necessary. Heck, I think a lot of games out right now are over-budgeted

[Onion Sing 666]

The last few *Tales of Games we played, clocked in at about 200 hours each, and we only paid around $60 per game. I forget how much of them was animated cutscene, but they had many many MANY hours worth of voice acting, with in-game-rendered anime-style characters. When you look at it from a consumer's standpoint, that's like paying only 30 cents an hour, for entertainment.

 

*Tales of Vesperia (360), Tales of Graces: F (PS3), Tales of Xillia 1 (PS3).