Games: 'ultimate Convergence'

Video game executives brainstormed ways of expanding their market beyond young men during a discussion Wednesday that amounted to a primer course on an industry whose annual revenue has already eclipsed worldwide boxoffice receipts.

"So many people think of the gaming business as 8- to 18-year-old boys who haven't figured out what girls are," joked Robert J. Dowling, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Hollywood Reporter, while moderating the event dubbed "Interactive Entertainment Growth … The Biggest Game in Town."

Dowling cited annual industry sales of $2.7 billion in video game hardware and $7.5 billion in software. "Games is the ultimate convergence," he said. "It is about storytelling. There is music, animation, computer graphics. It's mobile, interactive, communal, voluntary and participatory. It has all the elements of every individual discipline in entertainment."

Not so fast, cautioned Vincent Bitetti, president of publishing at Crave Entertainment. "Convergence is a misnomer," he said, noting that what movies and video games share is more accurately "a symbiotic relationship between two very different industries." After all, the economics are much friendlier to movies than they are to video games, he said.

Even if "Shark Tale," for example, opens to lukewarm business Friday, the film will turn a profit by way of DVD, television, product licensing, CD soundtrack sales and other revenue generators. The video game sector, however, is not yet so diversified.

One failure "can be very destructive to a game company," added David Freeman, president of the Freeman Group.

Freeman noted examples of movie-to-game convergence flops such as "Van Helsing," "Catwoman" and "A.I. Artificial Intelligence." The latter, a Steven Spielberg film, was to be a trio of games for Microsoft's Xbox as well as a PC game. But Microsoft, having paid millions to license the project, scrapped its plans as "A.I." disappointed at the boxoffice.

Freeman also said that Hollywood talent used to creating linear entertainment have sometimes stumbled with video games, where "the player is lead character."

On the flip side, Daniel Kletzky, a consultant for Konami Digital Entertainment, cited that firm's success in moving the video game franchise "Resident Evil" to the big screen. "It lends itself to a linear translation in films," he said. "Many popular games don't."

But the theme most returned to was, how might the video game industry broaden its audience?

Panelists noted that the demographics of gamers is primarily males 14-30 but that certain online games boast 50% female players. Such fare, though, was described by Edge Games CEO Tim Langdell as simple games that earn minuscule revenue.

The event at the Beverly Hilton was hosted by the Entertainment Industry Business Council.