District 9 Director Neill Blomkamp On Why Games Will Eventually Replace Film
Neill Blomkamp is best known for his politically charged action movies, most notably District 9. He's currently serving as chief visionary officer (a title he admits is "a little unique") for Off The Grid, an upcoming battle royale from Gunzilla Games. A full interview diving into Off The Grid will be available tomorrow, but having seen so many figureheads in gaming attempt to jump across into film, and seeing the medium as a whole constantly use film for inspiration, I wanted to get Blomkamp's thoughts on where the intersection between games and film currently lies.
"Filmmaking is like the 20th century art form, and it's very clear that - the word 'games' is the incorrect word - this interactive experience, going forward, is going to replace films," he says. "Everyone is going to be doing this and films are going to be a lot like books on a shelf. In the 1990s, people would watch films and books would be there, but they would be secondary to the cultural phenomenon that films were. I think this interactive gaming experience is going to do that to films. Films are static. And I don't mean passive, I mean that they're not necessarily changing. With computational changes with complexity in the structure of games, and learning more about how they work and what audiences want from them, the interconnectivity, the speed [and] scale of the internet, you could very well end up with some sort of Ready Player One situation pretty soon. The sky is the limit, it's just a wide open space of pure unbridled, untethered creativity. I think the film industry [doesn't] look outside of their fishbowl much, but I think if they did, they'd be pretty terrified about where entertainment is going."
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