Sunday, April 1, 2007

Chatting about Game Cinematics with THQ's Coray Seifert

I had the pleasure of attending a talk hosted by Game Institute with speaker Coray Seirfert from Kaos Studios, a THQ development house. The talk was about trailers and cinematics. It was basically a review of some top trailers and cinematics (H3, GOW, etc). Attendees were asked to view the content and comment to the group on their feel on items like the type of content, issues with the trailers, and discussing likes/dislikes and reasons. my thoughts below

H3 Intro Trailer - great trailer, showing scale of game, sounds builds (kinda slow but worth the payoff), in game technical innovations shown (real-time reflections on Master Chiefs visor and sky)

Gears of War In-Game Cinema - great in game cinema, actual cut from the game, "cnn-style" camera view shown, again technical innovations showcased well, audio a bit weak at parts (drowned out)

Gears of War TV Trailer - personally thought this was the least exciting, slow music ("Tears for Fears"Mad World), uses in game engine (real-time rendered), technically very good

Halo Wars Trailer - outsourced to production house so no in game engine used, great for users of Halo to see the spartans and elites in a more "real-life" scenario, audio weak at end


Overall good to hear Coray's comments as well as he was able to point out things like how to keep the viewer's interest, how to transfer from in-game cinematics to real game play, and the use of audio to pull off the theme and excitement.