Tigon: Hollywood needs to wake up

By Robert Purchese Published 30 June, 2009

Videogames are "the Field of Dreams".

Ian Stevens, boss of Vin Diesel's production company Tigon, believes videogames are "the Field of Dreams", and that Hollywood needs to start treating them as more than the proverbial action figure.

"It is a business for them," he told GamesIndustry.biz, "the studio goes ahead and slates the films for production in the next couple of years, and part of that revenue stream is licensing and merchandising.

"For a lot of those guys over the past 20 years, making videogames has been the same thing as making action figures, and putting your characters on cereal boxes, or making pyjamas. And that's been a very successful model.

"At some point I'd love to give a lecture about how some of the most talented people in the industry are the guys who we tend to respect the least, because they're actually making decent games out of impossible situations," he added.

He reckons if Midway Newcastle had been given the budget and opportunity of a developer like Valve, then the end product would have been, well, he leaves that to our imagination - a giraffe, perhaps.

Stevens recalled working with Blizzard and publisher Vivendi back before the Activision merger, and how World of Warcraft designer Rob Pardo talked of building and discarding "three out of four" ideas. The result is that everything Blizzard makes "is gold". It's a luxury that film tie-in developers are not given.

"There's something to that, and why that gets ignored by people... you've got the rest of the industry saying, 'Okay, you've got 18 months, go!'" he said.

Furthermore, Stevens believes risk, even in this the economic climate, is worth taking. Quality will speak for itself.

"My own personal opinion is that gaming is the Field of Dreams, so to speak. If you build it, they will come," Stevens explained. "This industry has always grown and been led by innovation and quality, and games that do something new and interesting, or are just plain good."

"I think investing in that, in whatever form it takes - whether it's new IP or licensed IP or whatever - is what the focus should be," he said.

Tigon Studios has collaborated on The Wheelman, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (7) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • Ranger101 #1 3 years ago

    What the hell does a 'Production' company do anyways?

  • Vordred #2 3 years ago

    thats the thing, if they really put time any money into these movie games they could be huge, but again it is almost like they just make them as a quick cash in like action figures and so on. hoping kids that like the movie will by them.

  • kangarootoo #3 3 years ago

    That was a pretty waffly article, but right in there in the middle of it all he speaks a fair bit of sense.


    @Ranger101

    That would vary from company to company. But a summary of production is making sure that everyone has what they need to do their job, at the time they need to do it, so that the end product gets made on time and to budget.

  • CHACK #4 3 years ago

    This would all be fine if you had a star that at least bothered with the content he was contracted to supply, Vin didn't show up for at least 5 VO recording sessions for Wheelman at a dev cost, they still had to pay the recording studio fees every time his agent assured the dev team he'd "show this time".

    Tigon is probably one of the worst examples because Vin gives a zero f**K about his obligations when he should be more concerned about his image and his lack of status in Hollywood. When you have a star that decides to rewrite the VO script as soon as he turns up to record his lines you sit around going...WTF?
    Hollywood and Videogames can only co-exist when everyone is on the same page and not sitting around Willy waving about who's got more to say.

  • dsmx #5 3 years ago

    The problem with any tie in game is that they have to spend the game budget on getting the rights to the IP, therefore the money that would of gone into making the game has to go elsewhere. Which means that every movie tie in game will never be as good as it could of been. That's not to say that every movie tie in game will be bad, just that they could of been better.

  • Sharzam #6 3 years ago

    That is a very good point 'dsmx', most of the problems i think personally are down to time the best game developers out there are very much from the 'when its done' school of thought. Blizzard being a classic example as much as you may love or hate there work they will never release something they dont believe is readya nother example could be valve.

    The list goes on basically this will never happen for those working to deadlines for releases of films so basic mistakes are made whether that be a wonky camera unbalanced enemies etc.

  • kangarootoo #7 3 years ago

    @Sharzam

    Both the companies you list as having a "when its done" attitude also have the bank balance to go with it. When every single day costs money, most devs simply can't afford to say "when its done". Its not about attitude.