Pirates director wants creative madness

By Robert Purchese Published 7 February, 2008

Or games become as stagnant as films.

Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinksi has urged game developers to "go down dark alleys" and not stick to set formulae, stating that "this is the time for madness".

His speech was made at the D.I.C.E. 2008, watched by GamesIndustry.biz, and highlighted his passion for gaming and the relationship it shares with films.

But he is sceptical our younger industry will follow its big-screen sibling and stifle creativity by clinging to tried and tested business models in search of a guaranteed returns on investments.

"The logic is flawed. They are reacting to a world which has already passed them by," said Verbinski. Our audience wants us to surprise them. They demand it of us.

"When they see something that's new, they will champion it because they discovered it. Serving them leftovers will never produce the financial gains of the original."

The Pirates of the Caribbean games were poorly reviewed and Verbinksi says this is because film studios treat them as merchandise, which he hates - believing that they should be regarded as another film and built using the same assets, although not necessarily have anything to do with their big-screen counterparts.

Verbinksi went on to pick out Guitar Hero as an example of an idea that sprung from the left field; a game that tapped on the memory of those who have stood in front of a mirror with a tennis racket as an instrument.

And this is the responsibility developers face, to stand up to the homogenisation of voice by going a bit bonkers, he reckons.

"It is time for the auteur in gaming. The game designer has a fiscal responsibility and a creative obligation to make the suits s*** themselves," concluded Verbinski.

Landing a blow on GamesIndustry.biz is as improbable as fact letting fiction join its news gang.

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 (19) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • bad09 #1 4 years ago

    Considering his Pirates movies went from awesome to awful the words pot and kettle spring to mind....

    ...but he does have a point though....

  • Triggerhappytel #2 4 years ago

    Yeah, I'll give this guy's comments a bit more creedence when he apologises for ruining one of the best adventure films of recent times with two shitty sequels.

  • mazzl #3 4 years ago

    creative maddness is always a good thing :)

  • Riggers #4 4 years ago

    How about instead of telling the developers that creative madness is good, he has a word with the publishers?

  • OnlyMe #5 4 years ago

    I don't know what films you saw, but I absolutely loved all of them myself. But I guess it's a cool thing to do, to hate the POTC films. Must be some sequel-phobia or something.

  • erp #6 4 years ago

    The film industry never clings to tried and tested business models in search of a guaranteed returns on investments.

    And the Pirates sequels were amazingly innovative and not at all cash-ins.

    (Oh wait.)

  • asphaltcowboy #7 4 years ago

    "I don't know what films you saw, but I absolutely loved all of them myself. But I guess it's a cool thing to do, to hate the POTC films. Must be some sequel-phobia or something."

    Sequel-phobia? No. It's down to the fact that the second and third films were UTTER SHIT.

  • OnlyMe #8 4 years ago

    And do you have anything more specific to say about the film than "it's shit"?

  • Triggerhappytel #9 4 years ago

    @ squarejaw - yep, he directed the US version of The Ring, which is probably the only Jap-to-US remake where the western version is better, IMO. I'm not sure if he did the sequel.

    @ OnlyMe - there were a number of reasons the Pirates sequels were shit; confusing plot, absurd monsters, over-long, needless scenes and too many double-crosses to name a small number.

  • LOLLERS #10 4 years ago

    99% of the time it's not up the developers, so maybe he should stop blaming designers and developers. He should team up with Steven Spielberg, together they could change this industry forever because nobody else thinks as 'left field' as they do.

  • Olemak #11 4 years ago

    So not the director of "Pirates XXX", then? Shame.

    PotC II was boring to the extent that I have not bothered with PotC III yet. I really liked the first one - most of all because of Depp's character, of course, and the undead pirate crew - Rush especially - had a depth of personality rarely seen in such films. A great villain.

    But iven in the forst film I felt the end dragging on a bit, too much here and there and back again and then once more. Kind of like a delivery mission in a MMORPG. Boring.

    The second film was just a string of extravagant action set pieces loosely strung together by an utterly uninteresting plot. What was that film even really about? What were they after? Why did they bother with all that nonsese? I forget. I really can't remember what the movie was about, but there was a squid-faced man and a giant octopus in it. I think they were were related somehow.

    Oh, and the fencing scenes, which in the original was a bit like something out of Monkey Island: Swing - Parry - Quip, Swing - Parry - Pun, had devoled to a tedious Swing - Parry - Swing - Parry - Swing - Parry - Swing - Parry - Swing et cetera, indefiately. Some times the swinging and parrying took place in novel settings, like in a an old mill, or, um, on an island I guess, but was it pretty much all the same, and nothing much ever came out of these action sequences.

    Boring. Leading nowhere, except to the next action set piece.

    Maybe PotC III is better, I don't know, don't really need to see it.

    Could be that the suits came in and butchered Verbinskis artistic vision on the sequels, of course, foring him to "mainstream" production or cut corners on the scriptwriting, which did seem rushed. Maybe that's why he's giving aout warnings against their influence now, and urging indepencense and creativity. He's got a good point either way: movies are so expensive to make these days, investors naurally want to hedge their investments, and tha's causing (big) films to be more boring and uninventive; popcorny. Games are definately moving in the same direction; an AAA game coste about the same to make as a minor blockbuster movie now, and involes hundreds of people. Games are definately adopting the Hollywood model of making entertainment, and that is certainly stifling creativity and innovation. And games studios ARE copying eachother a lot. So this is a good time to get a little crazy. I'd rather see more games like Brütal Legend and Rez than even more WWII shooters.

  • Milbe #12 4 years ago

    Maybe what we need is proper game testing to do the already existing genres right. We do need innovation, but concentrating on quality instead of quantity would be a great step too.

  • OnlyMe #13 4 years ago

    Tsk, I think they both were excellent fun. It entertained me very much, which were their sole purpose. I do believe a lot of the POTC sequels hate comes from people on a bandwagon. It's one of those "commercial success = crap" things. Still, I can understand that some people actually do dislike the movies.

  • asphaltcowboy #14 4 years ago

    @OnlyMe

    As Trigger says, the plot was all over the place and made very little sense. It was never entirely clear why they were in a particular place at a particular time. It kept switching all the time as though they realised each branch of storyline wasn't actually strong enough to support sticking with it for too long. The dialogue was bad, it was badly acted and directed, Johnny Depp wasn't nearly as funny as in the first one and yet that seems to be all they sold the film on for the second and third films. Not to mention they were way too long and generally didn't recreate the sense of fun and adventure of the first film (which I love).

    Basically, shit.

    EDIT: I really liked the first one as I say, and I hoped the sequels could take it to bigger and better places. I'm all for sequels, if they're not terrible. Commercial success is not a problem if it's deserved.
    Edited by 1 at 07/02/08 @ 10:33

  • TheWretched #15 4 years ago

    @Olemak

    Imho, the third one is MUCH better than the second one, if only because the story "evolves" a bit... (I hated the story of PotC2, because it was sooooo boring and nothing happened)

    Having all three now on Blu Ray is quite amazing. All three offer amazing quality^^

    But Gore Verbinsky... he should look in the mirror before complaining about others. All his characters are "tried and true" and are based on everything but his own damn mind. The only twist in PotC is the Curse in the first part, the rest is just... well not "twisty". I liked those movies, but where's his innovation he speaks of? There's NONE at all! At least I can't see any!

  • doriangray #16 4 years ago

    To be fair i think the main problem with the PotC sequels stems from really bad scripts. Visually the films were always impressive, so i think it's unfair to entirely blame him for them getting shitter.

  • asphaltcowboy #17 4 years ago

    A bit of trivia on IMDB:

    "They started filming without a finished script."

    I think that pretty much sums it up!

  • Feanor #18 4 years ago

    So did the Lord of the Rings movies.

  • asphaltcowboy #19 4 years ago

    @Feanor:

    What all three of them? Or they started filming the first one before the second and third films had finished being scripted (since they were all filmed at the one after the other)?