Shann Biglione's blog

Few pics taken in London

My camera is my new best friend... Nikon, I love you!

How to complete an awesome trilogy in 2h50?

Just ask Gore Verbinski, apparently he knows (most of) the tricks. He even managed to make Keira Knightley barable...

How to screw a great trilogy in 2h30?

Just ask Sam Raimi, apparently he knows all the tricks.

Monsieur le Président

Last week, France officially turned the Chirac page (it was about time). To open the Sarkozy one... If Thatcher had a son, she'd abandon him and adopt Sarkozy. He would make her proud.

After a wonderful program focusing on French nationalism, ie why we should enforce tough immigration laws, and restore the pride to be French (I know this may sound weird for English people, as we're usually seen as a proud people, but trust me we're not only talking of the pride to eat snails and frog legs here...), alongside with an ultra liberal economic program (unemployed = slackers, cut taxes for the rich etc.), our beloved president, freshly elected thanks to the vote of many popular classes who saw in him a chance to change things, retired for a couple of days... on a private luxuray yacht. Right after spending the election night at the Fouquet's, one of Paris most expensive restaurants.

Now we hear some of his supporters moaning about that, saying it's not sending a good message to the people after being elected on the promise that politics should change.

Maybe they should rather buy themselves a brain, for a change.

Orange, go f*** yourself

3 months that we've been experiencing major disconnections. I'm about to get mad at them. Last week we even managed to have no connection at all, the guys from Orange telling us they were really sorry that they couldn't even give us an ETA on when the work would be done.

If you ever need broadband, give orange the fingers.

Should games marketing timelines be the same as for movies?

In today's Gamesindustry update, Denis Dyak from Silicon Knights (Too Human) pledges for a new way of marketing games, while he clearly has the movie industry model in mind. In a nutshell, this line summarizes his thought: "I don't think we should start doing press on a game until it's finished".

He sees few reasons for this:
- it takes too much time to the dev team, while they should be working hard on developping the game instead of creating a PR demo or show.
- the marketing deadline is too close to the release of the game, putting a lot of pressure on the dev team, and ending up very often in forcing an unfinished game into stores.

I find it interesting as it kind of relates to the pressures we sometimes feel in an agency.
However, I must disagree with some of his comments.

First, movies are usually not finished 5 to 6 months prior to their release, with then the marketing team starting to work on it. That's an illusion, and interestingly, it's quite the contrary for the big blockbusters (the ones that make money and have a huge marketing behind them). For instance most of Jerry Bruckheimer's productions are ready within a few weeks (sometimes days) before their release. What is true is that directors never show unfinished footage of their movie, but that brings us to points 2 and 3.

Second, the issue with not showing videos or some code is that it basically means showing nothing. Unfortunately, the movie industry does not have this luxury (appart from extremely awaited movies, but even then, few dare to hide their movie, with their eyes focused on the awareness tracking). Movies can have a trailer ready a year before their release, and sometimes it actually requires a team dedicated to it (did someone mention "hire some people for this"?).

Third, a movie is not a game. Whereas a game will be polished in its last weeks of production, a movie can have parts ready long before its release. This is just a production process, and it has to be taken into account.

Fourth, games release dates tend to be even more strategic than for movies (basically everyone wants to release their game for Christmas). That's one of the reasons why there are often impossible deadlines, not only because there is a huge marketing plan set 6 months in advance (and realistically, you have to plan your marketing investments long in advance anyway). And you know what? While games are often delayed, we've rarely seen a long awaited movie delayed. Not because they're ready long in advance, but also because the planning is strict, and takes into account the production time (sometimes special effects are not as polished as they should though, betraying the fact the production was short of few weeks). Something game editors haven't been really good at so far. Not to mention that movies are less tight to the Christmas release rule (there are moments for a good release, but there are quite a lot throughout the year).

Interesingly, we can take the example of Lost Planet, which was quite an interesting trial. There, instead of creating a game for months and then showing the finished version to the public, Capcom instead worked on a gameplay and 3D engine, and distributed it months before the release (actually, almost a year). When the demo was first showed to the press, even the Capcom team did not have any specific definition of what the game would be like. They just offered this demo, took the comments, and then went on to build the game. Kind of a pitch work directed to gamers. And it worked.

Maybe that's actually a core problem of the game industry: this belief that your final version will look awesome and that you can sort everything missing in the last few months. If a game can't look convincing 6 months in advance, then something is just plain wrong, and you can't compare your industry to one where the product can look awesome a year before.
Then, maybe they should pay more attention to their production process, because not being able to set a release date in advance, and commit to it, that's just a sign of how badly the production is managed.

First pics from New York

I've started loosing my social life on photoshoping pictures from NY (with more than 1,500 pics taken, that took me about... the whole WE). A selection is available on my Flickr for those who want to see some more...

Time Square from the Empire State

Chrysler building

The one and only.

Symetric bridge

One, two and three.

The smoke of the city..

Bright side of the moon

There you go Mr Bachem

That's it, I'm jumping in. I thought I'd start with the least interesting and shortest post ever (almost). More to come soon, hopefully.

Erh...