James Cameron Making a New Movie and MMO

James Cameron, über director of such films as the Terminator trilogy series and the super-movie, Titanic, has revealed that he will be directing a new film. That, of in itself, is not really major news, but what is of special interest are his plans to tightly connect the film with an MMO (massively multiplayer online) game. According to an interview published in the February 13th issue of BusinessWeek, Cameron said, "My next project – which I’m currently writing the shooting draft for – is going to be this completely crazy balls-out sci-fi flick. The plan is to develop an MMO that takes place in the same universe and release it a little while before the theatrical release. That way people can start playing around and learning about this new world. Then we present a narrative in it with the movie." Cameron has code named his new film Project 880. No details were given as to the schedule release date for the film or game. The idea of closely tying in a movie with its game counterpart can be best represented by the Enter the Matrix game. The Wachowski brothers, who directed the film, also directed and wrote for the tie-in game. In Enter the Matrix, the game not only gave Matrix fans an opportunity to re-enter the Matrix universe, the game also provided a deeper understanding of the movies by including film scenes especially shot for the game as well as new plot directions to further the experience of the game and movie fan. CVG.com says that Cameron was recently appointed to the board of Multiverse, a company which provides a technology platform kit for independent game companies to develop and produce MMOs. Cameron™s new position, most likely, has sparked his interest in producing his very own MMO. Cameron stated that, "So much of literary sci-fi is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a social level. I want to see developers create games in which players can add to the worlds as they go along, so you can see what hundreds of thousands of people in this game environment can create. It’s like each is being handed a toolset…. Instead of creating a $50 million game, you’re creating $2 million games and letting them grow themselves." Tie-in games, unfortunately, have usually been substandard or outright disasters. Rarely do film directors take an active part in the production of the game. Third party developers are given the assignment, and they try to hammer out a game that is loosely, at best, based upon the film. This disconnection from film staff and game™s staff is one reason why movie games fail to reach their potentials. However, if film directors will be taking active roles in movie tie-in games, we might see an increase in the quality of these types of games. Strangely enough, the Terminator games, which were based on Cameron™s Terminator films, were considered failures. Perhaps James has learned his lesson.