Tag Archives: steven spielberg

Jason Rohrer, a consultant on EA’s cancelled Project LMNO, has said the development on the game partially suffered due to limited involvement from Steven Spielberg.

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The director and producer superstar team of performance capture 3D film The Adventures of Tintin have offered their thoughts on Ubisoft’s game tie-in. Verdict: they’re impressed – check the video for more.

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A Halo movie with the involvement of Steven Spielberg is set for a release in 2012, according to a French press kit for the latest Halo book, Cryptum,

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We are deeply saddened to live in a world where Imagine Party Babyz alternatively crawls and drunkely conga lines onto shelves while this gets canceled.

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Project LMNO was supposed to make you cry. And it did. Just not in the way its creators – chief among them Steven friggin’ Spielberg – were hoping for.

So, what happened?

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Hey, Guillermo del Toro, you’re not the only filmmaker-turned-videogame-designer on the block!

Oh, wait. Yes you are.

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Stuart Beattie has been shopping around his Halo: Fall of Reach script and according to a report over on IESB, none other than Steven Spielberg has his eyes on it.

According to the the site:

“IESB has learned exclusively (believe me this is solid and I’ve confirmed it three times over with studio executives and our close ties to CAA) that one of the biggest producers in Hollywood history is currently in active negotiations to develop the feature film adaptation and no it’s not Jerry Bruckheimer or Peter Jackson. It’s the man behind Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones and Transformers, Mr. Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg is blown away by writer Stuart Beattie’s take on the game in his script entitled HALO THE FALL OF REACH. This coupled with the fact that his Dreamworks umbrella is looking for a big tent pole to help launch their newly independent studio with distribution over at Walt Disney Pictures after losing Transformers to Paramount in the separation, it’s the perfect combination.”

Keep this as a rumor until we hear something different, and since the IESB site is currently down, big thanks to Kokugamer for the link.

According to Ubisoft’s Maxime Bernard, when Steven Spielberg was at E3 he mentioned that he gets some of his ideas from games like Splinter Cell.

“He had an entourage… and he said to his friend ‘it gives us a lot of ideas, it’s very inspiring’” Bernard told OXM. “I was thinking, like, wow. If we made a game that inspires Spielberg then [censored], we’re doing something good here.”

Guess it has to come from somewhere.

Hit the link.

EA has put any rumour of Spielberg title, LMNO (pronounced Elemental), being canned to rest by informing Kotaku that the project “continues to develop at EALA with Steven,” and that it isn’t referred to as LMNO any more.

“The rumor is incorrect. EA remains deeply committed to its collaboration with Steven Spielberg and projects we are developing together. LMNO was a code name for a project in development at EALA. While the project continues to develop at EALA with Steven, we no longer refer to it as LMNO. We have no further details to reveal at this time.”

This, incidentally, is what EA has been saying all along, as you can see here and here. Still, nice to know nothing’s changed.

Steven Spielberg has told the BBC that everything he’s working on with EA is now in the bin. Why? Because now he’s got Natal.

“I’m currently making videogames through EA, and right now I’m so excited to be able to write for [Natal],” he said, talking alongside MS entertainment boss Don Mattrick after the Microsoft E3 press conference last night.

“That’s what I’m most excited about, because it sort of changes the paradigm of what I would have written for last week, now all that has been thrown away and it’s a whole new world, a whole new beginning.”

The body-sensing tech, the creator said, will pull down the barriers experienced by many when they first pick up a game controller.

“This is going to try to bring those that are intimidated or scared of the technology, with what the buttons do or what the controller does, this is going to give people that don’t usually play videogames access to a whole new world that we know is compelling but they haven’t quite discovered yet,” he said.

“I think they’ll discover it through Natal.”

Spielberg added that Natal is a step in allowing developers to create truly emotional content.

“I don’t really know of a convergence, and I can’t give you a date for convergence, but so far, the videogame industry has not allowed us the opportunity to cry while we’re playing a videogame because we’re too busy putting our adrenaline rush into the controller, or to wherever we have to swing our arm with the Wii controller, to get a result, to achieve a level of success,” he said.

“Because of that there’s no room for a videogame to break your heart. I think, in terms of a technology, we have a little more room, to be much more emotional with the Natal technology than we ever have before.”

You must watch that interview. Hit this for details on the Nintendo and Sony conferences today. Let’s see if they can do better than this.

Steven Speilberg’s predicted that games consoles will “someday” cease to exist.

Speaking to The Guardian, the director said that, just like the old “videogame parlours”, consoles and other gaming equipment will go “the way of the Dodo bird”.

“Now we’re all playing at home and someday we’ll be playing directly on our TV sets, bypassing all of the platforms,” he said.

There interview’s in audio format. Get more from Eurogamer.

Steven Spielberg’s kicking himself. Had he not bailed on Medal of Honor’s development and sold DWI to EA in 2000, he’d be rich by now. Oh.

“The smartest and dumbest thing I ever did was to sell my company to EA,” the bespectacled movie oligarch told Reuters.

“Medal of Honor was almost done and we made the decision to sell Dreamworks Interactive to Electronic Arts and had we not sold, we would have been able to stay in business just based on the success of Medal of Honor.”

Don’t worry, though. He’s paradoxically pleased he did what he did. Make your mind up, Steve-o.

“But it was very smart also for us to sell to a company that was better equipped and better managed to be able to take Medal of Honor into the international market and really make a commercial success out of it,” he said.

Glad that’s sorted. Spielberg’s latest game project, Boom Blox: Bash Party, ships for Wii next week.

Despite the fact the second Boom Blox game, Bash Party, still hasn’t released, Steven Spielberg’s already talking up a third title.

“You can become a creator at home,” the media giant told Reuters.

“You can become a participant and you can become an activist. It’s a really wonderful way to empower players to share their ideas with the world and give us better ideas for our own future of the next iteration beyond Bash Party.”

While a third game may be yet a twinkling in Big Steve’s eye, getting the first two to market has helped him keep his kids off the sofa, he said.

“It’s been very, very good for a parent like me who wants our kids not to be couch potatoes, but to get up and move their bodies around more,” added Spielberg.

Wii-exclusive puzzler Bash Party ships next week.

More blox bashing madness is in store for Wii owners this spring, with Steven Spielberg’s sequel to his first foray into video game development, Boom Blox, arriving in the form of Boom Blox Bash Party.

Details on the title are under embargo until later this month, but at least you get to take a peek at it.

Trailer posted below.

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Boom Blox 2, now officially titled Boom Blox Bash Party, will release this spring for Wii.

The Spielberg-EA puzzle collaboration “promises increased multiplayer action and more than 400 new levels that take players from under water into outer space,” according to this Reuters story.

“Boom Blox Bash Party is a wild social gaming experience,” Spielberg said.

“We know families and friends really enjoyed playing the original ‘Boom Blox’ together, so we designed more explosive multiplayer experiences with Boom Blox Bash Party.”

The second game in the Jenga-esque franchise will feature online components, such as the ability to download new levels.

EA has refused to confirm or deny whether or not the majority of the LMNO team was laid off last week.

The company has clarified its noncommittal position by saying it isn’t detailing where staff cuts are to be made in the wake of the announcement of a 6 percent reduction in its workforce, confirmed Thursday.

Talk emerged on Friday that most of the creatives working on LMNO – the codename for EA’s second collaboration with Steven Spielberg, in development at EALA – are now out of jobs.

Following the publication of this story, Kotaku was contacted by EA on the matter, with the site publishing an email from the firm that said the game was still in production and, “The rumor is incorrect.”

We got the same statement from EA UK, albeit with the last line missing.

Eurogamer then published a statement from an EA rep later that day, saying that rumours of the lay-offs were “categorically not true”. This article has now been reworded.

We contacted EA US after these stories ran and asked the following question: Were members of the LMNO team made redundant this week?

“Development of LMNO continues at EALA under the creative leadership of Doug Church (creative director) and Lou Castle (executive producer),” reiterated a rep via email.

“EA announced yesterday that we are raking a cost reduction action that will impact roughly six percent of our workforce worldwide.

“It is never easy to see good colleagues leave the company. We take this very seriously and eliminating even one job is a tough decision.”

When pushed specifically on whether or not members of the LMNO team were made redundant last week, the same rep told us on Saturday: “We are not providing detailed numbers on a per location basis.

“We have only said that the action impacts approximately 6 percent of our workforce worldwide.”

For the record, it is true. The majority of the team was laid off. On Thursday. Staff were given severance packages, and apparently the whole thing was handled “nicely”. Senior members were involved in the redundancies. Those involved spent the day in the pub.

Only a handful of people are left on the team, including, as EA said earlier today in a statement, creative director Doug Church and executive producer and Westwood co-founder, Lou Castle.

LMNO has no release date as yet. The game is a “secret agent” action title: read a fuller description on Kotaku.

Those now without payroll – we salute you.

EA has just confirmed to VG247 that Steven Spielberg’s LMNO is still in production.

“Development of LMNO continues at EALA under the creative leadership of Doug Church (Creative Director) and Lou Castle (Executive Producer),” said the firm in a statement.

It was rumoured this morning that the majority of the team had been laid off in the wake of Q2 losses, announced yesterday.

EA made no comment on whether or not any developers working on the game had been made redundant.

LMNO is the codename for the second EA game signed up as a collaboration with Spielberg in 2007. The other title was codenamed PQRS at the time, and turned out to be BoomBlox.

The as yet unannounced game is thought to be an action project for 360 and PS3.

Update: EA’s just confirmed that the game’s still in production.

VG247 has learnt from an EA employee that the majority of the LMNO team has been laid off at EALA.

LMNO was the codename for the “ultra-real” Spielberg game being worked on at the studio.

The fate of the game itself is unclear: we’ve been told that “almost everyone on the team has gone.”

The title’s has been in the works for several years, and has included concepts like motion-capturing tear movements in an effort to induce “emotion” in the player.

Today’s talk emerged after EA said yesterday it was to lay off 6 percent of its overall workforce in the wake of Q2 losses.

More soon, hopefully.

Colour us shocked. Joystiq’s reporting that the Boom Blox head-tracking feature – that was supposedly going to allow players to move the game’s camera with head movements – has been pulled. From the site:

At the Nintendo Media Summit, Boom Blox senior producer Amir Rahimi confirmed that the final version of the game will lack the head-tracking mode. We understand that it was always an Easter egg, requiring gamers to set up Wii Remotes as cameras, and hacking together their own IR LED glasses. But you didn’t have to go to TED to see the promise, and we’re disappointed to see it removed.

More here.

According to CVG, EA’s Boom Blox will release in Europe on May 9.

The Spielberg Wii puzzle game is… a Spielberg Wii puzzle game. Looks fun, so keep an eye out.