Game news In the 90s, Steven Spielberg made this video game with Quentin Tarantino and Jennifer Aniston
In the 90s, at the height of the boom in FMV games, Steven Spielberg made a video game with a cast just as prestigious as him.
The Dig (1995)
You obviously know Steven Spielberg, this American filmmaker of undeniable genius to whom we owe a slew of classics, likeAND The Extra-Terrestrial Or Jurassic Park, my two little favorites. But did you know that in addition to maintaining a monumental filmography, the man is also a video game enthusiast and has even made his contribution to the industry? In an interview with Entertainment Tonight in the 1980s, he already confided about the medium: “For me, it’s a quick pleasure. I mean it takes me a year to get a quick thrill from a movie. With a video game, I can play Tempest, and in 10 minutes I probably feel like I accomplished something today“. For several years, Spielberg even offered a helping hand to the projects of one of his best friends, George Lucas, who then created his own game development company. He notably writes the story of The Dig, a point-and-click science fiction title that you can find for less than six euros on Steam and which is the subject of a novelization by author Alan Dean Foster. He also participates, unfortunately, in the development of Atari’s cursed ET game, first hoping to direct the team towards “something closer to Pac-Man“. Ultimately, the concept proved so complex that the reception was a calamity and the publisher was forced to bury the thousands of unsold copies in the New Mexico desert. The failure did not discourage Spielberg so much since ten years later, he is still trying his hand at new video game projects.
Spielberg’s FMV game
It was in 1996 that Spielberg sat behind the camera which recorded the images of his Director’s Chair, a live action game on CD-ROM that he designed in collaboration with Knowledge Adventure and DreamWorks Interactive. The experience simulates the process of making a film and consists of a succession of sequences that the player must choose in pre-production, which are commented on by the wise advice of the filmmaker. A sort of interactive masterclass therefore, supposed to inspire young students, and which even has the luxury of having in its cast Jennifer Anniston, then star of the series Friends, who would later say that the project was a “last minute thing“: “I was doing something in New York, and my agent called me to say that Steven had asked me“. The actress gives the answer to the no less famous Quentin Tarantino who plays the role of a prisoner on death row here while Anniston plays his girlfriend, launched into a mad race against time to prove his innocence. The most knowledgeable will also recognize the magicians Penn and Teller and the Brazilian actress Katherine Helmond on several levels.
This Director’s Chair is part of a big trend of the 90s, that of FMV games. The process has its origins in arcades. In 1983 precisely, the same year as the fateful industry crashSega releases Astron Belt, a spaceship game that draws many of its sequences from the films A Message From Space And Battle Beyond the Stars. At the same time, Dragon’s Lair, a Cinematronics title, impresses with its real animated film clips, although its frustrating and limited gameplay is detrimental. Other productions like Space Ace, Cobra Command and Mad Dog McCree expand the offering in arcades. But it is above all Sega’s Mega CD which marks a decisive turning point for FMV in 1990, the accessory offering players the possibility of testing console games on CD. Technological advances in digital storage and compression encourage developers to view pre-recorded video as a natural evolution. Then out come the very popular chicks Night Trap, Phantasmagoria, The X-Files Game and Company. As good scenarios become too rare, the trend quickly dies.
A new version 20 years later
Twenty-four years after its release, once the FMV fever had subsided, the Italian developer Paolo Pedercini (also a teacher at Carnegie-Mellon University), probably launched in an experimental impulse, developed a completely new version of the Steven Spielberg’s Director’s Chair which doubles its interactivity. The player can this time decide in real time the actions of Tarantino and Anniston, while influencing the comic or tragic atmosphere of a sequence. The experience this time is much closer to the interactive films that can be found today on Netflix, like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Tarantino’s acting, however, has not lost an ounce of its singularity. Computer Gaming World magazine, which gives the original game a score of 2.5/5, reserving it for “fSpielberg’s die-hards only”wrote precisely on this subject:
Why Quentin Tarantino was chosen as one of the “actors” in this game is a mystery… A superb writer and promising director, Tarantino’s idiosyncratic style is rarely found in his performance… Sometimes he is downright painful to watch.”
It would be a shame if you missed this curiosity with an atmosphere close to that of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks series, Pedercini having generously shared a link to his redesign on his Twitter page. “The footage was totally raw, I had to edit all the clips, add sounds and music. I also upscaled the ultra low resolution videos with an AI tool. Very stupid project, I do not recommend”, he comments below.
The Steven Spielberg Director’s Chair is far from being the filmmaker’s last attempt at video games. In the 2000s, the man joined forces with Electronic Arts and set about creating LMNO, code name given to what consisted of an open-world road trip accompanied by a friendly alien with special powers. It was about hiding this special ally of humans in an experience that mixed parkour and puzzles. A sort of very original ET-like but unfortunately canceled along the way. In 2008, Spielberg tried again with EA to develop Boom Blox, a rather successful party game for the Nintendo Wii which was entitled to a sequel, Boom Blox Bash Party, in 2009. But his greatest contribution to the world of video games remains Medal of Honor, a franchise inspired by the film We have to save the soldier Ryan. Spielberg’s love for video games is also visible on cinema screens, especially since the release of Ready Player One, his adaptation of the eponymous novel by Ernest Cline. He was also heavily involved in the Halo series on Paramount+.