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SHADOW OPS WAS BORN AT THE 2002 GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE when Zombie's agent at RED, Jeff Brunner, set up a meeting between us and Atari producers Matt Powers and Steve Ackrich. Powers and Ackrich were looking for a developer to launch a new FPS franchise for Atari, one that shared their vision for the title and who had an expertise in military shooters. We immediately clicked, realizing that we had all been thinking about the possibility of an extremely intense FPS experience since seeing the Ridley Scott film Black Hawk Down-which we agreed was unique in its unrelenting action and gritty realism. The more we talked, the more I realized that they wanted to make the most cinematic game I'd ever heard of-one with a compelling story and extraordinary production values. We quickly began topping each other with set piece ideas until I suggested we detonate a nuke and roll an aircraft carrier in a 100-foot wave in the first 15 minutes of the game and they said, "Yes! That's what we're looking for!"
Atari also loved the scripting in MEDAL OF HONOR and wanted a similar treatment of scripted events. Our producers, Jean Philippe Agati and Rafael Curulla, thought state-of-the-art non-player character (NPC) interaction crossed with the cinematic intensity of Black Hawk Down should be our design goal. We all agreed that the simple innovation of communicating level objectives in situ through characters, rather than the standard military FPS loadscreen or cinematic briefing would be a critical element in our cinematic goal.
We toss the term "cinematic" around a lot in the game industry. A friend of mine who owns a Los Angeles-based special effects company says, "Everyone in the game industry wants their game to look like a movie, and everyone in the movie industry wants their movie to look like a game." It's funny and it's true. But other than interstitial videos between levels, what does cinematic mean exactly, and how do you design for a cinematic look and feel?
For SHADOW OPS, it meant consciously adopting movie production techniques and striving at all times for a greater sense of presence-the you-are-there feel that makes you forget you're playing a game. Some of our attempts, like a cinematic score and sound design,...