Sorting interactive wheat from chaff

By ANDY MARX

Admitting that there has been "extraordinary hype" over interactive product development, Mark Goodson Prods.' president Mark Goodson told a packed audience at Thursday's "Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley" session of InterTainment '93 that the words "interactive" and "successful" don't automatically belong together.

"There's an 'off-the-rack' fallacy, where marketeers have made the assumption that any TV gameshow can be turned into an interactive show," Goodson said. "And that's not necessarily the case."

Speaking of his experience of trying to turn his own company's shows, such as "The Price is Right" and "Family Feud," into successful interactive ventures, Goodson said, "I don't believe that adding interactivity means that it's going to be good. If the technology is going to be appealing, it must enhance and be transparent to the broadcast television show."

Goodson, who appeared on the panel with Digital Domain's Scott Ross, LucasArts' Jack Sorenson and Trimark Interactive's Kelly Flock, pointed out through a series of demonstrations that interactivity is basically a distraction from a show's content and that producers will have to take that into consideration.

"The surprising aspect of all of this is that you have to make a choice between playing interactively or paying attention to the show being broadcast," Goodson said. "It's going to be up to the next generation of producers to solve these problems. The challenge is going to be to reconcile viewers and players into a single entertainment vehicle."

Turning to the world of Hollywood and interactive videogame production, LucasArts' Sorenson pointed out that because budgets for games are so much less than those for films and television, "interactive companies will have to find their own talent base."

The panelists also addressed the issue of licensing film properties for videogames, something which most agreed, except for a few cases, has not been all that successful.

"When you have to spend a lot of money on the licenses for these movies, you then have less money to spend on the production of these games," said Digital Domain's Scott Ross. "Ideally, it's better to put the money into the product."

Those thoughts were echoed by Trimark's Flock, who told the audience that the budgets for some of the games have climbed as high as $ 2 million.