A Movie or a Game

Many people may say that a game and an animation are not very different, in the sense that both present a virtually realistic environment to you. I respectfully disagree. What we should understand is that a game has very unique elements that are a proprietary of it, which are never seen in an animated movie. Examples include Heads-up-display (HUD) and 3-D pointers (cross-hair for a FPS). It is true that more and more games are now trying to get a feel of an ultra realistic environment wherein these extra elements are represented in the 3-D world itself (like the 3-D map system of FarCry 3), but nevertheless, these elements are characteristic to gaming.

Interactivity:

It is said, and quite rightly so, that you cannot watch a game or play a movie. This brings us to an important distinction between an animated movie and a 3-D game. Games are interactive. They respond to user inputs and are defined by it. An animated movie may have user inputs too (like play, pause, stop, fast forward etc.). But they are just control inputs that do not define the movie in essence. But a game can be fast paced, strategic etc, based on the inputs the user provides it with. For instance, in a game of Tetris, the user’s reflexes and response speed determines how much score he can achieve.

Artificial Intelligence:

This can be a little controversial, because in an animated movie, everything runs as a part of a pre-defined storyline, which mostly provides its actors or entities with a fake sense of intelligence. The way this differs in a game is that the Artificial Intelligence (if implemented properly) is most often unpredictable. It changes according to the user’s actions. It, mostly, does not show a constant behavior, although trends and patterns can be noticed with prolonged experience. But that is only because, well, it is “Artificial” intelligence and lacks intuition in most parts.

Realism:

Another important point of difference is the relation to real-world. In an animation as well as a game, anything, from intergalactic travel to time wrap is possible. But in a game the realism is built using extra components called Physics Engines. These components enforce certain physical rules (eg. collisions) in a game. The resulting behaviors (like a car jumping off a ramp) are just consequences of such rules (quite the way it is in real world). Whereas in movies these rules seem to be present, but actually are no different from any other action in the movie (eg. dancing of a character vs. bouncing of a ball off the ground).

These are some major differences between games and animation. But as time is passing by, this gap is getting bridged and games and movies are coming closer. The day is not far when we will be able to have a hybrid of a game and a movie where we will be able to play a part in our favourite movies, in a virtually realistic environment. Interactive movies are the next step to the already saturated movie and game industry.