New titles, genres, possible technology licensing on horizon

Digital Pictures, the Palo Alto, CA-based company that hit the jackpot with its Night Trap and Sewer Shark video games for the Sega CD system, is releasing three new titles under its U-Direct interactive “movie” label and considering licensing some of its core technology for interacting with video data, which is the company’s specialty.

CHANGING THE STATUS QUO ABOUT VIOLENCE, WOMEN?

DP’s new titles seem less aggressively violent and/or sexual in tone than their predecessors (and, we should add, than the standard for video games).

You may recall that Night Trap, Digital Pictures’ first title, was banned in the United Kingdom and got a great deal of flack in the U.S. because of its plot: scantily clad adolescent girls left alone at home for a slumber party being stalked by a hoard of black-suited and masked men.

But since then, company CEO and president Tom Zito and his team have started to change the status quo. For example, Amanda Lathroum, producer of one of DP’s new titles, Ground Zero Texas, says she worked hard to “raise consciousness” around such controversial issues such as violence while the game was being designed and built.

In Ground Zero Texas, for example, the plot centers around destroying a party of aliens taking over a small Texas town. Part of the challenge of the game is to kill only aliens; if the player shoots a human, even by accident, the game is over immediately. A small step perhaps, but a start.

The “beefcake” division. In addition, Zito says, Lathroum will take on the task of creating a women’s software division at DP. The fact that he half-jokingly calls it the “beefcake” division is testimony to one genre of games DP is likely to develop for women and girls (Fabio Interactive was actually mentioned), but having met Lathroum — who has a Ph.D. in linguistics and an undergraduate degree in fine art — we have faith that she will broaden the charter.

SWITCH DOES GENRE-BENDING WITH VIDEO, GAMES

Digital Pictures has done some genre bending with another of its new U-Direct titles called Switch, directed by Mary Lambert (who directed the Pet Sematary movies and Siesta) and starring singer Debbie Harry, teen heartthrob Corey Haim and R. Lee Ermey, the drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket. (Music is by Thomas Dolby.)

The game centers around an apartment building in a bad neighborhood, where one of the residents has built an elaborate security system to trap nogoodniks. But he’s found himself accidentally trapped in the basement, and it’s up to the player to snag the bad guys until he can figure a way out.

Tricky video. Switch finds a nifty way around the problems we’ve anticipated with using real video footage in video games; i.e., the literal imagery either detracts from the game play itself or the ability to keep playing it over time (see Vol. 2, No. 7, p. 17).

The Switch video does just what you’d expect video to do: it keeps you occupied. But while you’re gawking at the pretty pictures, an onscreen floor plan shows where the bad guys are entering the building. If you aren’t paying attention and they keep getting in and escaping without your trapping them, you get kicked out of the building and you lose.

A reason to get good fast. Less politically correct but technically impressive is the new Prizefighter title that makes excellent use of both black-and-white videography (a homage, says the producer, to Raging Bull) and the first person point of view. Game play evokes a fairly visceral response, especially if you’re a lousy boxer, since every time you take a punch, the camera jars the screen image in such a way that you feel like your head got hit. We aren’t wild about this one in terms of subject matter, but it’s quite well done.

A POTENTIAL MARKET FOR DP’S PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGIES

DP’s Zito says outside game producers are approaching the company about some of its proprietary authoring technology. He claims a number of CD-ROM developers have asked about licensing DP’s DigiChrome scheme for color reduction (the Sega can only display 32 colors at a time) and compression (nearly 100:1).

In addition, its Instaswitch technology for interleaving multiple tracks of video — which controls how to buffer and switch video coming off a compact disc — virtually eliminates the usual and annoying lag time between “click” and action in interactive CDs.

Though Zito says that DigiChrome is getting the lion’s share of the attention from potential licensees today, he believes Instaswitch will become very important to the company if and/or when digital cable becomes a significant force in interactive television.

Denise Caruso