CNN has a report on the launch party for Shiny's Enter The Matrix, a game which represents an unprecedent integration of Hollywood moviemaking and game development. There are some other comments on the relationship between the two industries.

"Despite the increasingly close ties between the two industries, even some backers concede that the technology is still not far enough along for games to inspire the same range and depth of emotions for an audience as film."

Honk! I disagree. Apart from the old and obvious danger of wanting to emulate Hollywood too much, I don't think the problem is technology. The problems that I think need to be solved before games equal movies in emotional range and depth:

Game design. How do we expand the emotional range? My feeling is that over the last fifteen years, we've slowly gotten more effective at producing certain emotions, but we haven't made any serious effort to produce new emotions. New for games that is - they're very, very old for other entertainment media.

Process. How to not screw up the basics. This touches on something I intend to write, about why game design is hard.

Technology. We probably need a level of AI-ish technology that is still uncommon in the games industry.

Money. How to get the money to try new things.

Market. How to teach our audiences about new things.

These last two are related. It's interesting to note that Chris Crawford is convinced that there is no smooth path from where we are to where we could be: he says it requires a revolution. I disagree, but I can't be sure. It's sure taking a long time...

(Thanks to the anonymous stranger for the link.)