The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian videogame tries to give players a continuation of their movie experience and expend about it with additional content. All Prince Caspian images © Disney Interactive.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian videogame from Disney Interactive Studios also offers activities -- combat, exploration and puzzle solving -- that extend beyond the film. The game features 20 playable characters, including the ability to play as Prince Caspian.

"We know that fans of the movie are looking for a continuation of their experience, so it is our goal to make the game consistent with the movie and provide additional content that expands far beyond it," says Tim FitzRandolph, international producer, Disney Interactive Studios. "Movie fans and videogame fans are primarily the same audience so it's important that each experience is cohesive in content and feel but provides different experiences for entertainment."

Key Assets
Today's videogame creators are able to provide a more authentic movie-like experience thanks to the increasing use of shared assets. At the London press conference for the Speed Racer movie in May, producer Joel Silver spoke about his and the Wachowski brothers' involvement in the development of Speed Racer: The Videogame, giving direction and assets to the development team directly from their Berlin set.

Silver noted that a lot of the assets of the movie were incorporated into that game, saying, "These games are hugely successful, and these kids are seeing them and accepting a visual style that then can be translated to movies. We've come a long way from Pong, so I think the games are getting more sophisticated, the technology is more advanced and every year there's something that we've never seen before."

"We had a lot of the car models provided to us from the film guys," confirms Satterthwaite. "Each was made up of hundreds of thousands of polygons. We had to squeeze them down to less than two thousand each, and then get all the textures to fit. We also got 3D models of key racing scenes, but again in formats completely incompatible with a Wii game."

The assets from the Speed Racer movie were incorporated into the game. The game developer was provided with lots of car models as well as 3D models of key racing scenes.

The asset sharing on Speed Racer did help. "While it is still a lot of work converting these assets to get them into the game," Satterthwaite continues. "By starting with the film models as a reference point, you know the approvals process is going to be a lot less painful.

"It would be great to think that for future productions we could work with the filmmakers at a much earlier stage," Satterthwaite notes. "That way, we could actually provide them game models that could be used for previs and we could really tie the game and film worlds together, letting them feed off each other, rather than it being a one-way street."

Disney Interactive's FitzRandolph says that one of the most notable assets was the exact model of King Miraz's castle seen in the film, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. "The game production team referenced the asset from Weta Digital, one of the vfx teams on the film. The game production team at Disney worked closely with the film crew in London to assure accuracy on visuals and story. Disney Interactive Studios is able to gain access to film production easily because of company synergy. Director Andrew Adamson was also involved with reviewing various stages of the game and assuring its accuracy to the film's look."

Setting the Tone
Summer movie videogames are in the unique position that they can add to the mythos of a popular franchise. The game may also extend the film director's vision.

"In our first meeting with John Gaeta and the Wachowski brothers, they were very clear on the target audience and the type of game they wanted to create," adds Satterthwaite. "The Speed Racer movie was to be aimed directly at 8-12 year olds, and the game should be too. They also felt that the game should not just be a racing game -- indeed, they didn't even mind if it wasn't a racing game at all… What was most important to them was that it should be a kinetic battle between cars with enough energy to have the kids actually jumping around the room while playing it. (This was one of the primary reasons why we led with the game on Wii)."

This meeting provided a bit of a conceptual challenge as, traditionally, the future racer genre appeals to hardcore gamers rather than kids -- and it's usually about twitchy finesses on the controls rather than high energy vehicle collisions. But the Wachowski brothers had a name for vehicle-vehicle fighting: 'Car Fu' and that single phrase was enough to get the imagination flowing. When we then got to see a previs short of their vision for the movie, we knew that we could make something really fun."