"Towards Convergence," the theme for this year's MILIA conference, held February 7-11 in Cannes, provided a great opportunity for the interactive and animation communities to come together to see if they could turn hot animation properties into equally hot interactive games. Professionals from the interactive community were on hand as panelists to provide their expertise, insight, and advice to animation producers who were eager to find out how they could take existing linear properties into the non-linear world. Since every property is unique, and every production company has their own strengths, no two scenarios were handled the same. The panelists, who included the likes of Veronique Chanlandar, Business Development Manger at Ubisoft, Michel Cassius, European Director for New Business with EA, Alan Gershenfeld, Sr. VP at Activision, interactive journalist guru Arnaud Chaudron, Matt Costello, Creative Director of Polar productions, and myself, Deborah Todd, a writer and designer of award winning interactive titles, gave the animation presenters their virtual money's worth of expert interactive advice.

Gaumont's series Space Goofs has plenty of elements to make it a multimedia game, but how should they do it? © Gaumont.Infogrames and Warner Bros.

The Projects
The animation projects were presented in two categories the "teen to adult" market, and the "children's market." However, in the interactive world, as in animation, these lines aren't so easy to draw in the proverbial sand. What looks, tastes, and feels like a children's animation series could come out on the flip side as an interactive property for teens or even adults.

The first session, held on Sunday, February 8, was for properties that could cross over into the teen-to-adult market. The Tuesday, February 10 session was aimed at the children's market. This, of course, was coordinated based on how these shows play in their current form in the television market. There were some properties that had the potential to cover multiple markets young children, older kids, and even adults. But there were others that didn't show any promise as interactive games. The primary question that needs to be answered before beginning any development on a game is, "Why does thishave to be interactive?" If the answer is something along the lines of, "Because everybody else is getting into it, and wouldn't it be great if our series could be a game too," it's a recipe for failure. In this business, failure is a very expensive proposition.

Interactive Entertainment signed an agreement this year to develop games based on Looney Tunes characters. Tasmanian Express is coming to the Nintendo 64 platform in spring 1999. © Warner Bros.

Major Players Attended
Having major companies like Saban and Gaumont show up to tout their very polished, very sophisticated series provided some great contrast for the sessions. Both of these companies brought along series that had strong potential in the interactive arena. Saban could pretty much pick the platform it wanted to develop Diabolik. It's strong enough to hold up as a PC RPG (roll-playing game), as an arcade twitch game, or as a PlayStation title with some story wrap. The characters were well-developed and solid graphics were very consistent and held up for the "10 year-old boy" standard. Furthermore, the overall story wrap provided a great environment in which to work and could be easily expanded.

Gaumont, best known for their foray into the feature film business with The Fifth element, brought along a series that's currently airing on Fox's afternoon ine-up. Space Goofs has plenty of elements to make it a multimedia game, but what should Gaumont do with it? The panelists felt Gaumont should: 1.) work ith Fox's interactive division to publish a game, or 2.) develop the game themselves in-house. Gamuont has a multimedia division, and taking a strong existing property like Space Goofs and having total creative input and business decision-making privileges seemed to make this the perfect opportunity for them to show their chops. Gaumont seemed reluctant though to get that far into the interactive business, but perhaps was receptive enough to at least consider it.

Passion is a Plus
The key element for smaller companies who want to turn their ideas into any kind of property is passion. Two French companies showed up with good animation projects backed by a healthy supply of passion. No doubt we will see their games on the market within the next few years in some form.

One such company based in Paris is Master's Copyright. Their project, Attila &Yunna, is an animated series based around an unlikely hero, Attila the Hun. Now, typically, this could be a problem he's not exactly well loved. However, on the positive side, not many kids, or adults for that matter, really know who Attila the Hun is, nor do I imagine they would care if they were playing a really cool video game where they could kick some major butt. Attila & Yunna has a wonderful graphic design, and a strong female character, Yunna, which is a nice bonus. The characters are appealing, the stories are compelling, and they have great weapons. Panelists felt this property has the potential for a PC Age-of-Empires-type game, a PC RPG, an edutainment title (remember the history), or an arcade game with or without story. How to proceed from here? They need to pick which platform they'd like to attack first, then hook up with a developer who thinks this game is as cool as they do. Two publishers told these folks to come and talk to them when they get the game figured out. Plenty of promise here.