DKP Effects recently partnered with Rhino Home Video and Warner Strategic Marketing to bring a new interactivity to the booming DVD format: DVDn. The first title, SCOURGE OF WORLDS: A DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ADVENTURE ($24.95), released earlier this summer, is intended to be a true hybrid of features and gaming. DVDn allows you to choose your own plots with more than 20 decision points, 990 possible combinations and four different endings, all wrapped in more than 200 minutes of 3D CG animation. DKP president Dan Krech also directed SCOURGE OF WORLDS. A collector's edition with even more footage will be released later in the fall.
The DVDn partners are hoping to create a whole new revenue stream for studios, video game publishers and other content creators. Companies can now release a title on a regular DVD, as a video game and also on DVDn without cannibalizing their audience. Toronto-based DKP, the company that invented DVDn, says it has been approached by major studios about bringing their properties to new audiences via this new form of hybrid entertainment. Until now, older technology such as CD-ROMs, simply couldn't support this kind of storytelling in a compelling way. DKP acquired the interactive rights to DUNGEONS & DRAGONS from Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast and produced this first DVDn title within only nine months.
Long ago, in a land ravaged by strife, an ancient race of mages crafted the ultimate weapon to destroy their enemies and end all wars. They called it the Aryx Orthian, the Scourge of the Worlds. Hidden safely for hundreds of years, the Scourge is now sought by a new swarm of darkness threatening to unleash its secrets. A grief stricken cleric defies his own holy order to search out the Scourge of Worlds in its hiding place deep within the lifeless wastes of the sea of dust-desiring to seize this key to incredible power for himself. To save the world, three fearless heroes-Redgar the human warrior, Lidda the rogue halfling, and Mialee the elf wizard-must embark on a treacherous quest and choose between honor and evil, between life and death. But the choice is not theirs. It is the viewers'
DKP Effects Inc., one of Canada's largest 3-D animation, effects and compositing houses, has gained a reputation for excellence in producing high-end digital visual images for feature films (X-MEN), commercials, television series (upcoming GAME OVER for UPN) and TV movies.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
