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Full-motion video (FMV) is avideo game narration technique that relies upon pre-recorded video files (rather thansprites,vectors, or3D models) to display action in the game. While many games feature FMVs as a way to present information duringcutscenes, games that are primarily presented through FMVs are referred to as full-motion video games orinteractive movies. Recent full motion video games often combine the use of CGI/green screens and in-game graphics for immersion.
The early 1980s saw almost exclusive use of theLaserDisc for FMV games. Many arcade games used the technology but it was ultimately considered to be a fad and fell out of use. In the early 1990s FMV games had a resurgence of interest, the proliferation ofoptical discs gave rise to a slew of original FMV-based computer games such as Night Trap (1992), The 7th Guest (1993), Voyeur (1993), Phantasmagoria (1995), and Daryl F. Gates' Police Quest: SWAT (1995). The introduction of CD-based consoles like 3DO, CD-i, and Sega CD brought the concept of interactive FMV gameplay. Companies such as Digital Pictures and American Laser Games were formed to produce full-motion video games.
As thevideo game industry was emerging from its niche status into the mainstream—by 1994 it was two-and-a-half times larger than Hollywood by revenue[citation needed]—Hollywood began to make inroads into the growing market. In 1994,Sony'sJohnny Mnemonic became the first video game title produced by a film studio. Soon thereafter, video game heavyweightElectronic Arts featured well-known Hollywood talent such asMark Hamill,Tom Wilson andJohn Spencer in their critically acclaimed titlesWing Commander III andIV, setting the stage for amore expansive tie-up between the movie and video game industries. With the continual improvement of in-gameCGI, FMV as a major gameplay component had eventually disappeared because of the limited gameplay options it allowed.
The first wave of FMV games originated inarcades in 1983 withlaserdisc video games, notablyAstron Belt fromSega andDragon's Lair fromCinematronics. They usedLaserdiscs to store the video used in the game, which allowed for very high quality visuals compared to contemporary arcade games of the era. A number of arcade games using FMV with Laserdiscs were released over the next three years and the technology was touted as the future of video games. Some games released in this era reused video footage from other sources while others had it purpose made.Bega's Battle,Cliff Hanger andFirefox reused footage, while titles likeSpace Ace,Time Gal,Thayer's Quest,Super Don Quix-ote andCobra Command were entirely original.
The use ofpre-rendered3D computer graphics for video sequences also date back to two arcade laserdisc games introduced in 1983:Interstellar,[1][2] introduced byFunai at theAM Show in September,[3] andStar Rider,[4] introduced byWilliams Electronics at the AMOA show in October.[5]
The limited nature of FMV, high price to play (50 cents in an era where 25 cents was standard), high cost of the hardware and problems with reliability quickly took its toll on the buzz surrounding these games and their popularity diminished.[6] By 1985, the allure of FMV and the Laserdisc had worn off, and the technology had disappeared from arcades by the end of 1987. RDI Video Systems (Thayer's Quest) had branched out into making a home console called the Halcyon, but it failed and they went bankrupt. Cinematronics's fortunes fared little better and they were bought out byTradewest in 1987. Companies such asAtari canceled more prototype Laserdisc games than they released. Others, likeUniversal, stopped development on games after only one release despite announcing several titles.
After only a few years, the technology had improved and Laserdisc players were more reliable. In addition, costs had come down and the average price to play a game had gone up. These factors caused a resurgence of the popularity of Laserdiscs games in the arcade.American Laser Games released alight gun shooting game calledMad Dog McCree in 1990, which was an instant hit.[7] Then, in 1991 withWho Shot Johnny Rock?, American Laser alone would go on to lease almost a dozen Laserdisc games over the next few years and many other companies again rushed to release titles using the technology.Dragon's Lair II, a title which had been shelved years earlier, was released byLeland to strong sales.Time Traveler further pushed the technology by using special projection technology to give the appearance of 3D visuals.
Again, the fad passed quickly. The limited nature of the Laserdisc hampered interactivity and limited replayability, a key weakness in arcade games. American Laser, the chief producer of Laserdisc games during this era, had stopped making arcade games in 1994 and most other companies switched over to newer technologies around the same time. With the rise of3D graphics and the introduction ofhard drives andCD-ROMs to arcades, the large, expensive and small-capacity Laserdisc could not compete and disappeared. While CDs would see some use in the mid and late 1990s, it was hard drives,GD-ROMs andDVD-ROMs that caused the largest jump in FMV use in the arcade. Their very large capacities and mature, reliable technology allowed for much cheaper hardware than traditional hardware systems, and FMV cut-scenes became commonplace. FMV as a major gameplay component had disappeared by this time because of the limited gameplay options it allowed.
In 1984, a home console system called theHalcyon was released by RDI Video Systems that used Laserdiscs for its games and was to feature ports of several popular Laserdisc arcade games of the day. It used FMV exclusively, but the company folded after releasing only two titles for the system. TheLaserActive fromPioneer would try the technology again in 1994, but it too failed.
By the early 1990s whenPCs and consoles moved to creating games on aCD, they became technically capable of utilizing more than a few minutes' worth of movies in a game. This gave rise to a slew of original FMV-basedcomputer games such asNight Trap (1992),The 7th Guest (1993),Voyeur (1993),Phantasmagoria (1995), andDaryl F. Gates' Police Quest: SWAT (1995). Other titles were simply scaled down ports of Laserdisc arcade games, some of them a decade old by this time. Regardless of their sources, theseFMV games frequently usedB-movie and TV actors and promised to create the experience of playing an interactive movie or animation. However, production values were quite low with amateurish sets, lighting, costumes, and special effects. Animated titles either cobbled together footage from oldanime or used cheaper overseas animation producers to create their footage. In addition, the video quality in these early games was low, and the gameplay frequently did not live up to thehype becomingwell-known failures in video gaming. At this time, consoles like3DO,CD-i, andSega CD borrowed this concept for several low-qualityinteractive games. Companies such asDigital Pictures andAmerican Laser Games were formed to produce full-motion video games.
Also, the "multimedia" phenomenon that was exploding in popularity at the time increased the popularity of FMV because consumers were excited by this new emerging interactive technology. The personal computer was rapidly evolving during the early-to-mid 1990s from a simple text-based productivity device into a home entertainment machine. Gaming itself was also emerging from its niche market into the mainstream with the release of easier-to-use and more powerful operating systems, such as Microsoft'sWindows 95, that leveraged continually evolving processing capabilities. Some games like theTex Murphy series combined FMV cutscenes with a virtual world to explore.
Video game consoles too saw incredible gains in presentation quality and contributed to the mass market's growth in awareness of gaming. It was during the 1990s that the video/computer game industry first beat Hollywood in earnings.[8][9][10]Sony made its debut in the console market with the release of the32-bitPlayStation. The PlayStation was probably the first console to popularize FMVs (as opposed to earlier usage of FMV which was seen as a passing fad). A part of the machine's hardware was a dedicatedM-JPEG processing unit which enabled far superior quality relative to other platforms of the time. The FMVs inFinal Fantasy VIII, for example, were marketed as movie-quality at the time.
FMVs in games today typically consist of high-quality pre-rendered video sequences (CGI). These sequences are created in similar ways as computer generated effects in movies. Use of FMV as a selling point or focus has diminished in modern times. This is primarily due to graphical advancements in modern video game systems making it possible for in-game cinematics to have just as impressive visual quality. Digitized video footage of real actors in games generally ended for mainstream games in the early 2000s with a few exceptions such asAce Combat Zero: The Belkan War released in 2006,Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars released in 2007,Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure released in 2014,Her Story andGuitar Hero Live released in 2015, the2015 reboot ofNeed for Speed, andObduction released in 2016.
The early 1980s saw the almost exclusive use of the Laserdisc for FMV games. Many arcade games used the technology but it was ultimately considered a fad and fell out of use. At least one arcade game,NFL Football from Bally/Midway, usedCEDs to play its video. Some 1970s eraNintendogames used film and projectors. formats had the advantage of offering full frame video and sound without the quality problems of compressed video that would plague later formats like CDs.
With the re-popularization of FMV games in the early 1990s following the advent of CD-ROM, higher-end developers usually created their own custom FMV formats to suit their needs. Early FMV titles used game-specific proprietary video renderers optimized for the content of the video (e.g.,live-action vs.animated), because CPUs of the day were incapable of playing back real-timeMPEG-1 until the fastest486 andPentium CPUs arrived. Consoles, on the other hand, either used a third-party codec (e.g.,Cinepak forSega CD games) or used their own proprietary format (e.g. the PhilipsCD-i). Video quality steadily increased as CPUs became more powerful to support higher quality video compression and decompression.The 7th Guest, one of the first megahit multiple-CD-ROM games, was one of the first games to featuretransparent quality 640x320 FMV at 15 frames per second in a custom format designed by programmerGraeme Devine.
Other examples of this would beSierra's VMD (Video and Music Data) format, used in games likeGabriel Knight 2 andPhantasmagoria, orWestwood Studios'VQA format, used in most Westwood games made from the mid-1990s up until 2000sCommand & Conquer: Tiberian Sun Firestorm. These video formats initially offered very limited video quality, due to the limitations of the machines the games needed to run on. Ghosting and distortion of high-motion scenes, heavypixelization, and limited color palettes were prominent visual problems. However, each game pushed the technological envelope and was typically seen as impressive even with quality issues.
Johnny Mnemonic: The Interactive Action Movie, was the first FMV title made by aHollywood studio.Sony Imagesoft spent over $3 million on the title.[11] Instead of piecing together the title with filmed assets from their movie (directed byRobert Longo) of the same name, Sony hired Propaganda Code director Douglas Gayeton to write and film an entirely new storyline for the property. The CD-ROM's interactivity was made possible with the Cine-Active engine, based on theQuickTime 2.0 codec.
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger was one of the most significant FMV titles made in 1994, featuring big-name Hollywood actors. The video quality in the game suffered significantly from the aforementioned problems and was almost visually indecipherable in parts; however, this did not stop the title from earning significant praise for its innovative gameplay/FMV combination. Its sequel,Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom, used a similar custom movie codec in its CD-ROM release, but a later limited-volumeDVD-ROM release sawMPEG-2 DVD-quality movies that far exceeded the original CD release in quality. A hardware decoder card was required at the time to play back the DVD-quality video on a PC. Wing Commander IV was also the first game to have used actual film (rather than video tape) to record the FMV scenes which attributed to the ability to create a DVD-quality transfer.
An exception to the rule wasThe 11th Hour, the sequel toThe 7th Guest.11th Hour featured 640×480 FMV at 30 frames-per-second on 4 CDs. The development team had worked for three years on developing a format that could handle the video, as the director of the live-action sequences had not shot the FMV sequences in a way that could be easily compressed. However, this proved to be the game's downfall, as most computers of the day could not play the full-resolution video. Users were usually forced to select an option which played the videos at a quarter-size resolution in black-and-white.
As FMV established itself in the market as a growing game technology, a small company calledRAD Game Tools appeared on the market with their 256-color FMV formatSmacker. Developers took to the format, and the format ended up being used in over 3,000, largely PC-based games.[12]
With the launch of consoles with built-in optical storage (theSega Saturn and Sony'sPlayStation) console manufacturers began more actively taking it upon themselves to provide higher quality FMV capabilities to developers. Sony included optimizations in their hardware for their MDEC (motion decompression) technology, and Sega chose the software route. Sega worked both internally on optimizing technology such asCinepak, and externally by licensing video decompression technology from the New York-basedDuck Corporation. While Duck's offering won praise for its quality (showcased in games likeEnemy Zero, major Launch titles in the US and the Saturn adaptations of console hits from theSega AM2 arcade group) the opaque licensing and royalty structure impeded widespread adoption outside of Japanese and larger US developers.
Duck'sTrueMotion technology was extended to the PC and Macintosh as well, showcased in the high-profileStar Trek: Borg andStar Trek: Klingon,The X-Files Game,Final Fantasy VII, and the highly anticipated sequel toPhantasmagoria,Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh and other titles. It was reported that versions for PlayStation andGameCube were developed, but the last console version released was for Sega's short-livedDreamcast.
As the popularity of games loaded with live-action and FMV faded out in the late 1990s, and with Smacker becoming outdated in the world of 16-bit color games, RAD introduced a new true-color format,Bink video. Developers quickly took to the format because of its high compression ratios and videogame-tailored features. The format is still one of the most popular FMV formats used in games today. 4,000 games have used Bink, and the number is still growing.[13]
In the late '90s, Duck largely shelved its support for the console market (likely fueled by the direct support for DVD support in newer generation consoles) and focused its formats instead on internet delivered video. Duck went public asOn2 Technologies and later generations of its technology was licensed byAdobe,Skype and was eventually bought (along with the company) by Google as the foundation forWebM. An early open source version of that work also appears as the renamedTheora codec of theXiph Project.
Windows Media Video,DivX,Flash Video,Theora andWebM are also now major players in the market.DivX is used in severalGameCube games, includingStar Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike.
Hollywood's aim, of course, is to tap into the $7 billion that Americans pour into arcade games each year — and the $6 billion they spend on home versions for Nintendo and Sega game machines. Combined, it's a market nearly 2 ½ times the size of the $5 billion movie box office.
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