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That Steven Spielberg Video Game LMNO Is Never Coming Out

jefferiestubes8

jefferiestubes8

Commodore
Commodore
What people were really waiting for was LMNO, an ambitious, story-driven sci-fi project that was announced at the same time. A 2007 article from Newsweek--written by one N'Gai Croal--describes the game:
The second game, code-named LMNO and made for Xbox 360 and PS3, can be described as "North by Northwest" meets "E.T." --if E.T. were female, grown up and, um, hot. You don't play as the girl, however. You're an ex-secret agent, and the bond that you forge while on the run with the computer-controlled woman--good, bad, indifferent--determines the nature of her special abilities and the ways in which she'll assist you. Says Spielberg: "The challenge is, can the game have an emotional impact on players while they are actively manipulating the world?" Based on the clever ways in which he and EA are extracting a genuine performance from their digital Eve--complete with eyes that widen, lips that curl and translucent skin that lights up in different colors to express her quicksilver moods--we think Spielberg's got yet another hit on his hands.
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But it seems like LMNO--pronounced 'elemental'--will never see the light of day. Developer Jake Kazdal--an industry veteran who worked at the EA LA studio, as well as at Sega and other companies--went on Gamasutra's podcast and told the story of how politics seemingly killed the game.
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The long-brewing sci-fi game from the man who gave us "E.T." ain't ever happening.
10/12/2010

http://www.ifc.com/news/2010/10/ea-yeah-that-one-steven-spielb.php

aw, sounded cool though.
 
EA mostly kept it under wraps, other than vague "Spielberg is working with us" comments. Sort of like when Peter Jackson was supposed to be making a Halo game.

It's too bad, because it seemed like an interesting game that only Spielberg could have made. No one else probably has the "juice" to make a multi-million dollar game without murdering in it. :lol:

Err, also, that 's the 8-4 podcast, not the Gamasutra podcast. I wonder if the author just typed out the wrong name or something.
 
Kazdal talks about the project 58 minutes into the podcast. He worked on it for 2 and a half years, yikes.
 
Sounds like it could have been cool. Hard to be upset over something Ive never heard about though.
 
i am uncertain of Speilberg as a designer. honestly, i am a little uncertain of Speilberg as a writer. Director, lining up shots for a film, he's awesome. Writing and wrangling Lucas, he's not so hot anymore.

but directing a film and designing a video game are completely different skill sets.
 
The thing is that only Spielberg is big enough to pitch a game without violence... probably in the same way that he was one of the few people who could get funding to make an expensive film about the Holocaust.

Talent or no, his name is probably enough to at least get people to listen to him.
 
i totally get him duping executives and money people into funding his game. i dont get gamers thinking he'd have any expertise in gaming or designing games. he's no more a game designer than your average poster on this board.

as for funding a game without violence? there are plenty of genres devoted to games without violence... puzzle games. LMNO didnt sound like it was "violence free"
 
Of course I'm talking about "AAA" first person narrative based games. You could make an argument for Portal, but as much as everyone turned that game into a shitty meme, the thrust of that game is its puzzles, not its narrative. Even more so if you have nothing invested in the Half Life universe.
Christ, even Heavy Rain had to resort to a crappy SAW story in order to make the game "interesting". No one has figured out how to make interactive "talking" exciting outside of the visual novel (which, quite frankly, is the bulk of all storytelling), so all we do is blow shit up or move things around.

If you read the article though, it seems like they were planning to make a first person free running game and even butted heads against DICE at one point because of Mirror's Edge.

And really, he was mostly the idea man:
Spielberg's role was to sit down with Church and other team members to flesh out the game's concept -- sometimes frequently, sometimes sparsely, depending on his schedule -- and offer feedback. On occasion, EA would even film these meetings and show them to the rest of the team members.
"He'd be super good at picking out certain things," says that same team member. "If [a character] looked a little weird or uncanny or something like that, he'd be like, 'No, you've just got to move her smile in like two teeth and make her eyeballs do this.' And it was like, 'Wow, he's right -- f***. That's weird.' Stuff like that was really neat."
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I mean, when he put his name onto the original Medal of Honor or Boom Blox, I'm sure he wasn't writing code or whatever.
 
i read the article. and i guess it all depends on how you define violence. because according to the article, there was fighting going on in the game. it wasnt all free-running.

She would fight alongside you in combat, use special "psionic energy powers" to do things you couldn't...
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she could team up with Lincoln for cooperative attacks...
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if the player was hesitant, or if the player failed a bunch, she might be like, 'Screw you, I'm gonna be in charge here. I'm going to take charge and run over and beat up these guys. And then I'm gonna be pissed at you for not being much help.'
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sure maybe her attacks are non-violent... maybe she runs up and convinces them hold a birthday cake with both hands, so they can't possibly fight you...

as for being an idea man... eh. anyone can have a great idea. it all comes down to how well that idea is implemented. Spielberg will have a different set of ideas, coming from film directing, but that doesnt mean they can translate well into gameplay.

i tend to feel the same way Ken Levine does about Hollywood and games
why would I want a film director to help me make a game, any more than they would want me to help out with their films?
 
I guess my point is that Spielberg has enough juice to pitch a multi-million dollar game without bald space marines shooting space aliens and not get laughed out of the room because he is Spielberg.

Lucas could too, I suppose, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't care what LucasArts does to the Star Wars or Indiana Jones franchises.
 
from what i've heard, Lucas and LucasArts are very interested in their gaming franchises... it doesnt mean they'll make the smartest of choices for the franchises in terms of giving developers time to fully do justice to a game (Kotor 2)... but you've gotta go through a lot of approvals before you start introducing new characters into their universe.

i wish i could say i feel sorry for spielberg and his game, but i cant. and working with EA... yeah, that's not the best starting move... but hey, i bet he made boat loads of money for coming up with ideas for games and having very little to show for it.
 
Well, I don't know about LA because they keep laying people off and canceling their games.

Anyway, Lucas keeps saying how he's interesting in making a film about the Tuskagee airmen but you bet your ass there will never be a game about the Tuskagee airmen. I'm not even sure how you'd do that, other than build a lame flight sim around a series of cutscenes... which is basically a movie at that point.
 
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