Matt Damon is totally chill about video games now
Matt Damon admitted during a Monday "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit that he's interested in working on a video game.
I've never been approached to do that, I'd totally be into it. I'm really interested to see where entertainment heads as these video games, the graphics are getting so good, and VR is getting so good, and you know, what's going to happen to movies? What are the implications for movies, and does this morph into a new kind of story telling, and what is that, and can I be a part of it? You know, ultimately those of us who make movies are storytellers and we want to gather you around and tell you stories. If gaming is the way to do that I'm all for looking into it, but nobody has asked me as of yet.
It's a seeming change for an actor who refused to lend his likeness or voice to The Bourne Conspiracy, a decent-but-flawed 2008 video game based on the Damon-led blockbuster action series. In fairness, Damon implied at the time that it wasn't the kind of game he wanted to see.
"I lobbied hard to not make a first-person-shooter game but to make it more like Myst, which was a great, interesting puzzle you tried to solve — you know, to play with his amnesia or his memory," Damon told The Boston Globe in 2008.
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"They weren't interested. They made the [game] anyway, without my likeness." He then added: "I'd like to think that I at least made them more aware of the issues. That's step one. Step two is changing behavior."
High Moon Studios, the game's developer, did approach Damon's people -- they never met with him one-on-one -- about getting the actor involved. But Meelat Sadat, the studio's marketing and PR head at the time (who admitted to MTV that he didn't know about the Myst pitch) detected a general lack of interest.
"We got the sense that his interest in games overall was marginal, and we decided to move away from celebrity involvement and take our Bourne in an original direction," Sadat said.
Remember that The Bourne Conspiracy came out in 2008. Games have evolved significantly over the past eight years and from more than just a technical standpoint.
Releases like Gone Home and Journey have opened players' eyes to non-violent or minimally violent games that have more to impart than the visceral satisfaction of shooting a virtual threat in the face. Time and endlessly creative developers have proven that games can elicit a wide range of emotions.
There will always be a place for violent action games, but it's also easy to imagine Damon's "let's make Bourne like Myst" angle being taken much more seriously in this day and age.
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Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
