Steven Spielberg is one of the most renowned directors in Hollywood and has enjoyed enormous success with his films. But something that many cinephiles do not know is that the Hollywood filmmaker was always into video games and has made a big contribution to the video games industry. Steven Spielberg helmed an iconic first-person shooter game franchise that went on to receive an Academy Award, a milestone no other game franchise had ever achieved.
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Steven Spielberg’s Game Franchise is the Only One to Ever Win an Oscar
Steven Spielberg created the Medal of Honor franchise while he was working on his 1998 war film Saving Private Ryan. The development of the first Medal of Honor game started in 1997 and it was later released in 1999. The game is set at the end of WW2 where players needed to complete objectives for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the commanders in the game. Players had over 20 missions such as shooting Nazis, planting bombs, sneaking through fortified structures, shutting down war operations, and more.
Medal of Honor went on to become a big hit and the game franchise won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021 for its 2020 game Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, which had a short documentary called Colette in the gallery mode of the game.
Steven Spielberg could be considered the pioneer of first-person shooter titles as he recognized the potential of the rapidly growing video games industry to entertain as well as educate the younger generations. Around 16 Medal of Honor games were released by Spielberg’s DreamWorks, Electronic Arts, and other game companies between 1999 and 2012, including sequels and spin-offs.
How did the Idea of the Medal of Honor franchise Come to Steven Spielberg?
The main idea for the game originated with Steven Spielberg’s interest in World War 2 particularly when he saw his son playing the cult-hit James Bond game, GoldenEye 007 on Nintendo 64. The director wanted to create a game that could be both entertaining and educational and it came to light during the production of Saving Private Ryan.
Soon Spielberg met with his team and shared his idea for a first-person shooter game set in the 2nd World War, the same as Saving Private Ryan, and wanted to recreate that same level of intensity as the film. According to Farout Magazine, in the 2012 book, Generation Xbox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood, author Jamie Russell explained how Steven Spielberg approached to make Medal of Honor. He stated,
“Spielberg, who was then in post-production on Saving Private Ryan came into the Dreamworks Interactive offices and outlined his idea. He saw Saving Private Ryan as an educational experience as much as an entertainment property… He’d watched his teenage son and his friends play Goldeneye on Nintendo 64. Could Dreamworks build a World War II shooter, he wondered, that would let them learn about the conflict through playing?”
Peter Hirschmann, the producer of the game also said that developers were unsure about it and said that it’s been forever since WW2 and gamers are now interested in something like laser guns. The game was also almost canceled as violent games were very controversial those days, and the game was criticized by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
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However, Spielberg stood firm with his idea and maintained that the game’s setting would make it an astonishing success. This wasn’t the only stint of Spielberg with video games as he signed a contract with EA in 2005 to make three videogames the first game that was released was Boom Blox, an action puzzler game designed by Spielberg and got a good response from the gaming community but did not do very well in the long run.
Source: Farout Magazine
