Just a few hours ago Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond and Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner held keynote speeches at the International Film Festival in Berlin, Germany. While the event itself, entitled The Age of Collaboration, was primarily aimed at those in the movie business, it did contain some bits that should be of interest for gamers as well.

Raymond, who contrary to the rest of all speakers went with Dell instead of a Macbook Pro to present her keynote slides, touched on the gaming industry in general as well as Assassin's Creed's development -- pointing out similarities and parallels to film making.

1. Assassin's Creed was four years in development, with more than 300 people working on-site in Montreal, Canada. Plus around 350 additional people off-site from the US and Europe.
2. A historian, who also worked with Ridley Scott on Kingdom of Heaven, cared for the historical accuracy of the game and its setting.
3. They've incorporated expertise of Hollywood professionals such as a writer working on-site, special effects and motion capture guys, director of photography, storyboard artists, ...

Last to present, Jordan Mechner talked about his currently in pre-production Prince of Persia movie and explained in crucial detail, why a 1:1 adaptation of the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time game won't transform into a good movie experience -- only jumping, running around and killing sand monsters is not a Disney/Bruckheimer movie. He also mentioned a few details from the script, like the Prince being the youngest of three brothers and the story taking part just before the hourglass incident -- not sure if that's final though, since production is in the earliest of stages. One thing that struck me as interesting was, that the (incredibly well informed) moderator mentioned two times in a row, that Prince of Persia is planned to be a movie series like Pirates -- Mechner didn't yea or nay though.

Pictured above are from left to right: Moderator Melinda Crane, Ton Roosendaal (blender.org), Matt Hanson (aswarmofangels.com), Jordan Mechner, Jade Raymond and Don Tapscott (newparadigm.com).