Turbine Raises $40M from Time Warner and Friends

Art is expensive. Particularly electronic, interactive art that allows its audience to participate in everything from the slaying of Barrow-Wights, to break-neck police chases through crowded, virtual streets. As hardware and software developers continue to push the envelope of the video game experience – progressing from little more than colorful distractions (Frogger and Pong come to mind) to complex interactive narratives – the production of their art becomes more costly.

An unfathomably enormous amount of man-hours goes into the construction of games the likes of the recent smash hit Grand Theft Auto IV. Today, Pong and Frogger only satisfy if the player’s avatar can play them on a decrepit old arcade machine inside a virtual bar so luminescent with detail that one can practically smell the urine stain in the corner.
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