3rd Light Digital Media. The talented 3rd Light Digital Media video crew (from left to right): Vanessa J. Martinez, Andrew Tokuda and Janecke Hausken.

Seeking a powerful, economical way to convey the excitement and action of games, Future Network (formerly Imagine Media), publishers of “PSM: 100% Independent PlayStation 2 Magazine,” turned to Tokuda and his two partners at 3rd Light to author a one-time promotional DVD to tuck into every newsstand copy of the magazine.

The Video Guy
“We thought it would be a cool idea to show readers of the magazine actual movies of PS2 games, instead of simply stills,” says Chris Slate, editor-in-chief of “PSM.” Slate called on Tokuda, who he’d known as “the video guy” for “MacAddict” magazine.

“Future Network is known for editorial teams and magazines with personality,” says Tokuda, “so we needed to capture that aspect as well as the content itself. We used snappy graphics, added some cool effects and put it all in a nice, interactive package with MTV-like playback.”

The “one-time” promotional disc, packed with game footage, trailers of PlayStation 2 games, exclusive interviews and other exciting extras, all accessible via an interactive menu, was so successful that 3rd Light has already produced three additional DVDs for “PSM,” with more on the way.

It Had to be DVD
“There’s not enough room on a CD for all the gameplay that the ‘PSM’ disc entailed. Also, because they’re dealing with a console gaming community, they needed something that didn’t require a computer for playback,” says Tokuda. “With the DVD format, it was no problem to include full-screen video and interactive menus, and the disc plays on a regular or PlayStation 2 DVD player. DVD was the natural choice for this project.”

3rd Light used DVD Studio Pro to author the disc. “DVD Studio Pro is very ‘drag-and-drop,’ which is extremely important for creative people. It’s like the difference between Web developers who do code and Web developers who use a WYSIWYG user interface: we’re not code jockeys,” says Tokuda.

Next page: Showcasing Games on DVD