James Cameron's "Avatar" movie game was one of the more unexpected announcements at this year's E3. released in 2009, the film was one of the highest grossing films of all time, but nowadays, while we may remember the spectacle, we don't necessarily remember the plot details. The CGI was spectacular, seeing it in 3D was a novelty, and the main character's name is ....... Was it Jake? [The upcoming game "Avatar: Frontier of Pandora" avoids this problem entirely; in an interview with VentureBeat, Luigi Priore, vice president of Disney and Pixar Games, explains their approach.

"There was a time, 15 or 20 years ago, when playing a movie was something. Buy the game, play the movie. It's like the classic Aladdin game from Sega Genesis. Play the movie. That was popular then, but gamers now expect much more. They want to interact with their favorite characters and worlds, they want to play new stories and do new things with those characters and worlds."

Rather than treading forgotten ground again, Avatar: Frontier of Pandora seeks to explore the "amazing science fiction world" that the original Avatar built, which Priore describes as "a great playground to play in." It's a strange approach to the setting, I think, indeed, as if nothing more than cool or beautiful exists.

"The whole idea is to be part of the story of the huge Pandora franchise, but not a 'play the movie' game. It's a whole new open world, with new characters. So it's 'Frontier of Pandora. The setting is another frontier, another area of the moon of Pandora," he said. [Since the original storyline was centered on colonialism, inviting players to explore a new "frontier" on Pandora is a loaded statement, to say the least. This is because the canonical worldview of "Avatar" is to be extended not only in this game, but also in three more films. One of them, Avatar 2, will be released next year along with Frontier of Pandora.

The full interview can be read on VentureBeat, where you can learn more about Disney's approach to gaming, including Star Wars, and the new Sea of Thieves expansion.