Gamers star in The Great Escape

By Jo Twist
BBC News Online technology reporter

Eight gamers are preparing for their screen debut, not on the movie screen, but on computer monitors in the game version of The Great Escape film.

Steve McQueen digitally resurrected for the game

One of them is Michael Shaw, who plays James Garner's part of Flight Lt Bob Anthony "The Scrounger" Hendley.

Hendley is one of the four playable characters to feature in the new stealth-action game released at the end of the month.

The lucky eight are winners of a competition launched last year by SCi Games, offering members of the public the chance to star in the prison adventure.

SCi had already secured the rights to digitally re-create Steve McQueen, using original voice recordings.

To save them from a long and expensive process however, they replaced other big-name stars like Garner and Richard Attenborough with members of the public.

No goatees allowed

More than 500 people e-mailed photos of their faces in the hope they would be picked.

Michael Shaw as the game's Hendley

After sifting through the good, the bad and the ugly, the game's creators finally settled on the eight who not only had the look and build of the real-life prisoners on which the book was based, but also whose look "fitted in" with the era.

"We had a lot of people with goatees and piercings but we wanted a slightly more classic look rather than off the wall look," Patrick O'Luanaigh, creative director of SCi Games, told BBC News Online.

Best known for the final sequence in which Steve McQueen makes a heroic motorbike jump to freedom, the Great Escape film centres on the largest mass breakout in history from the infamous Stalag Luft III prisoner of war camp.

Key scenes are in the game, but also a couple of extra sections explaining how the characters ended up at Stalag Luft III.

More to come

Michael Shaw thinks it is "pretty cool" to be playing Hendley and he explained why he entered: "I think it may have been a moment of pure vanity.

GETTING IN THE GAME Photos taken from all angles with digital cameras Game artists use images to trace face and head shape Photos then used to texture map the faces Process for each face takes about a month on and off Four-month prototype and testing period

"I am a big fan of video games and thought it would be really fun to be a part of one. But I set about doing it before I really paused to consider why I wanted to do it - the Great Escape is a great movie."

Personal involvement in games has become a big marketing tool for game companies and is something Mr O'Luanaigh says SCi Games are planning to do again.

"It allows us to get realistic looking people into games without paying thousands of pounds to use the faces of famous actors.

"We are starting work on Reservoir Dogs based on Quentin Tarantino's film. I don't see any reason why that the same process can't be used for that."

After two years in production, The Great Escape is released on 29 August for Xbox, PlayStation 2 and PC.