On Licenses That Should Be Made Into Games

Ant writes "GameSpy has an article discussing their favorite ideas for licenses that should be made into games, but haven't made the transition yet." The piece, thankfully, notes that we "often get slammed with hideously inappropriate or just badly implemented and misbegotten licensed creations", but also argues: "For every Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Pirates of the Caribbean, or Superman for the N64, we'll occasionally get a Tron 2.0, or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic", before picking The Road Warrior, Lone Wolf and Cub, and Ender's Game, among others, as licenses they'd like to see made into games. Which licenses do you think could survive the transition to games intact?

Comments

Ender's Game a Game?

[peripatetic_bum]

When I first read this I was thinking, you want to make psychological torture a game? (then I remembered daikatana) but seriously, I was thinking that while Ender's game is probably one of the best science fiction books I am trying to think how one would make it a game that needs to be made

1. The initall battle seens at battle school never really were about the battle but about Ender being tested to see just how much they could push him before he broke. ie Could they push him more than the enemy could and of course we find out (at least I think so) that "we" pushed him much harder than any space-faring alien race could, and it made much about our nature and what we will do achieve them

2. I was thinking about the space seens but I tell you, they were always abstract in the book , and I think the closest thing I can think of, is HomeWorld2, again a game that's already been made and made well

anyway, would care to hear your thoughs

Re:Ender's Game a Game?

[Rallion]

More on why the battle room/space battles from the book would make terrible games. They aren't things you can play with a keyboard or a controller. They're about command, and that's voice--and having teammates that can understand you. It's a neat idea, sure, but an impractical one. The only way to get it is to make it an online game, with one large team against another. That doesn't work with battle room games because there's no control scheme on earth that you could use to control a player, and there's no way that I can accept a space battle where the Formics are played by humans.

I can't think of any way to do it that could work and still be worth calling Ender's Game.

Re:Ender's Game a Game?

[Rallion]

I doubt the stuff Ender does would really be doable in game--tying the soldiers together, making assault craft out of soldiers before they even enter the battle room...

Otherworld or Well of Souls

[millia]

boy, i don't know if anybody could make a mmog (or rpg) out of it, but the whole time i was reading the otherworld series, i envisioned it as a game.
it would probably be too expensive to make it into a stand-alone game, but not as a multiplayer game.
in a similar vein would be Chalker's Well of Souls series. 1500, if memory serves, worlds to explore? i'd pay $20 a month for each of those.

Dune

[eggstasy]

I must have played every single Dune related game ever made, I am quite the Dune fan. But no game has even begun to capture the slightest glimpse of the amazing work of Frank Herbert. I would really like to see Black Isle (makers of Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment) make a Dune RPG, and at least try to decently cover the story of the first book instead of making up idiotic deviations. If not them, then someone with the slightest bit of a clue.
I still think the best Dune game so far was the first, made by Cryo back in 1991. The CD version was particularly nice, but now Cryo is dead so I guess it's about time someone gave it another shot. The new Sci-Fi channel mini-series have been drawing attention to the "Duniverse" so it seems like a good time to get something like this off the ground.

Running Man

[JabberWokky]

Running Man the movie (not the original story). Colorful world, gimmicky bosses, lots of "levels".

That said, it would probably have done much better as a 2d platformer in the days of the NES.

--
Evan

Disney's Gummi Bears & the real Lone Wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, the idea of colored bears bouncing around as a result of gummiberry juice ingestion is very appealing to me. Could be a potentially fun game for mindless, fast action, kind of like the Sonic games.

Also, how about a Lone Wolf game not based on LWAC, but on the real Lone Wolf? Make it a Zelda-style game or an RPG, and you're golden. Use memory card data from previous games in the series to keep track of your character's encounters, skillset, and items, just like the character sheets that were used to keep track of your character between volumes in the game book series. God, I miss those books. They got me through so many boring days in elementary school.

Road Warrior has already been done, sort of

[dougmc]

Assuming that the premise of Road Warrior is to drive around in cars with guns, it's already been done in games like Autoduel and Interstate 76. I like to think that both games were pretty successful.

Of course, there's more to the Road Warrior than just driving around, but that should be a large part of it. Done right, it could be pretty cool :)

Lots of cartoon shows...

[Anonymous Coward]

"GI Joe"? "The Transformers"? "Thundercats"?

Stargate SG-1

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since squad based tactical shooter type games started coming out, I've been wanting a more action oriented take on the genre using the Stargate SG-1 license, but I'd rather control some other team than SG-1 itself so that there could be some actual character development across missions. The thought of strolling around the SGC between missions, attending briefings with General Hammond and Colonel MacGuyver, and then walking through the Stargate to some distant planet on a diplomatic mission that goes sour as Jaffa start invading just makes me giddy. They could even use the time for dialing the Stargate and that twisty wormhole animation to hide load times.

well

[DiscoOnTheSide]

I'm a sucker for things that fit into White Wolf's World of Darkness. I felt the Hunter games they made for X-Box (especially Redeemer) were good, and the new Vampire game looks incredible.

That and I would actually like to see a game based off Underworld. It shows potential for a good FPS game, some tactical elements, open story... Of course people would probably bork it up...

Unfortunately you are in the minority

[grahamwest]

Let me preface all this by saying I'm only talking about console games, my data come from sales figures tallied by NPD, which is a commercial reporting service and I define commercial success as sell-through of over 250,000 units.

90% of all videogames launching new properties are commercial failures. This is well above the overall failure rate of 78%. The sad truth is that most gamers stick with familiar themes and simple concepts. The quirky, unusual, original games you and I like (over 20 of the PS2 games on my shelf sold under 100,000 units) just do not pay the bills.

Therefore it behooves us to think about how to make games that we can enjoy but which will also speak to the mass market. My personal opinion is that the real inventiveness is best served in gameplay mechanics and control. Use the licensed theme as a base to build from. The game market is coming close to maturity. It grew and grew through the 80s and early 90s and now it's near a plateau in terms of userbase. One sign of this is the gamer's average age increasing year on year.

Right now there are plenty of relatively new gamers for whom simple action-shooter, driving and hack-slash gameplay is appealing. They'll quickly grow into more sophisticated play concepts, just as today's hardcore gamers did in years past. The people who figure out how to keep that large pool of gamers interested will be the people who succeed in the industry.

road warrior game

[William Joseph Rober]

my wife used to work for a major games company as a senior artist. in or around 1999, george miller was in talks with them to make a ps2 game out of road warrior. A demo tape of rendered footage was made, and much of the game was plotted out. Miller didn't like the game, but the footage grew legs and got bandied around hollywood for a while. I'm surprised it hasn't hit the net as a hoax. I have a copy, but it's only on VHS. I'd be happy to hand it off to a /.er who lives in Australia to get it saved as an mpeg and set loose.

Zombies

[100lbHand]

I have all ways wanted a Zombie MMOG. People get to play survivors, group into clans to defend buildings from the hordes of undead. The great thing about this is it gets rid of camping because the MOBs come to you.

Neverwhere or...

[Anonymous Coward]

anything else by Neil Gaiman for that matter. Good Omens and The Discworld Books would be awesome too, if done correctly.

Starship Troopers

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always thought that Starship Troopers would make a great game. Imagine a MMOFPS similar to Planetside...

Re:Starship Troopers

[jmlyle]

Did that game never come out? I know someone was working on it back in 98. It was going to be the most polygon intensive game ever.

Maybe that's why it didn't come out.

Re:Starship Troopers

[DisKurzion]

Heh, you obviously havn't played starcraft for too long :)

They've had SST maps for years that embody what a good SST game would be: Fast, Fun, and Lots and LOTS of killing.

That being said, yea, I would want a good SST game. Especially since there are SOOO many ways the story can be taken (and that's just from the guy who watched the movie).

I would like to see a MMO FPS/Hack&Slash. People playing as the troopers (low HP, but good weapons) would be FPS, while people playing bugs (high HP, but pretty much only melee attacks) could play from a third person perspective, ala PoP: Sands of Time.

Yea, that would rule. Of course, it probably does sound better in my head than it does here.

Lexx

[Bambi Dee]

While I would certainly like to see a (good) video game based on any of my favourite books, comics or movies, I'm not so sure an Astrid Lindgren, Isabel Allende or Haruki Murakami video game would actually make any more sense than a Mario Brothers novel (not that games can't be more ...cerebral... than that). Maybe "I like it" doesn't mean it'd make a good game. So I'll just nominate "Lexx". It's got... it's got something. Apart from a cheesy heavy metal logo, it's got a lot of things that aren't particularly brilliant or original in and of themselves but don't tend to appear in one and the same show: creepy, absurd, exotic, bizarre, whimsical, moody, silly, dark... There're also lots of things it hasn't got, such as a good reputation, but I can ignore that depressingly well. So many different types of game could be given a Lexx treatment:

Something "vehicle-centric": Fight exponentially growing clouds of Mantrid drones - enjoy the breathtaking view from a balloon suspended between the planets Fire and Water - keep Lyekka from eating Japan...

Action adventures: Escape the frantic to-and-fro of the Heretic-sabotaged "Cluster" - have Poetman show you around ancient Brunnis - visit the Wife Bank...

Strategy: Have Prince and Kai play for your life a la "Battle Chess"...

First Person Fast-Away-Runners: Take a ride on the Narcolounger - meet the crazed inhabitants of K-Town and the Tunnels...

Musical/dancing games: Re-enact Brunnen-G history to the tune of German nursery songs - sing "Row, row, row your boat" with the other trees in Oberon's forest...

Not to mention dating sims: frustrate yourself swooning for the dead guy/any woman who won't try to eat you...

And all of that without the bother of digging for trade-able minerals, shopping for weapon systems and blowing up countless petty space pirates and whatever else tends to make sci-fi games such a hassle sometimes. Nor would anybody care about "continuity", "canon", "plot holes" or whatever else Trek fans get to worry about all the time.

Hunhh... I think I might actually buy that. Scary thought.

Larry Niven's Known Space / Ringworld

[KE1LR]

Known Space is a fairly well-developed environment at this point... with Humans and Kzinti occasionally duking it out, the Puppeteers pulling their strings, the Outsiders occasionally dropping a wild card and the pre-history of the Pak and the Slavers, there's lots of interesting stuff going on in the world.

However, the books and stories that defined this world have largely petered out - Niven seems to have run out of ideas after three trips to the Ringworld and there can only be so many "Man-Kzin Wars XX" books before they all look like the same thing.

There was a Ringworld-based game years ago. It played kind of like the Space Quest series but without the tongue-in-cheek attitude. I think Known Space would be a great place to roll out any or all of the current game genres (RTS, RPG, FPS...)

The first time I stood on Halo and lifted my viewpoint to the "arch o'er the world" I realized that they... almost had it.