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

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 :)

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.

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.