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WB Using Game Reviews To Calculate Royalties
Thanks to The Hollywood Reporter for its article discussing Warner Bros. Interactive's decision to use average review scores in calculating the royalty rates videogame makers must pay to WB. The article explains: "Games based on Warner Bros. licenses must achieve at least a 70% rating [calculated via GameRankings.com and similar services], or incur an increase in royalty rates", with WB's Jason Hall commenting: "An escalating royalty rate kicks in to help compensate us for the brand damage... the further away from 70% it gets, the more expensive the royalty rate becomes... If the publisher delivers on what they promised -- to produce a great game -- it's not even an issue." However, Bruno Bonnell, CEO of Atari, makers of Enter The Matrix, which didn't include this contract clause, comments: "We sold four million copies. That's $250 million worldwide... and Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70%? Are they joking?"
Like IGN, Gamespot, and Gamespy don't already get under the table offers to give games better ratings. Read those sites once in a while and you'll realize bias that strong is most likely a paid bias.
What happens when the game publisher alledges the IP owner let the brand go to shit? Make a crap game, licensing fees go up in real-time, let the original go to crap, licensing fees go down in real-time. Both parties are accepting significant risk so just write it into the contract. Sounds like good business to me.
I don't doubt it. I hate to be cynical, but those "Best of E3" lists they were all posting looked more like lists of "publishers and developers we hope to be securing advertising revenue from real soon now".
Games reviewers are not only running the risk of losing advertising income from publisher whose games they game poor ratings to, but they're potentially damaging future relationships with that publisher. The exclusive previews of a new game may well go to a competitor who game a less damning review.
I remember a game I worked on in the mid 90s - one magazine gave it around 40%, another magazine gave it 92%. The difference? The journos from the second magazine were treated to free dinner and beers. It really is that skewed.
That is bad for end users.
The consumer is best off when reviewers are impartial and unbiased.
We already have to deal with product managers doing everything they can to convince reviewers to give high rankings to sell product. The video game industry suffers particularly much from this, with game publishers taking reviewers (often young people that are not paid much for their review work) on special trips or given gifts. It's hard to find a good, unbiased source of reviews.
So now, there are two more variables -- reviewers are *directly determining* income of developers, and one movie publisher now has incentive for rankings to *drop* if they are near the 70% mark.
This reminds me of an article I read once before -- I believe that it might have been a MacUser article by Andy Ihnatkno. Andy was reviewing a software package, and was contacted by the product manager at the developer early in the week, asking
how the review process was going. Now, normally Andy wouldn't say anything, but the product manager was insistent, and finally he reluctantly said "Well, I would have liked it if you hadn't forced me to do task X manually." The reviewer thanked him and hung up, and Andy got back to reviewing.
Next morning, Andy recieved a package via courier. It contained a new version of the software package, and a handwritten note from the product manager -- "I hope that you'll consider trying this version". It turns out that this version contained the automation feature that Andy had mentioned that he missed. That afternoon, the product manager called up again and asked "What do you think of the product?" Andy again mentioned something that the product didn't do, and next morning, another brown package arrived via courier. Andy thought "You know, this really isn't how the review process is supposed to work" -- but the software *was* getting better. Some poor developer had clearly spent a frantic 24/7 over the weekend adding and testing code. This continued on for a bit, and finally Andy finished his review -- giving the software package a good rating.
This is, surprisingly, a bad thing for the end user. Yes, the software package had some new features when done, but here is the problem. A reviewer will only find a certain percentage of the lacks in a software package -- some will go unnoticed. The user depends on the reviewer reviewing the entire package based on his analysis of the lacking features and bugginess of a subset of the package. The reviewer's opinion can then be extrapolated to the entire package. If the developer can change things as the review is happening -- something like a student changing stuff as his professor is grading his assignment -- this leads to a disproportionately good subset of the product and an inflated rating.
Furthermore, it's already a hard thing to pan a product, knowing that it will cut into sales -- publically criticizing people is something that humans don't like to do. How much harder will it be to pan the product of someone like Will Wright, which the reviewer might know personally, knowing that there will be a *direct* impact on the income of that developer?
I could see reviewers refusing to review products where their ratings are used in such a manner as a policy. This can only tend to distort ratings and increase pressure on them to mis-review products.
My guess is that this may be an attempt to help compensate the movie publisher if the movie publisher was the one that did a good job. Enter The Matrix, the game in question, has frequently been criticized as being a bad game. The reason that it sold well may be more due to the efforts of the movie publisher than the developer -- heavy marketing effort from the movie, and a good movie coming out.
This pay-based-on-review policy will tend to decrease royalties for licensed games (especially movie releases). These are frequently done on an extremely tight schedule to ensure a game release shortly after a hit movie. This tends to mak
May we never see th
If it encourages developers to spend less time and money on crappy media-tie ins and more time on original stuff (and above-average media tie-ins), I don't care if WB or any other conglomerate wants to shoot themselves in the foot.
As a fan of certain properties (certain comic books for example; WB owns DC), I'm crossing my fingers that there might finally be some incentive to do a decent job with the characters I want to see. So bad news for the WB as they try to find someone to make another Superman game. But good news for players if we ever see another Superman game in stores?
Unfortunately for the developers, though, game reviews are too arbritrary a test. And sales don't necessarily have everything to do with quality. It's the excitement of the (first) film that sold Enter the Matrix, not the quality of the game. That first film is also what sold the sequels, but that's another topic.
Alex.
This is an interesting and valid idea, if its inherent flaws could be worked out. I'm glad WB recognizes the tendency for licensed games to "suck", but I wonder if they recognize that LICENSORS (ie: themselves) are often to blame for that?
10 years ago I was Producer on several games based on WB licenses, and I can tell you, all they care about is how it looks and how accurately their IP is depicted, etc. They end up with their hands in everything, and if their decisions affect gameplay, so be it. They aren't gamers. They don't recognize that gameplay comes before visuals. It's very difficult to make an innovative game when you have this group of non-gamers telling you what you can and can't do with their characters.
and I think in some sense that publishers/developers being punished for releasing shit games is a good idea, simply because it pains me everytime I review some half-assed product that I know many consumers will be burnt by.
;) )
Yes, this could lead to the review system being corrupted (further!!!), but I think that readers of reviews quickly learn which review sites are honest, and which ones are being bribed/corrupted, simply because their experience of a game will not match up with a corrupt (or inept) review.
A punishment system is dearly needed to financially cripple "shit development houses", so that they are not in a position to spew force further crap into the marketplace. In a Darwinian sense, we need to select against these houses (and select for good houses).
I would obviously prefer it if it was the norm to return games that one is unhappy with, but I understand that this is not common since retailers have concerns that consumers are copying and returning the software.
My feverent hope is that consumers will increasingly use retailers that have something like a 1-week return policy (without the third degree, thank-you very much) and that the retailer will have a little checklist which the consumer can tick off why the game was returned (if they so choose), which will be attached to the software being returned:
Consumers reason for game return:
[ ] Unwanted present
[ ] Review inaccurate: (review site/magazine)
[ ] Not fun
[ ] Not long enough
[ ] Dated features
[ ] Buggy
[ ] Overpriced
etc
The sooner developers and publisers are financially hurt for releasing titles which are inadequate, the better. Power to the people!
(BTW: I review for http://vgnz.com , feel free to slag my reviews