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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?"
The game had some fun elements, but it wasn't really a very good game. I think it did hurt my opinion of The Matrix. Come on, 70% isn't that much to ask for.
or will be, shortly. Any time big bucks depend on some web site operator's opinion, that web site operator is going to get a great offer...
:-)
Gotta start a game rating web site....
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
this will be expanded to gamers as well. If your game sucks, you must pay me royalties to play it.
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.
"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?"
Math aside, the Matrix game sucked, and I don't think I'll ever buy any more Matrix games. It absolutely makes sense that bad games should be responsible for brand damage.
Canadians?
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
As someone who has worked on crapped-out shovelware licensed GBA games, I believe this is very good news. Often times the license games skimp on design phase and go straight to development, usually using a cookie-cutter engine and game mechanics from a previous title. With some penalties in place, perhaps companies will spend more time thinking about how they can make "Michigan Frog Racing" fun, or just find something else to do if they can't do that.
I think that a brand damage clause is reasonable. If for no other reason than the selfish desire to see fewer braindead/marketing driven tie-ins. The clause should cut both ways though; if the game is awesome and wins GOTY or similar awards then the royalty rate should be reduced commiserately.
burritoj
At one point, "The Matrix Online" was a game license that was very valuable - a marquee game. There was a lot of goodwill out there. "Enter the Matrix" exchanged a lot of that goodwill for money (as did the last two movies).
Now they could have got money out of that franchise with anything from any developer. But if the game was excellent, they would have retained a lot more goodwill - and possibly helped maintain the franchise in the face of the lackluster sequels. That could have been worth much, much more than these sales figures.
Look at the value Ubi Soft has created in the "Prince of Persia" franchise. PoP was dead, no value. Now it has lots, even if Sands of Time didn't sell as well as it should have. Sega is still milking Sonic the Hedgehog on the basis of a couple good games a decade ago.
These things have tremendous, very real value. It makes sense to protect this value via contract - and pegging things to game reviews is as good of an idea as I can think of.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I'm for anything that discourages the production of video games based on movie/tv/book franchises.
Video games are interactive. The "story" is told by the user and the charecters are defined and developed by playing the game (at least, in a good game, they are). When you have the baggage that comes with charecters that have already been defined by movies, television, or books, you take away power from the user for no good reason whatsoever. The less of these types of games there are, the better.
Oh, and yes...I'm aware that I can't spell.
Who taught the canadians about a monetary system, I've limited their influence to quebec and they are still in the neolithic age. At least in this Civilization game I'm playing.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The biggest problem with Hall's manifesto is that he's not paying for quality, he's paying for good reviews. There's a big difference. While there is usually correlation between a truly good game and the reviews, particularly when using meta ranking sites, it doesn't always match up. Take Black & White, for example, which was highly rated by the press. Two years later, B&W was lauded at by the very same magazines for its overwhelming boredom. Or Deus Ex 2, which also received comparetively high scores from the media but among fans and consumers hurt the Ion Storm brand far more than it helped? Good reviews does not always equal quality. More importantly, ti doesn't always equal sales either, and quite practically that's what Jason Hall should be most concerned about. Would more people have bought Enter the Matrix had it been a decent game? Probably. Does Enter the Matrix hurt the next Matrix game? Unarguably. But you can't chart the quality of a game with game reviews alone. Relying on those is too simplistic, and too impractical.
If Hall actually gets to put this into place - which I doubt he will - why wouldn't Developer X unofficially bring on Mr. EGM Reviewer as a "consultant," with the thanks taking the shape of an HDTV? Allowing game reviewers to ultimately dictact the size of multi-thousand dollar royalty paychecks is a big mistake. I read game magazines all the time, and with the rare exception it's pisspoor writing stitlted with poop and boob jokes. I wouldn't trust them with determining my family's income, so why is Jason?
Enter the Matrix is a good example why this is a good idea. Atari could have put anything out and earned a fortune. In fact this is done with many brands - back in my gaming hay day THQ were infamous for this.
It's a great idea, as it protects the brand by discouraging game publishers trying to make a quick buck.
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.
for any reviewer who has an axe to grind against a given game developer.
"An escalating royalty rate kicks in to help compensate us for the brand damage...
How about compensating the ripped-off consumer that paid 49 fsking bucks for the lame game in the first place.
Oh, and I see you also sell CD's. How about compensating the ripped-off consumer that paid 16 fsking bucks for the lame album that had one good cut.
Do I sound angry? Do I sound ripped-off? Better pull your head out of your ass, mr record/game company executive before it's too late.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
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.
This is a unsubtle way of shifting even more of the financial risk of a project onto the developer rather than the publisher, especially the smaller teams who are relying on any profits to keep the place running for another six months. Anyone who finds this clause presented to them in a contract should make sure there are counter measures against the publisher imposing any of the following:
- An insufficient budget, forcing the developer the cut features that make the distiction between a good game and a average/mediocre game.
- Design changes at later stages or without renegotiation of the schedule and funding. Forced changes from those without a full understanding of the game can easily muddle the gameplay and result in a poor final product.
- A too short or too rigid deadline, forcing the developer to submit an unfinished or unpolished title.
It's all too easy to perceive the situation where WB or a similar publisher enforces situations like these resulting in an average (50%) game instead of a good (75%) game. They then pull out their own increased royalties and profit, leaving the developer with a smaller than expected sum that may not even break even.
Who can forget the insanely high review that Gamepro gave to "Street Fighter II: Special Championship Edition" for the Genesis? I remember that sparking a whole slew of conspiracy theories that Gamepro was paid off by Capcom. Can you imagine the reprecussions of a reviewer who happens to disagree with most reviewers on a game now that future royalties are on the line? It would give the payoff conspiracy theories a lot more credibility since there would be a concrete link between the review and the revenue the game generates.
NOTE: I really don't want to start a flamewar over a 10-12 year old topic so if you think that SFII:SCE was the cat's meow then I apologize for making your blood boil, but there were many SF2 fans who owned a Genesis (including me) who feel that we were given an inferior product compared to the SNES version which scored lower.
Gamerankings.com has an interesting page where you can see the average rating of a game review site.
I belive that these numbers should be around 50% but they are around 75%
Link
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
I spent a good week and a half playing through it, the same way I enjoyed DX1. Yes, they changed things. Yes, some of it was missed (the skill point system was great, finding extra multitools when exploring doesn't really make up for its loss as a way to reward more play).
Most of the stuff (positional hitting and universal ammo) make a lot of sense once you beat the game. It helps it flow better, and the game is definitely worth a good playthrough. Just get it with an open mind, and you'll see how good it really is. If they'd released this not as a sequel, I guarantee it would've done better.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
He's not actually paying for good reviews. He's charging for bad reviews. There is a big difference. Nearly all games these days recieve a 70% or higher. A truly atrocious game like UFC has earned a 61% on metacritic. Resident Evil: Outbreak even breaks above 70%.
With the tremendous score bloat these days if a game gets below %70 its pretty safe to assume it's junk. Heck, Shrek 2 is above that mark. The only excuse to release a below-70 game is running out of funding, and even that's a mark of bad management.
Honestly, the movie studios taking notice and demanding a little bit of quality is a great thing. Movie licensed games bring in a large number of non-gamers to our world, yet turn off people in droves. The poverty of gameplay is legendary. Now, if only we could make the same arrangement on game to movie licenses...
The ______ Agenda