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Aiming For Hit Games, Movie Licenses Come Up Short
Thanks to the New York Times for its article (free reg. req.) discussing the relative unpopularity of licensed videogames based on recent films. The piece notes: "Of the nation's 10 top-selling games for video consoles last year, only one was based on a film, a television show or a book: Enter the Matrix", before arguing: "The problem seems to arise from basic differences between films and games as forms of media. Films, like books, are obviously linear, with a specific, tightly defined story arc and specifically defined characters." Are there ways film adaptions can break free of these constraints?
they just need to do the same thing as the movies made about novels do: not care crap about the thing they're based on.
of course it might be hard when you're just aiming for riding on the popularity of the movie and thus on a fast track to catastrophe as far as schedule and gameplay planning goes.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Star Wars Episode 1 Racer was one of the best reasons to own an N64. The second and third Lord of the Rings games for the GBA are probably the best games I've played on that platform. Neither of these stuck tightly to the story of the movie. They picked out key elements and used them to flavour a game that would have been popular even without the francise. That's how you make a movie license game.
I think it's more to do with deadlines. Tie-in games have to come out when the film does. This means that publishers will go for unadventurous game designs and the game will often be released before it's ready.
From my experience, (i just got out of 4 years of college mind you) video games based on movies are terrible. If you've seen the movie, you know whats going to happen in the video game, and they always manage to do it in some cheezy way involving clips from the film that you already saw. They hardly ever stray from the movie plot, so plotwise, the game is already old and dull the second you rent/buy it. Another problem is that they always seem to have less than par graphics and gameplay, probably because the developers were rushed to release the title in time for the movie. You can really tell this when you play a title like Prince of Persia, or Metal Gear solid, Metroid, Zelda, etc.. vs the spiderman game, or even lord of the rings. I mean, how fun is it to play as Frodo!!!! Seriously. All those other games have fresh new plots, great gameplay, and awesome graphics, while the movie games are just sub-par in all those categories.
Enter the matrix on the other hand, was a brilliant video game. First of all, they hyped it up like another movie. And if you played it, it almost was. They basically told another story that tied so well into that trilogy, but used new and fresh plots, and even scenes by the matrix actors just for the video game. If more movie games were more like movie-additions, they'd be more successful, and even better yet, more fun to play
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Games like Max Payne 1 & 2 were linear, but still great games. It's all in how creative you are with the gameplay. Hell, those games were more like movies than a lot of movies I've seen.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
1. Make a non-linear game
2. Play it some time to get a decent story line
3. ???
4. Movie!
For more practical reason, you can recycle computer graphics model for a game in its film form.
"The problem seems to arise from basic differences between films and games as forms of media. Films, like books, are obviously linear, with a specific, tightly defined story arc and specifically defined characters."
Another problem is that games generally aren't the same length as novels or movies. A book like Harry Potter can be condensed into a two or two and a half hour movie and remain pretty faithful to the source material, and though no one actually reads them, two to three hour length movies are very often adapted into novels that retain the fairly standard 150-300 page paperback length. Modern games, on the other hand, are expected to be at least eight to ten hours in length, if not twice as long.
That means that when a game developer adapts a movie into a game, they have to find another six or eight hours (at least) of story and action sequences. And on top of that, they have to make sure that the filler doesn't interfere with any of the possible ideas for where the movie franchise could go in the future, both forward in time (sequels) and also backwards (flashback sequences in the prequel). This is why useless, lame-ass villains like Shocker and Mysterio are featured prominently in the Spider-Man: The Movie games, instead of much more interesting and fun supervillains like Venom or Carnage.
If only more movie studios would just let them go the KOTOR route, we'd be fine. But apparently they won't. So movie games suck, even though they don't have to.
Don't forget Jedi Knight 2 (PC). Had some really good saber effects which was probably why it was so popular, a worthy sucessor.
But apparently E.T. for the Atari 2600 was sh*t.
When you have a universe as Large and Diverse as the Star Wars Universe (with many spin-off books and such), it only makes sense to make an MMORPG out of it.
...it's not a RE-ENACTMENT of the movie...which is where I imagine most Movie Video Games break down. As a few people previously have mentioned...it's the whole linearity thing.
In that sense, it's a game based on a movie, and it's sucessfull at that. But it's BASED on a movie.
How could I say to men: "Speak louder, shout! For I am deaf!"? -Ludwig van Beethoven
in the form of some of the older Gold Box D&D games,the ones based upon a series of novels. As observed in the article, part of the problem with the media transition was that the book and movie forms tend to be very linear. Curse of the Azure Bonds(and resultant related properties) dealt with the constraints of the storyline by a) removing the normal heroes and b) expanding the storyline by adding optional quests and such. They didn't wreck the setting, and barely took any licence with it. Now for a movie-tie in, you can't replace the characters, as they make the storyline in most cases. However, you can expand the options available to the player at any time-and by extension, both the length of the game and the fun quotient. Another thing to note is that the games I'm referencing didn't stick straight to the storyline-they played around with it.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
This will become a popular game title. It has several elements useful in a game... a compelling story, defined scenes, a villain and episodes of discreet action that are easily translated into gameplay. If you are going to make a direct movie to game translation these are the things you need in the movie. If not, follow the example of a previous post wherein the game sticks to the spirit of the movie, not the plot. Keep the characters consistent and keep the background story consistent... everything else can be arbitrary.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
The problem seems to arise from basic differences between films and games as forms of media.
Yeah right!
The problem is that they just aren't making good games based on these... linear or non-linear. The common assumption is... if we put "The Hulk" or "The Matrix" on it, it will sell itself. So they tend to concentrate more on the brand than the quality of the game itself.
I have a solution! Are you listening movie and game companies? Concentrate on quality as much or more than the brand! I know that sounds hard... but it's not. Developers do that on just about every other game out there.
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
One of my favourite games was based on a movie. It was ET for the Atari 2600. Man that game was hot in its time.
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
-The X-Wing and Tie Fighter series of games
-Tron 2.0
Both share a few attributes - they capture the feel of the source material, without making you think you are rehashing the movie. They let you recreate/relive the most fantastic moments of the movie - with you as the star (trench run in X-Wing, disk duels in Tron 2.0). Most importantly - they are creative and go beyond what happens in the movie - you aren't just summarizing the movie in a game - you are adding to the saga!
Is it a bad thing that movie/licensed games don't sell? I say NO.
Back in the 16 bit days you couldn't turn a profit on an "original" game (you'd be lucky to sell 10,000 copies), so every had to be licensed. Publishers truly believed you needed a licensed property to compete.
Now to hear that a licensed property does NOT guarantee the higher sales, is GREAT news to me. Perhaps the publishers can open their eyes, ears and minds a little more now and take a few "risks" on innovative original game designs. Why not? They are saving themselves millions in licensing fees and the headaches that go with them.
Games made from licensed IP aren't as good because a sizable portion of the budget goes to pay for the IP. Say the average game costs 2 million to make, so that's the budget given to it by the publisher. The IP license costs 1 million so you now have half the budget of any normal game, plus a tighter deadline and twice as many suits looking over your shoulder. It keeps happening over and over again though because people buy these pieces of crap because they have a recognizable name. So, rinse and repeat.
Setting a movie based game in the same world or universe, but following some side-story or other characters is probably the best way to go. Although they're obviously not based on a movie, the two Half-Life expansions Blue Shift and Opposing Force demonstrate this perfectly. They both take place in the same location and time as the original Half-Life, but instead of following Freeman, they follow a security guard and one of the invading troops instead. You'll often run into places Freeman has already been, seeing what he did there, or you might even catch a glimpse of him escaping. Doing it this way with a movie based game would leave it open for creativity and a different story, while keeping it tied to the movie.
Alas, it seems that the universal law is that 90% of everything is crap! (Actually I think SF writer Theodore Sturgeon said that...) Which means that inevitably most games whether movie based or not are going to suck.
Movie based games just get more publicity for sucking badly because of all of the hype. Fortunately most of the bads don't sell. But occasionally, buggy messes like Enter the Matrix actually do, ugh, which is enough to convince the powers that be to continue making movie based games. Oh well, if you do find yourself playing a bad game, perhaps some fun can be had in revelling in its suckitude!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
It's all about the universe. Copying the plot of a film is rather silly if you ask me; it is utterly restrictive for the player. I think Enter the Matrix (while a fairly average game) at least tackled the movie license problem with the right toolbox. In fact it did rather a nice thing and cross linked the plots. I agree, the game was otherwise instantly forgettable, but I respect the effort it made. Bottom line- can the universe from the film exist properly without the plot? I think with LOTR and Matrix, you can see why the answer is 'no'. They are too intertwined, too neat, too discrete. By contrast, Star Trek and Star wars are a big, fertile mess. I suppose I see the issue the other way around: Universe licenses are a superset of movie licenses. So stop producing doomed games guys :P
We get the sister article, "Aiming for hit movies, game licenses come up short"
OTOH films based on videogames seem to be doing
quite well. Case in point: Tomb Raider 1 & 2.
Despite miserable plots, comic-book acting, and
mediocre effects, these turned a pretty damn good
profit.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
While the parent foster has part of it, a lot of designers and developers actually want to put together a good game based on a movie license.
Here's the problem, the developers are real fans of the movie. So, they naturally want to include all those awesome bits of the movie.
Unfortunately, what typically ends up happening is one or more of the cool moments in the movie don't end up using the same type of engine. So you have a first person shooter, and then all of a sudden...you're driving...with the same engine.
So the games start out hamstrung, having to pull things from the movie license and yet have a shorter development cycle than most games. You have to get the game out while the movie's still fresh in the public's mind.
But, you don't want another Waterworld, or Reign of Fire...so you typically don't have game companies rushing out to pick up a license unless it's a hugely marketed motion picture.
You start seeing ads for those like 6 months ahead of time, meaning they were probably shooting like 9 months before that. Assume game companies start work with half the time of movie shoot, and you have basically a window of a year to pump out a game.
This is why the licensees usually borrow an engine slap some new textures on to it and ship it out the door.
It seems like the only real way to win is to create a game off of a film that had some staying power, but make the game 3-5 years after the fact so you can make it something really solid. Otherwise, you're seriously just asking for crap.
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Are there ways film adaptions can break free of these constraints?
Here is a zany idea, just throwing it out here, how about you don't make them absolutly suck?
I have heard several times the same "Games cant reflect movies or tell a history" scenario this is not correct. For the information of the suits who believe this sort of crap. A good designed Game can tell the history better than a movie, since they allow you to participate in it. Examples at hand: half life, deus ex, (fable), KOTOR, FF(VII-X) they all tell great histories and manage to do it extremely well with great ammounts of drama, tension and suspense.(even GTA vice city manages to tell the history of tommy vercetti traition, deceipt and finally triumph in the mafia)
The reason why movie games are not "hits" is because most of them have no quality/low budgets, lack of originality, etc in a few words: they suck. Mostly they are quickies made to cash in from movie revenues. The worst thing about this is that gamers are aware of it, and they EXPECT this games to be bad.
Example at hand the shreck2 game (I HAVE NOT SEEN this game) Excerpt from a magazine: "You probably are excited about shreck coming back to teathers but not so much about the game, the first game was awful lets expect this one to be better". The same can be said about Van-helsing, cat-woman, batman and just about any other movie game coming out.
A lot of people expected ETM to be a good game (and to some extent it kind of was) and they expected LOTR to be good too and that was reflected in their sales, people were hyped about the games NOT only the movies they are based on.
If hollywood wants to have better sells for their games all they have to do is 3 things:
1.-Stop the neverending flow of crap games cash tie-ins Licensed by themselves by simply hiring profesional reviewers to test the Quality of games before aproving their release. (that would save us so much pain)
2.- Assign more time to the design and implementation of movie-games theres little to no point to release a game simultaneously or before the movie if the game is bad, unoriginal or quality lacking. If the game is good (and is not very delayed) it doesnt need to. example1: KOTOR was released a lot later than episode 1 and 2 and this didnt provided any problem to sales at all. Example 2: A lot of people would have prefered a van helsing game with true DMC quality coming this xmas or early next year than the medium quality movie tie-in being sold now
3.-You should advertise games as an entity and with its own values instead of just a tie -in to some other medium example: spiderman 2 is advertising their GTA style game instead of its movie linkage, as a result people are as hyped about the game as they are about the movie.
I rest my case.
Go ahead MOD my day!
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Remember NES?
There were countless games based on movies:
back to the future, batman, jungle book, jurassic park, indiana jones...
and those are just off the top of my head!
More often than not these games had little if anything to do with the movie other than the box art and, at a stretch of the imagination, in-game graphics. Some of these games, despite that, were actually really good games.
just to note, this is a generality (granted a pretty good one), but a generality nonetheless. if you want to talk games based on movie licenses, look at the reviews for everything or nothing, the newest bond game. the return of the king game garnered strong critical praise as well. further, the reviews that i've seen so far for the new chronicles of riddick game (read: EGM) call it one of the best xbox games yet. admittedley, these two games took an existing license and crafted an entirely new story from what was seen in the movies, but still, they're based on licesnses nonetheless.
Damn, I wish I could have gotten to this sooner. Warner Brother announced this week that they would be implementing increased royalties for games that do not achieve a certain average-rating by multiple gaming websites and magazines. This has huge implications to developers and gamers. If this works I'm sure it will catch on to all the movie studios with any marketing sense.
I actually wrote an article about this on my gaming website Counterfrag. Here is a direct link.