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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?
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
"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.
There is still a problem. As some SWG players have noted, they feel powerless, because they can't alter the storyline or go directly against established canon. This also applies to well detailed movie universes-you don't have much space to create your own plotlines, or else you run into the movie. KotOR got around this by predating near anything done in that universe so far. Episode 1: Racer escaped restraints by taking an undetailed aspect, and expanding upon it in great detail. Enter the Matrix tried to, by taking relatively unused characters. Where it failed, however, was by trying to integrate its plotline with the movies. Especially in a setting with as much depth as that one, they could have taken a tangential route to the movie, and still been able to play around with the trappings, with near no restraints. A game either needs to have the space to take large liberties with the established plotline, or be able to create a near unrestrained one of its own. In marked contrast, games based in the Forgotten Realms have nearly never had those problems-as the setting is large enough to allow for multiple developing events.(Although the designers of its pen and paper counterparts have had to clean up messes they've left behind-and some of them still aren't resolved.) I can see a fundamental problem here-the difference between a single epic storyline, and a world built to support many different stories. All of the MMORPGs based upon an established storyline are going to run into a problem at some point: they can't take true liberty with the world, as they have to avoid destroying the movie/book/whatever's story. In marked contrast, a world-based MMORPG, like EQ, can avoid this, by allowing for individual player development. There is one way to meld the two-by making the epic, singular storyline so far above a player's reach that they can never touch it. An example of this can be found in the World of Darkness(White Wolf's Creature: the x games), where there was a consistant meta storyline, but the players were(or should be) busy working with their own problems, like defending their town, and giving White Wolf a free hand to play around with Marianna of Balador. The two might interact, but there was near no development problems-the Storyteller worked on the smaller scale, the company on the larger. The game was specifically designed for this dual cycle of plotlines.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
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
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
We get the sister article, "Aiming for hit movies, game licenses come up short"