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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?
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
Ban Reality TV!
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.
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
People keep blaming the story - but then they forget games like Half-Life - a game that was, practically, a playable movie. Over-linear storylines are no excuse. There are tons of massively successful hyper-linear games.
ETMatrix was a bad game because it was ugly, clunky, and dull. Not because it had an over-linear storyline. Max Payne has practically the same fantasy-mechanics as The Matrix, and the game just played and looked better even though being an older and smaller project.
The incompetence of movie games is probably mostly due to things happening behind closed doors like
a) boardroom micromanagement by non-gaming PHB's
b) formulaic design to keep the title safe, resulting in bored developers
c) shipping before completion to make deadline
Evidence that it is likely these factors causing the problems appears when you compare to games based on older movies, like the AvP, Star Wars games (except for the glut of ep1 and ep2 games - only a few of those managed not to suck), and Tron 2.0. Remember, even the corny Nintendo Star Wars platformers on the NES and SNES drew piles of rave reviews from magazines.
Still, gameplaywise, I think one of the most common problems is that games are often made in completely the wrong genre for their movie. Like the Starship Troopers RTS - anyone watching the movie could have told you it would be a boring version of StarCraft. Or a Star Trek Spacefighter (remember ST - 25th anniversary, or any of the other ST games where a consitution class starship handles like an X-Wing?). Star Wars is not afraid to make great departures into odd genres, but while they do it they throw out the tight connections to the movies. IMHO, the first Matrix game should have been made not as a Shiny 3rd person adventure (especially not from a team that specializes in cute puzzles, cartoony animation, and twisted humour) but as a Digital Extremes project. UT with more Matrix oriented gametypes and the matrix set of abilities. I would love it to be a "design a character" team FPS game. But no.