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Movie Games Losing Their Appeal to Game Publishers
The New York Times (registration required) has an article on the relationship between games and movies, as regards movie tie-in games. While efforts like Spider-Man 2 or Escape from Butcher Bay prove that quality games based on movie properties are possible, game developers and publishers are beginning to realize the inherent dangers involved in attempting to capture a movie as a game. From the article: "Another factor adding to the risk is that the development process for most major games is now 18 to 24 months, longer than that of many movies. The long development time puts publishers under pressure to make their picks when a film is just a script. And still, not all games come out on time for a movie's release..."
These guys are slow on the uptake. I think the rest of us had it figured out about the same time E.T. kiled Atari.
If only they would realize game-based movies are an equally bad idea!
Ceci n'est pas un post.
(this would solve the Game to movie problem, not the other way around)
A lot of movies based on games have been so crappy lately, and I blame the "Uwe Boll" phenomenon.
He's the worst thing that has been happening to the industry. Period.
I don't think it's his fault personally, but it his horrible what happened these past few years. Alone in the dark? (What part of "alone" didn't he understand?) House of the Dead?
And next, he's going to butcher Dungeon Siege, Farcry, Bloodrayne and Hunter: reckoning...
This has got to stop.
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
different points of interest. The biggest issue with translating any story from one medium to another is that what is "really cool" in one is just goofy or boring in another. In the Lord of the Rings books there were many places where the party was just traveling. Tolkien used that time to describe the changing landscape, the fear and uncertainty they were feeling, and their comradery. If this had been done in the same way in the movie (which can show in a few seconds several pages of description) it would have been boring. This is part of the reason Douglas Adams naturally adjusted his story to suit each media it was translated into.
When big movie companies get involved in making a game based on their movie, they insist that the game stay close to the story. You end up with behaviors that are similar to the movie but aren't a lot of fun in a game and a lot of direct from the movie cut scenes, all of which are buggy because of the push to get it released in time.
It is funny that it has taken movie companies so long to get this.
Hey, hey, now, KOTOR was a damn fine game. KOTOR2 would have been so much better if they'd spent, say, another four or five months on it.
I think the biggest problem of making a game based on a movie is releasing the game close to when the movie came out. When the matrix game came out the same day as the movie, you could tell it was just unfinished. There were so many bugs, big and small, and the whole game just felt unfinished.
A lot of the difference comes from the distinction between fads and niche markets. Fads are very short lived and generally spill down from the core market to less sophisticated markets: people will buy macarena-based garbage, not a movie. Niche markets are the ones with a die-hard core of nerds that will shell out for anything related to the product. Few people are buying Light Sabre flashlights and bartman dolls, but Star Wars videogames, simpsons filmographies, and any number of related pieces of merchandise are selling pretty hard.
Still, things are getting better. There was a period when I remember seeing the California Raisins and VAnilla Ice both having video games in production, and neither being able to make it to the market before the fad was passe'.
Absolutely. Kotor2 had some problems that could have been easily fixed with more time. Rushing it out of the door for Christmas wasn't a good idea.
Anyway, at least there's Jade Empire on the horizon.
Mind you, the Chronicles of Riddick game (referring to PC version here, can't comment on consoles) was quite a corker. Rather than just trying to sloppily re-create "cool" moments from the film into a stereotypical chopped-together movie->game transfer - some elements of the Riddick story are told only in the movies, while others are told only in the game, and the two media support eachother quite well IMHO.
Add to this a fair bunch of DVD-movie-a-like "extras" on the game disk, including a sometimes fascinating in-game developer commentary, shots of early development versions, concept artwork and such. I think what you end up with in "Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay (Developers Cut)" is a movie-game tie-in that merits a small footnote in the history of the development of these kind of cross-media entertainment franchises.
Alli
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
Just because some publishers are moving away from movie licences doesn't mean its going away. People wil still buy games just because it has spiderman or harry potter on the cover no matter how bad the game may be. And as long as people are willing to buy the games, publishers will keep buying licences.
Star Wars has made a number of good games. (And then there's Force Commander.) Star Trek is usually the example brought up when one wants to talk about stinkers, but there's a few winners there too -- Starfleet Command, Bridge Commander, Elite Forces.
Perhaps the difference there is that the ST and SW games are generally not tied to the release of a specific movie (though there were SW games tied to the release of episode 1 and 2, but these are the exception rather than the rule.) Perhaps they should stop making games to go with movies and instead make them to go with franchises (like SW and ST), so they have the time they need to make the game, and don't need to rush it out the door.
Of course, I can only think of a few franchises where they've made 6+ movies. I guess by my reasoning, they should make a Friday the 13th game now? (too late!) Police Academy? Nightmare on Elm Street? Revenge of the Nerds is getting close ...
Of course, this situation is a concern only for marketroids, and shouldn't concern developers (in a perfect world, anyway). Is it a nice marketing gimmick to be able to advertise a movie and a game at the same time? Sure, I guess. But you're just as well off advertising the game during the trailers as "coming soon" just like all the other movies that get advertised during the trailers.
See, the problem, she is solved, and it doesn't involve developers compromising quality to meet ridiculous ship dates.
Or perhaps Hollywood just realized that Halo 2, GTA SA, Metroid Prime 2, made quite a few million bucks, and their best "tie ins" "spiderman , ridick" barely reached the top 20 most sold games of the year?
Heres a hint: 1 year development time with zero creative freedom an unexperienced team and copycat techniques, cant lead to more than a regular game, never will, never has. No matter how "cool" it looks on paper.
Probably the most succesful licensed game is Kotor (1) which took almost 3 years in development. Complete creative control (since is barely tied with the star wars universe) and a team of rpg experts leading it. Take a note hollywood producers.
Heres an idea. Grab an experienced team who actually admires your franchise and grant them the license and resources to do a game about it. Forget about "tying it" to the release of a movie. Leave them do their work. If everything works you will make almost as much money as you did with the movie.
Go ahead MOD my day!
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You know, I never had such problems with E.T.'s levitation function that it required a reset. The trick is simply to stop pushing the joystick upwards the moment the screen changes from inside the pit to the surface. You then change direction and levitate to the side or downwards. The "bug" was that the levitation would end one pixel early if you tried to levitate off the north/topside of a pit.
I'd love to know where they buried all those unsold ET cartridges in the Mojave...
It wouldn't do you any good. They were mixed in with a bunch of other underselling Atari games, crushed under steamrollers, and then had concrete pored over them. (I can't remember for sure, but I think the bulk was being used as some kind of foundation. It wasn't just simple disposal, but a crude recycling attempt.) You wouldn't be able to get anything for eBay from the remains.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
The basic problem is that the movie industry has developed a predictable efficiency, and the game industry has yet to do that. Perhaps that's why so many movie studios favor EA; they're mostly on time, and they get it done (granted, at the cost of overworked employees and p-oed wives).
I still contend that if the movie industry can more or less accurately predict a release date before even starting production, eventually so can the gaming industry. With the new consoles, this is going to hit critical mass. It's only going to get worse for the game industry. It needs to start developing better tools.
And maybe unions.
Chalk it up as 'journalists never agree on trends.' An article on Businessweek's cover this week says the exact opposite-- Video games and studios are getting much closer, studios looking to buy devs/publishers, devs/publishers looking to make alliances with studios. I read both, and Businessweek is usually more accurate about industry trends than the NY Times. So take it with a grain of salt.
The question is not really whether movie games are universally good or bad, but whether the publishers are paying the right amount of money for the license. Also, remember that only a small fraction of games are hits, so there's a pretty good chance that a big movie-based game could flop. All the naysayers will point to this and say "See movies and games don't mix-- I told you so" when that is simply the standard operating economics of the industry.
"I still contend that if the movie industry can more or less accurately predict a release date before even starting production"
I think game developers are better at predicting how much time it takes to make a game that movie publishers are at predicting how much time it takes to make a movie.
The time it takes to make a game depends on how much stuff goes into the game, number of levels, animations, enemies, etc. etc. and if the schedual slips there are usually some stuff that can be cut to make the deadline. The reason some games just can't seem to get done is that unforeseen problems pop up (you used HOW many vertices in all the characters?) or that the game is too complex or that the staff is inexperienced.
Compare this with movies where you have actors that can delay a movie for years because he is otherwise busy (I think that is the story with impossible mission 3), where you end up deciding to retake major portions of the movie at the time of final editing or even worse the focus tests and marketing driven delays such as other movies would steal your audience (like Fantastic 4 that won't be out on July 4).
The movie a game is licensed on can end up being released earlier simply because shooting the movie was smoother than expected and time is lost to develop the game. The studios are also usually very secretive about their scripts and art and it can be impossible to get any useful information out of the movie producers, and they even shoot alternate endings that they don't decide on until a week before release...
The only recent movie tie-ins that have done well were Riddick and Spider-Man 2.
I'm willing to take a wild guess and say that Enter the Matrix would have to be the low point of movie-game tie-ins. It was overhyped, underproduced, and was not a good game experience. Watching the previews, you could definitely tell that they really really wanted to believe they could sell a ton of it. They didn't plan on two things though: the bad reception of Reloaded, and the quality of their game.
I played it, beat it, ripped the FMVs from it (quite easy when you have the PC version), and shelved it. You watch the movies a couple times and you realize that even those were underproduced (there's a couple with some obvious errors).
The fact that the Wachowski's, Atari, and Shiny want to do Path of Neo well after the franchise has blipped off the radar kinda makes me sick to my stomach. If the Bros. had any smarts, they'd let Monolith just do what they gotta do, get TMO out there, and just stick with that. No one is going to buy the Shiny game after EtM fizzled.
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The did a Friday the 13th game and a Nightmare game way back in the day for the NES. Both weren't well recieved (although Nightmare did make use of the 4-player peripherals Nintendo made).
Most SW games weren't tied to the movies because they were released well after the original Trilogy was done. Exemptions include the early arcade games.
But you're quite right, both ST and SW have had good game adaptations, and a few clunkers. Nobody is perfect.
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Pursue the influence lines, and you'll see the weaknesses of the game start to come out. The characters just aren't as dynamic as they were in KOTOR1, and don't really progress very much, except Visas and to a slight extent, Handmaiden. Anyway, the ending is pretty lame story-wise, but I do have to admit that Darth Treya was very cool, with the three levitating lightsabres taht fly around the room at you and have to be independently "killed." Been since Die by the Sword since I've seen an enemy like those.
That means no more "Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game"s... Now if games as movies would lose appeal as well, we could legally shoot Uwe Boll and put an end to poverty, sickness, hunger, and . . Well, Uwe Boll.
THat's all I have to say!
You forget the the mother of all sequels known as The Land Before Time, which includes 11 movies and 2 music videos.
For a show or movie to be successful, it must be a good movie or show; no matter whether its based on real events, a novel, or even a video game. Same goes for video games. I _hate_ star trek. Its a crappy show, always has been- always will be. On the other hand, I love the game MTrek. Its loosely based on star trek, but the gameplay was the main focus of the designers. Rather than cripple the game with being forced to keep true to the ST storyline and timeline, the MTrek creators made building a quality replayable game their top priority. The goal of a game designer shouldn't be to get $$$ by exploiting the fanfare surrounding a show/movie, but rather to create a playable game, which in its own right is entertaining. http://mtrek.game-host.org/
no.
Theres another great idea. Is there someone even remotely interested in buying that game? (lets not even mention scarface)
No wonder why the studios are dissapointed.
Go ahead MOD my day!
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but the California Raisins game was finished, and ported to multiple platforms. check www.the-underdogs.org. From what I've heard, it's and above average platformer.
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Are they calling Spider Man 2 a quality game? Anyone who has played this game will agree it is complete shit.
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I just finished the PC version of KOTOR 2 last night, and gameplay, and story wise it was really good up until the end, (especially the end of Nar Shaddaa scene,) it was just lacking... It's alsmost as if there was going to be something else past the last scene.
I worked with a lot of the influence lines, and I personally thought that they were some of the best story additions in the game, a lot of them really helped tie together the story, though I didn't like that you could go against the nature of your character, light or dark, to gain influence with someone but not gain opposing light/dark influence.
As far as the characters go though, the only character I wasn't thrilled with thier story was Atton, there just wasn't enough building with him, the other thing I noticed is that there weren't as many situational quests, (a specific member in the party, on a particular planet or after a particular event was done,) in KOTOR 2 as there were in KOTOR 1. I really liked Bao-Dur's story extras and Mira's as well.
I will agree about the ending just being really really bad, like I said before, it just seemed like they had more planned for it. It just seemed to stop, kind of like the ending for Xenocide in the Ender trillogy, it makes you want for more, makes you feel like there is more to tell of the story.
It's kind of a mixed bag. The missions are insanely repetitive, it relies far too heavily on time trials and the like, the non-Spiderman models are weak, and the scripting is poor.
On the other hand, no superhero game made comes even close in capturing the *feeling* of being the hero. Absolutely nothing compares. The sensation of speed, the incredible model of New York, the smooth transition between actions... wonderful.
The result is that I continue to play it every once in a while just to swing through virtual New York. I haven't even completed half the mission goals, but I know I won't be selling it. Having the whole map there is just too fucking cool. Jumping off the highest building in town and shooting out a web to catch myself inches from the pavement, ditto.
If Publishers were just spending millions on developing good quality games and not on costly movie and or other licenses what would happen to business of all the those the licensing agents when a company does something like trying to make its own original IP