Slashdot Mirror
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.
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'.
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 ...
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!
More opinions here
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...
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.
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.