Making Franchise Cross-Overs

Gamasutra has a piece exploring how to make a great game out of a franchise, with information from a CES panel on the subject. From the article: "'The durability of a franchise is great,' countered Microsoft's GM of franchise development for Xbox Kevin Browne. 'Look how many crappy series it took to finally kill Star Trek.'"

Comments

Goddamn marketing-speak

[badasscat]

It really bothers me how meaningless marketing-speak has invaded video games. This is a complete misuse of the word "franchise" - it doesn't mean what these marketing guys think it does, or what most people who now subscribe to this marketing-speak outside of marketing think it does. Here's the definition from dictionary.com:

franchise Audio pronunciation of "franchise" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (frnchz)
n.

      1. A privilege or right officially granted a person or a group by a government, especially:
                  1. The constitutional or statutory right to vote.
                  2. The establishment of a corporation's existence.
                  3. The granting of certain rights and powers to a corporation.
                  4. Legal immunity from servitude, certain burdens, or other restrictions.
      2.
                  1. Authorization granted to someone to sell or distribute a company's goods or services in a certain area.
                  2. A business or group of businesses established or operated under such authorization.
      3. The territory or limits within which immunity, a privilege, or a right may be exercised.
      4. A professional sports team.

Somewhere along the line, one of these marketdrones probably confused "the granting of certain rights and powers to a corporation" (i.e. the right to distribute games based on Star Trek, for example) with an actual line of games all bearing some relation to each other. That is not a franchise!

It just bothers me how games are now called "IP", series are now called "franchises", etc. and people just accept it. Speak English, people, not the language of marketing. Because more than half the time these people don't know what they're talking about to begin with, and they don't even know the meaning of the words they're using.

It all boils down to gameplay...

[rubberbando]

Developers need to focus more on the gameplay being fun and relevant to the characters when making these kind of games. There have been too many bad games that sell because they use a franchise be it from a movie, comic book, or a cartoon show that will make kids hound their parents until they buy it for them. Every once in a while we get a nice game that actually makes sense but IMHO I feel that they are too few and far between.

Re:What did Star Trek do ...

[ReverendLoki]

What did Star Trek do to deserve such a cheap shot from MS no less?

I personally think Bill's just seen one to many Photoshops of himself in a Borg outfit.