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Originality Vs. Established IP In Games
Ten Ton Hammer has an article about the differences between developing a game based upon existing intellectual property and the creation of an entirely new story and setting. They make the point that while doing the former may result in an easier time building a fan base, those same fans will often be the hardest to please.
"By creating a game based on a popular IP, the company in question has a huge responsibility to 'do it right.' Unfortunately, not everyone realizes the reality of one little secret — every single fan out there has a different idea of what 'right' is. ... Lord of the Rings is a perfect example. For a person that may be familiar with the movies and little else, it's a great game with an impressive amount of depth and attention to detail. For the mass of fanatical fans that have spent more time poring over every book Tolkien ever wrote than even Tolkien himself, any deviation from the lore of his world is paramount to sacrilege on the most horrific scale."
If something transitions from one medium to another, whether it's from novels to movies, from movies to games, etc, it doesn't matter.
If it's faithful to the original, I will disdain the transition for being unoriginal.
If it tries to be original, I will blame it for straying from the source material.
*sigh*
I guess I'm really just an awful person when it comes to these things.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
As a longtime fan of the "First post" universe, I'm extremely disappointed with this version. All my favorite characters, specifically "post" got cut. Totally butchered it.
They are a extremely small part of any fan base for a certain IP.
Well, maybe he's referring to First Post 2099 where Post was killed by his evil twin psot.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Gee, this seems rather obvious.
Do we really need a slash dot story telling us that if you set out to make a movie, game, coloring book, lunch pail, or Barbie dress based on a theme from some outside source you generally make a commitment to have at least a passing resemblance to said source.
Won't Slash Dotters look at this and express their deep disappointment that there is really nothing behind this story, and it doesn't even bear the tiny-est resemblance to an actual Slash Dot story?
Nah! What was I thinking.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You're talking about a guy who spent 50+ years writing the Silmarillion (and died with it unfinished) and would rewrite passages dozens of times. I don't think anyone is quite that obsessed with his work (mainly because someone that obsessed would almost need to stop eating and sleeping to fit it all in).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
i have severe short term memory loss. what were we talking about again?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Existing IP was an original creation as well at one point. How do you tell a bad movie/book? When it doesn't even respect its own IP from before the break/previous chapter. We call them plotholes.
Whenever you create a world, which is really what any writer does, the visitor is going to expect at least some kind of continuety. That the middle follows the beginning and the end connects to both. If you start the journey with "A long time ago..." you don't expect space ships do you? That would be silly.
Lotro has us expecting certain things. There should be elves, a force of evil, dwarves (only male) and hobbits. Lotro provides that. But how far do you go? Some people complain about the new Rune-keeper class, which fills the role of a glass cannon which Lotro really didn't have. Fans claim the game was fine without a glass cannon and breaking the lore to add a class just to appeal to WoW players is a bad idea. The problem is the entire game breaks the lore.
Females, in battle. OOPS!
Hobbits, fighting. No no.
Dwarves, out of the mines.
Elves, fighting on the front in numbers.
All races being roughly equal while according to Lore, Elves would be the absolute top, dwarves second, man (Aragon is NOT a man), a distant third and hobbits trailing way behind.
Elves starting story line being several hundred years before anyone else, yet when you emerge in the game world proper, you are the same level as a young human.
All of the above is "needed" to make Lotro a game. You can't have Elves be real elves because they would be impossible to balance. People are going to want to play dwarves so screw them being holed up in their mines. Hobbits not leaving the Shire? It is a beautifull area of the game but you could hardly expect people to spend 2+ years there.
But with all the problems, using existing IP has a HUGE advantage.
As a player you don't have to sit through a huge amount of drivel as the creator tries to explain the world to you. Ever tried an Asian free MMORPG? Apart from the simplistic gameplay I am often turned off by trying to understand what the fuck is going on and why I should care. Each race, each class has some kind of really bad Sci-Fi wannabe tearjerker background and after having been introduced to new words for everything I just can't keep up. Existing IP gets rid of that. Somebody else established the currency, the political make up, the names of races and classes. You no longer need to do that.
Do you know why existing franchises keep on ticking? Because creating a new world is insanely hard. Only a few can do it. Gene Roddenberry, father of the biggest franchise of them all, only created 1 succesfull one, despite several other tries. An existing backstory allows a new story to get right down to business. No new star wars needs to explain about hyperdrive, the force or the sith. We know them and you can just skip to the good bits. The ewok songs!... what? Why are you looking at me like that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Some fans are die-hards. Comic book and trekkie fans spring to mind.
But other fandoms are retarded, blind lemmings in a blender. I don't want to be pointing fingers, so I'll make up an example. So lets say some guy makes a couple really good movies. A couple good related books and games come out. Later, lets say about 25 years, this dude comes out with a prequel movie. It's pretty awful, and only has brand recognition going for it. Regardless, they decide to make even more movies. A bunch more related products come out, and most of them suck. HOWEVER, it ALL sells tremendously well and people act as if it's the second coming of Jesus. Just to top it all off, the guy refuses to release the original movies on DVD, but has a dozen different "Director's Cut" editions, which fans always buy the latest version of.
I know my example is over-the-top exaggeration and nothing could possibly be *that* asinine, but some names are worth millions of units sold, regardless of the product's quality.
Literally, owning some brands is like owning your own private mint.
I'm getting sick of playing game adaptation because of the inaccuracies. It can totally ruin the gaming experience. I was quite disgusted with the inaccuracies in this game. It has left a sour taste in my mouth. I don't think I will play a movie adaptation again.
By creating a game based on a popular IP [...]
Like what?
Kevin alone at 127.0.0.1?
The Hostmask?
Destination Anycast?
Don't Loop Back?
The Last Broadcast?
Now those are movies I would watch...
Why is everyone using "intellectual property", a catch-all phrase for trademarks, copyrights etc instead of just saying "ideas", "stories" or "settings"? I don't want to sound like RMS but it's really a dumb use of the term. The LoTR game is not based on IP, it's based on a story that happens to be protected by copyright.
It's a matter of how ambitious you want to be. There have been studios that made a point of owning their IP, and began their game as the beginning of a brand, a mascot, intended to become popular. Look at Mario, has more name recognition than Mickey Mouse. To do this sort of thing you have to be a triple-A studio backed with a ton of financing and development freedom.
The last developer that notably got to this point, after years of doing work for other people's IP is Factor 5. Unfortunately they tanked with Lair, mostly not their fault, who could've predicted Sony would release at $600 :| But the game wasn't amazing either. You could mention Silicon Knights as well. Too Human in development for over 10 years, at least conceptually. While the story was ambitious it somehow didn't quite resonate, and had that miserable E3 debut.
So, if you're an up&coming developer and you catch the eye of a publisher, do you say yes or no to that Matrix derived console port? You say yes, of course. You want to work, you bide your time, pay your dues, and store up the cheddar for your shot.
Sometimes their day comes and fizzles, and sometimes it's a home-run. Sometimes it's Daikatana, sometimes it's Deus Ex. Lol, same studio (name anyway), but Romero was running the one that tanked like a fish. (One wonders if Romero still wears his 'Design is Law' t-shirts around the house... or do they even fit anymore?)
Sure, doing a game adaptation has its pitfalls, that's clear. The biggest pitfalls fall in areas that can be the hardest to get right. It's damned easy to create the world's visuals. No one cares anymore. You have a hi-rez texture-map of Trinity's face for your Matrix game and know enough code to slap it onto a wireframe (mirrored), whoop-dee-do. Let's see a trick learned in your sophomore year of college. The real trick is matching tone, mood, atmosphere, scope -- those things that movie-makers try so desperately hard to build into their films, and if they're done right are so subtle that you only feel them, never mechanically note them. After that there's the question of whether the game-play is slick or not, and that can be tricky too. The master of gameplay is Nintendo. Miyamoto's made how many Mario / Zelda / Metroid / etc., etc., etc., etc., games now? And yet each one sells like crack? That's because the story is only a frame, the game is in the gameplay, the control mechanics, that feedback of visuals and control. The answer to the question: what is a game? Miyamoto knows it, and you play it in his games.
The last major pitfall: running out of time and financing. When they rely on the name more than the game. We've all played stuff that was an adaptation that was utter sh!t. Going all the way back to the industry slayer: E.T. the Extraterrestrial for the Atari. I played that goddamn thing left and right, and it was annoying as hell. Or take that Little Mermaid game for the NES my sister talked my little brother in purchasing one Christmas long ago, though I warned him about it and he later was quite upset.
There's always gonna be some stuff that just should not be adapted. Who's gonna try and make a game out of "Pride and Prejudice", or "Angela's Ashes"? There's just not enough action. And dating simulators never really took off in the States (thank god, that's a new level of pathetic :P).
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
In the video game domain, Fallout 3 is another example of a game where a small and vocal minority wigged out that Bethesda DARE change anything about their beloved isometric franchise. Even so, Fallout 3 was able to strike a balance between offering a modern realtime experience while adhering fairly close to what came before. The ranting of more obsessive fans had no impact on the game's popularity.
I'm sure games franchises do benefit from fan approval but it isn't necessary to make every last one happy, especially the fanatics.
I don't recall the 95 successive scenes in the film where E.T. fell into a friggin canyon.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.