Limitations Of Game Licenses Probed

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to game designer Mark Barrett's page, where he has an opinion piece discussing the gameplay limitations of videogame licenses. He references earlier discussions on the subject from the likes of Warren Spector and Greg Costikyan, and says his Enter The Matrix play sessions revealed "..most of what I was doing and seeing had been forced not by design decisions, but rather by the promise of the license itself... [which was] encumbered by filmic conventions and film-related audience expectations, some of which were unrelated (or even antithetical) to a meaningful interactive experience." Do developers just have to rely on luck when it comes to how game-translatable a license is, or can they beat the odds by being smart?