Originality Vs. Established IP In Games 71
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."
So what if the faithful screams? (Score:4, Interesting)
They are a extremely small part of any fan base for a certain IP.
Re:Depends on the IP (Score:5, Interesting)
I've decided to define Star Wars Canon by Timothy Zahn's works.
Who is this George guy anyway?
Ambition (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
Re:WTF, intellectual property? (Score:1, Interesting)
this is particularly interesting since every relevant legal doctrine agrees that general ideas can't be protected.
in the US:
copyright attaches to a nonfunctional original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression.
trademark protects nonfunctional arbitrary, fanciful, or descriptive (where secondary meaning exists) terms/logos/devices which serve as source identifiers and thus prevent consumer confusion.
patent gives an exclusionary right to the inventor (or discover-or) of new, useful, nonobvious process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. ...not that complicated.
Re:I'm the worst person to try to please (Score:1, Interesting)
The one exception to this rule is the Blade Runner computer game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_(1997_video_game) [wikipedia.org]
This is the BEST other-media IP translation I have ever seen. A wonderful game. Would have been so much worse if they had just made a translation of the movie/book.
Good graphics too - especially for the time. Cut scenes were pre-rendered, so close to modern Final-Fantasy graphics quality (but more realistically shaped people), and live-action parts are rendered with voxels, so provide a surprisingly good visual/speed for software rendering.
Runs great under Wine; can't say if it still runs on Windows though.