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Aiming For Hit Games, Movie Licenses Come Up Short 53

Posted by simoniker from the not-so-great dept.
Thanks to the New York Times for its article (free reg. req.) discussing the relative unpopularity of licensed videogames based on recent films. The piece notes: "Of the nation's 10 top-selling games for video consoles last year, only one was based on a film, a television show or a book: Enter the Matrix", before arguing: "The problem seems to arise from basic differences between films and games as forms of media. Films, like books, are obviously linear, with a specific, tightly defined story arc and specifically defined characters." Are there ways film adaptions can break free of these constraints?
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Aiming For Hit Games, Movie Licenses Come Up Short More

Aiming For Hit Games, Movie Licenses Come Up Short

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  • yeah. (Score:2)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 )
    they just need to do the same thing as the movies made about novels do: not care crap about the thing they're based on.

    of course it might be hard when you're just aiming for riding on the popularity of the movie and thus on a fast track to catastrophe as far as schedule and gameplay planning goes.

  • Use the universe, not the story (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Thursday May 27, 2004 @04:16AM (#9264967) Homepage Journal
    Star Wars Episode 1 Racer was one of the best reasons to own an N64. The second and third Lord of the Rings games for the GBA are probably the best games I've played on that platform. Neither of these stuck tightly to the story of the movie. They picked out key elements and used them to flavour a game that would have been popular even without the francise. That's how you make a movie license game.

    • Re:Use the universe, not the story (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, that's true.

      Games like X-Wing and more recently KOTOR have been wildly successful but they do not rely on the story mechanisms of the movies, rather the universe to build the games on. And of course excellent gameplay.

      It's interesting that KOTOR also uses the D20 roleplaying system, which is becoming the defacto-standard roleplaying system (like it or loathe it, it's not going away).

    • Re:Use the universe, not the story (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Damn straight. It worked wonders for the Super Mario Brothers game. That thing was hardly like the movie at all, but it shared just enough concepts to make it work.

      For one thing, Miyamoto really captured the "Essence of Hoskins" perfectly in his take. I'm sure I'm not the only one who died countless times on level 2-1 after daydreaming that I was watching Bobbi Hoskins taking a nice skinny dip in the ocean with all the friendly animals.

      Oh, Bobbi.

    • Almost all of the Lucas games kicked serious butt, for Nintendo, PC, what have you.

      The majority of video-game based games blow chunks. ET? Home Alone?

      It's been like that forever.

    • Re:Use the universe, not the story (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @09:27AM (#9265871) Homepage
      People keep blaming the story - but then they forget games like Half-Life - a game that was, practically, a playable movie. Over-linear storylines are no excuse. There are tons of massively successful hyper-linear games.

      ETMatrix was a bad game because it was ugly, clunky, and dull. Not because it had an over-linear storyline. Max Payne has practically the same fantasy-mechanics as The Matrix, and the game just played and looked better even though being an older and smaller project.

      The incompetence of movie games is probably mostly due to things happening behind closed doors like
      a) boardroom micromanagement by non-gaming PHB's
      b) formulaic design to keep the title safe, resulting in bored developers
      c) shipping before completion to make deadline

      Evidence that it is likely these factors causing the problems appears when you compare to games based on older movies, like the AvP, Star Wars games (except for the glut of ep1 and ep2 games - only a few of those managed not to suck), and Tron 2.0. Remember, even the corny Nintendo Star Wars platformers on the NES and SNES drew piles of rave reviews from magazines.

      Still, gameplaywise, I think one of the most common problems is that games are often made in completely the wrong genre for their movie. Like the Starship Troopers RTS - anyone watching the movie could have told you it would be a boring version of StarCraft. Or a Star Trek Spacefighter (remember ST - 25th anniversary, or any of the other ST games where a consitution class starship handles like an X-Wing?). Star Wars is not afraid to make great departures into odd genres, but while they do it they throw out the tight connections to the movies. IMHO, the first Matrix game should have been made not as a Shiny 3rd person adventure (especially not from a team that specializes in cute puzzles, cartoony animation, and twisted humour) but as a Digital Extremes project. UT with more Matrix oriented gametypes and the matrix set of abilities. I would love it to be a "design a character" team FPS game. But no.

  • Deadlines (Score:5, Interesting)

    by henben ( 578800 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @04:25AM (#9264991)
    The problem seems to arise from basic differences between films and games as forms of media.

    I think it's more to do with deadlines. Tie-in games have to come out when the film does. This means that publishers will go for unadventurous game designs and the game will often be released before it's ready.

    • Re:Deadlines (Score:2, Insightful)

      by skyman8081 ( 681052 )
      Whereas games that are released 2 [gamefaqs.com] or even 20 [tron20.net] yaers after the film came out may be of a higher caliber, most of the time...

      Development time is overlooked way too often in the course of a movie lisence game.

  • movie games suck (Score:4, Insightful)

    by snakattak ( 592921 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @05:10AM (#9265119)

    From my experience, (i just got out of 4 years of college mind you) video games based on movies are terrible. If you've seen the movie, you know whats going to happen in the video game, and they always manage to do it in some cheezy way involving clips from the film that you already saw. They hardly ever stray from the movie plot, so plotwise, the game is already old and dull the second you rent/buy it. Another problem is that they always seem to have less than par graphics and gameplay, probably because the developers were rushed to release the title in time for the movie. You can really tell this when you play a title like Prince of Persia, or Metal Gear solid, Metroid, Zelda, etc.. vs the spiderman game, or even lord of the rings. I mean, how fun is it to play as Frodo!!!! Seriously. All those other games have fresh new plots, great gameplay, and awesome graphics, while the movie games are just sub-par in all those categories.

    Enter the matrix on the other hand, was a brilliant video game. First of all, they hyped it up like another movie. And if you played it, it almost was. They basically told another story that tied so well into that trilogy, but used new and fresh plots, and even scenes by the matrix actors just for the video game. If more movie games were more like movie-additions, they'd be more successful, and even better yet, more fun to play

    • I agree 120%. I never ever, ever! buy games based on a film. The only exception being Star Wars - (like Xwing and KOTOR, but those aren't film based).
    • Enter the Matrix was a really cool concept, but I think it flopped on it's execution. I almost feel the timeframe made most of it's problems (and some massive oversights on their part in the design). The idea of making the movie-based game tie into the story, but not replicate any portion of the movie-universe, was a super idea and gave it an originality to it. The problems with Enter the Matrix came from it's lack-luster graphics for the time (though they didn't bother me, but then I'm used to pretty cr
    • GoldenEye for N64 followed the movie pretty tightly and that is one of the highligts of the article.
    • Actually, I think LOTR was good, and Enter the Matrix sucked. I mean, it has almost 0 replayability, which sucks cause it's over in about 6 hours. Compare that to 60 hours with replayability for a Final Fantasy game...

  • It's not just the linearity... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Danse ( 1026 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @05:58AM (#9265226)

    Games like Max Payne 1 & 2 were linear, but still great games. It's all in how creative you are with the gameplay. Hell, those games were more like movies than a lot of movies I've seen.

    • I agree.

      And on the flip side, many movies are not linear. The article writer obviously hasn't seen any Tarantino movies.

      I think the reason why so many movie games suck is simply a question of quality of thought and design put into them. A mere association with a brand/character name isn't going to work magic. This is true in general. For example, a "Spiderman drink" isn't going to become wildly successful if it tastes like crap even though it has the Spiderman name on it.

      Likewise with games. Put some tho

      • I think the reason why so many movie games suck is simply a question of quality of thought and design put into them.

        which is the reason, why something sucks, 99% of the time. i mean, really: some corporation asks you, why its product isn't successfully marketable and you can almost always say, that it lacks quality of design.

        it is the way a short lived market like that of movie merchandise is handled.

        In fact, the only thing that the name-association will get you is some free publicity.

        and in the exa

  • 1. Make a non-linear game
    2. Play it some time to get a decent story line
    3. ???
    4. Movie!

    For more practical reason, you can recycle computer graphics model for a game in its film form.

  • Length (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @06:32AM (#9265290)
    "The problem seems to arise from basic differences between films and games as forms of media. Films, like books, are obviously linear, with a specific, tightly defined story arc and specifically defined characters."

    Another problem is that games generally aren't the same length as novels or movies. A book like Harry Potter can be condensed into a two or two and a half hour movie and remain pretty faithful to the source material, and though no one actually reads them, two to three hour length movies are very often adapted into novels that retain the fairly standard 150-300 page paperback length. Modern games, on the other hand, are expected to be at least eight to ten hours in length, if not twice as long.

    That means that when a game developer adapts a movie into a game, they have to find another six or eight hours (at least) of story and action sequences. And on top of that, they have to make sure that the filler doesn't interfere with any of the possible ideas for where the movie franchise could go in the future, both forward in time (sequels) and also backwards (flashback sequences in the prequel). This is why useless, lame-ass villains like Shocker and Mysterio are featured prominently in the Spider-Man: The Movie games, instead of much more interesting and fun supervillains like Venom or Carnage.

    If only more movie studios would just let them go the KOTOR route, we'd be fine. But apparently they won't. So movie games suck, even though they don't have to.
    • Yes, but your explaination doesn't account for Enter the Matrix, since Enter the Matrix was all 'figured out' at the same time that Matrix: Reloaded was being planned out. They even used the same actors, sets and special effects team to do the cinematics in the game that they did in the movie. Enter the Matrix, in fact, did pretty much everything you're suggestion they should do:

      1) It was faithful to the source material, being written by the same writers, acted by the same actors, etc.
      2) It had the addit
      • 1) It was faithful to the source material, being written by the same writers, acted by the same actors, etc.
        2) It had the additional length required to make a successful game, and little of that is what I would consider 'filler.'
        3) It played with the Matrix universe without the rick of 'stepping on the toes' of the sequels... since the sequels had already been planned out at the same time the game was made.

        What Enter the Matrix is missing is something harder to grasp at.

        Actually, the entire GAME is what
  • When you have a universe as Large and Diverse as the Star Wars Universe (with many spin-off books and such), it only makes sense to make an MMORPG out of it.

    In that sense, it's a game based on a movie, and it's sucessfull at that. But it's BASED on a movie. ...it's not a RE-ENACTMENT of the movie...which is where I imagine most Movie Video Games break down. As a few people previously have mentioned...it's the whole linearity thing.
    • There is still a problem. As some SWG players have noted, they feel powerless, because they can't alter the storyline or go directly against established canon. This also applies to well detailed movie universes-you don't have much space to create your own plotlines, or else you run into the movie. KotOR got around this by predating near anything done in that universe so far. Episode 1: Racer escaped restraints by taking an undetailed aspect, and expanding upon it in great detail. Enter the Matrix tried to,

      • This also applies to well detailed movie universes-you don't have much space to create your own plotlines, or else you run into the movie. KotOR got around this by predating near anything done in that universe so far

        This is exactly why SWG does not appeal to me. 99% of the people (including myself) who want to be a part of the star wars universe want to be a Jedi. (or Sith) Thats the big draw. Phenominal cosmic powers, bad-ass lightsaber, feared and respected by all. Most people don't want to play the

  • in the form of some of the older Gold Box D&D games,the ones based upon a series of novels. As observed in the article, part of the problem with the media transition was that the book and movie forms tend to be very linear. Curse of the Azure Bonds(and resultant related properties) dealt with the constraints of the storyline by a) removing the normal heroes and b) expanding the storyline by adding optional quests and such. They didn't wreck the setting, and barely took any licence with it. Now for a mov
  • This will become a popular game title. It has several elements useful in a game... a compelling story, defined scenes, a villain and episodes of discreet action that are easily translated into gameplay. If you are going to make a direct movie to game translation these are the things you need in the movie. If not, follow the example of a previous post wherein the game sticks to the spirit of the movie, not the plot. Keep the characters consistent and keep the background story consistent... everything else ca
    • Care to explain the shovelware Shrek 2 GBA ROM that appeared on supernova the other day?
      • I like Shrek 2 GBA! It is a little generic but the cooperation aspect of the game is really cool. The enemies are bad, but the puzzle elements are surprisingly fun.
    • I hate to say it, but the first Shrek sucked. I bought it for my wife (I am trying to find some XBox games that she will like but don't cost $50). The game was so difficult in some parts from the very beginning that she gave up. I got most of the earlier parts figured out with a lot of effort. I finally got stuck toward the end when it was not obvious what needed to be done.

      That said, my wife did like that Shrek farted (you could light them on fire), but that didn't make the game work. All you prett

  • The real problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pudge_lightyear ( 313465 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:09AM (#9265547) Homepage
    The problem seems to arise from basic differences between films and games as forms of media.

    Yeah right!

    The problem is that they just aren't making good games based on these... linear or non-linear. The common assumption is... if we put "The Hulk" or "The Matrix" on it, it will sell itself. So they tend to concentrate more on the brand than the quality of the game itself.

    I have a solution! Are you listening movie and game companies? Concentrate on quality as much or more than the brand! I know that sounds hard... but it's not. Developers do that on just about every other game out there.
    • Enter the Martix is an interesting case because there was very very close interaction with the directors of the movie. They directed cutscenes specifically for the game, used the real actors to do their own motion capture, digitized their own faces, etc. The breakdown seemed to be that they were trying to recreate the environment and the world of the game so closely, that they neglected some technical aspects of the game mechanics. The time schedule probably also figured into this. Because they were put
      • My main problem was that it was like watching a movie, and was too short. 6 hours of gameplay, and not really replayable. Took me 60 hours, with almost no meaningless leveling, to beat Final Fantasy X. And they worked too closely with the directors -- there are 600 moves, but that's it, and all are coreographed. It was fun while it lasted, but nothing really innovating.

        I do like Blizzard, but "getting the game right" means the release might be decades too late. Same with Valve. I'd rather have a gam
    • While the parent foster has part of it, a lot of designers and developers actually want to put together a good game based on a movie license.

      Here's the problem, the developers are real fans of the movie. So, they naturally want to include all those awesome bits of the movie.

      Unfortunately, what typically ends up happening is one or more of the cool moments in the movie don't end up using the same type of engine. So you have a first person shooter, and then all of a sudden...you're driving...with the same
      • Better: Most movies take time anyway, some more than others. So start the game before the movie, and let it wait for a bit -- like when the movie is out of theaters and into home video.

        Or don't even pretend you're doing something new, just make a mod for a game that already exists -- since the studios only seem to see it as advertising, I'd rather play a free ut2004 mod with normal guns, random slowmo, good models of Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, and Smith, and hidden upgrades that let you fly or some such. W
  • One of my favourite games was based on a movie. It was ET for the Atari 2600. Man that game was hot in its time.

  • The problem with movie adapatations... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dtolman ( 688781 ) <dtolman@yahoo.com> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @09:25AM (#9265856) Homepage
    ...is that most of them are less creative than the original. Who wants to play a game that is linear and doesn't capture the feel of the movie. In my mind the most successful adaptations though through the ages:

    -The X-Wing and Tie Fighter series of games

    -Tron 2.0

    Both share a few attributes - they capture the feel of the source material, without making you think you are rehashing the movie. They let you recreate/relive the most fantastic moments of the movie - with you as the star (trench run in X-Wing, disk duels in Tron 2.0). Most importantly - they are creative and go beyond what happens in the movie - you aren't just summarizing the movie in a game - you are adding to the saga!

  • Is this a bad thing?? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is it a bad thing that movie/licensed games don't sell? I say NO.

    Back in the 16 bit days you couldn't turn a profit on an "original" game (you'd be lucky to sell 10,000 copies), so every had to be licensed. Publishers truly believed you needed a licensed property to compete.

    Now to hear that a licensed property does NOT guarantee the higher sales, is GREAT news to me. Perhaps the publishers can open their eyes, ears and minds a little more now and take a few "risks" on innovative original game designs. Why

  • Cost (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fallingdown ( 709840 )
    Games made from licensed IP aren't as good because a sizable portion of the budget goes to pay for the IP. Say the average game costs 2 million to make, so that's the budget given to it by the publisher. The IP license costs 1 million so you now have half the budget of any normal game, plus a tighter deadline and twice as many suits looking over your shoulder. It keeps happening over and over again though because people buy these pieces of crap because they have a recognizable name. So, rinse and repeat.
  • Setting a movie based game in the same world or universe, but following some side-story or other characters is probably the best way to go. Although they're obviously not based on a movie, the two Half-Life expansions Blue Shift and Opposing Force demonstrate this perfectly. They both take place in the same location and time as the original Half-Life, but instead of following Freeman, they follow a security guard and one of the invading troops instead. You'll often run into places Freeman has already bee

  • Universal Law (Score:4, Insightful)

    by blueZhift ( 652272 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @11:40AM (#9267164) Homepage Journal
    Alas, it seems that the universal law is that 90% of everything is crap! (Actually I think SF writer Theodore Sturgeon said that...) Which means that inevitably most games whether movie based or not are going to suck.

    Movie based games just get more publicity for sucking badly because of all of the hype. Fortunately most of the bads don't sell. But occasionally, buggy messes like Enter the Matrix actually do, ugh, which is enough to convince the powers that be to continue making movie based games. Oh well, if you do find yourself playing a bad game, perhaps some fun can be had in revelling in its suckitude!

  • Tomorrow... (Score:3, Funny)

    by borisbfurry ( 738057 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @12:18PM (#9267685)
    We get the sister article, "Aiming for hit movies, game licenses come up short"

  • The other way works better? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aminorex ( 141494 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @12:26PM (#9267777) Homepage Journal
    OTOH films based on videogames seem to be doing
    quite well. Case in point: Tomb Raider 1 & 2.
    Despite miserable plots, comic-book acting, and
    mediocre effects, these turned a pretty damn good
    profit.
  • Are there ways film adaptions can break free of these constraints?

    Here is a zany idea, just throwing it out here, how about you don't make them absolutly suck?

  • Not exactly... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AzraelKans ( 697974 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @02:06PM (#9269154) Homepage
    I have heard several times the same "Games cant reflect movies or tell a history" scenario this is not correct. For the information of the suits who believe this sort of crap. A good designed Game can tell the history better than a movie, since they allow you to participate in it. Examples at hand: half life, deus ex, (fable), KOTOR, FF(VII-X) they all tell great histories and manage to do it extremely well with great ammounts of drama, tension and suspense.(even GTA vice city manages to tell the history of tommy vercetti traition, deceipt and finally triumph in the mafia)

    The reason why movie games are not "hits" is because most of them have no quality/low budgets, lack of originality, etc in a few words: they suck. Mostly they are quickies made to cash in from movie revenues. The worst thing about this is that gamers are aware of it, and they EXPECT this games to be bad.

    Example at hand the shreck2 game (I HAVE NOT SEEN this game) Excerpt from a magazine: "You probably are excited about shreck coming back to teathers but not so much about the game, the first game was awful lets expect this one to be better". The same can be said about Van-helsing, cat-woman, batman and just about any other movie game coming out.

    A lot of people expected ETM to be a good game (and to some extent it kind of was) and they expected LOTR to be good too and that was reflected in their sales, people were hyped about the games NOT only the movies they are based on.

    If hollywood wants to have better sells for their games all they have to do is 3 things:

    1.-Stop the neverending flow of crap games cash tie-ins Licensed by themselves by simply hiring profesional reviewers to test the Quality of games before aproving their release. (that would save us so much pain)

    2.- Assign more time to the design and implementation of movie-games theres little to no point to release a game simultaneously or before the movie if the game is bad, unoriginal or quality lacking. If the game is good (and is not very delayed) it doesnt need to. example1: KOTOR was released a lot later than episode 1 and 2 and this didnt provided any problem to sales at all. Example 2: A lot of people would have prefered a van helsing game with true DMC quality coming this xmas or early next year than the medium quality movie tie-in being sold now

    3.-You should advertise games as an entity and with its own values instead of just a tie -in to some other medium example: spiderman 2 is advertising their GTA style game instead of its movie linkage, as a result people are as hyped about the game as they are about the movie.

    I rest my case.
  • Remember NES?

    There were countless games based on movies:
    back to the future, batman, jungle book, jurassic park, indiana jones...
    and those are just off the top of my head!

    More often than not these games had little if anything to do with the movie other than the box art and, at a stretch of the imagination, in-game graphics. Some of these games, despite that, were actually really good games.
  • just to note, this is a generality (granted a pretty good one), but a generality nonetheless. if you want to talk games based on movie licenses, look at the reviews for everything or nothing, the newest bond game. the return of the king game garnered strong critical praise as well. further, the reviews that i've seen so far for the new chronicles of riddick game (read: EGM) call it one of the best xbox games yet. admittedley, these two games took an existing license and crafted an entirely new story fro
  • Damn, I wish I could have gotten to this sooner. Warner Brother announced [hollywoodreporter.com] this week that they would be implementing increased royalties for games that do not achieve a certain average-rating by multiple gaming websites and magazines. This has huge implications to developers and gamers. If this works I'm sure it will catch on to all the movie studios with any marketing sense.

    I actually wrote an article about this on my gaming website Counterfrag [counterfrag.com]. Here is a direct link [counterfrag.com].

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