Movie games care only about profits / Quality is an afterthought - Agree or not?

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I've found this GameFlavor site http://www.ps3informer.com/ to have some pretty funny articles like the Guitar Hero one, but I read one article that actually got me thinking: do movie-based games have odds stacked against them that make them bad. What I mean is, is it like destiny or something or is it really the developers' fault or publishers' fault that a movie game turns out bad.

After reading this article, I'm wondering if game companies even bother about the quality of their product, or if it really is all about making easy money. The writer has some good points and some good insights on why movie games usually turn out bad. Do you agree or not?? Here's the article http://www.ps3informer.com/playstation-3/news/why-movielicensed-games-suck-009716.php
 
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Movie-licensed games tend to fail simply because they weren't originally designed to be games. Poor development periods, creative constraints, licence regulations are all implications for a movie licensed game, that aren't for a game designed to be a game. It's really that simple as far as I'm concerned.
 
I think it's kind of unfair to take such a black and white view when it comes to all publishers (and license holders), as it very much depends on the situation. I'm sure there are some game companies who work on movie/TV/whatever licenses which put their all into making a quality product - partly because they want to be hired again, and partly due to the hopes they can build their reputation enough to be able to work on their own stuff - but find themselves constrained by the license, in terms of time and other things.

On the flipside, and this seems to happen far less often, there are license holders that understand video games and want to see a quality product. Disney and Lucas are two examples of companies that have good - even some classic - games based on licenses, including movies. Even though both also have game divisions of their own, in Disney's case, there have been some licensed games made by outside companies that have been great (thinking of Kingdom Hearts specifically here, but there have been others).
 
While the lion's share of licensed games are crap, there are exeptions. I thought Peter Jackson's King Kong was amazing.
 
[quote name='blueshinra']I think it's kind of unfair to take such a black and white view when it comes to all publishers (and license holders), as it very much depends on the situation. I'm sure there are some game companies who work on movie/TV/whatever licenses which put their all into making a quality product - partly because they want to be hired again, and partly due to the hopes they can build their reputation enough to be able to work on their own stuff - but find themselves constrained by the license, in terms of time and other things.

On the flipside, and this seems to happen far less often, there are license holders that understand video games and want to see a quality product. Disney and Lucas are two examples of companies that have good - even some classic - games based on licenses, including movies. Even though both also have game divisions of their own, in Disney's case, there have been some licensed games made by outside companies that have been great (thinking of Kingdom Hearts specifically here, but there have been others).[/QUOTE]

I think in this case we are talking about games base on the movies, which are ruched to be release around the same time and not just on the license. In this case both of them are just as bad with revenge of the sith or cars. The sad thing is that back in the SNES days there were some really good movies game. The super Star Wars games were very good, and the Aladdin and Lion King were aslo enjoyable.
 
I 95% agree with the statement of the topic. I do not include, however, games that build on the Star Wars universe. Those run the gamut from liquid crap to pretty fucking incredible, with a relatively equal distribution across the spectrum.

In general, though, movie-licensed games are like pizza in reverse. That is, "even when they're 'good', they're pretty bad."
 
For the most, licensed games (movies and otherwise) are just shovelware designed to make a quick buck.

But there are the occasional exceptions.
 
Licensed games used to kick ass, because they had actual studios (like Capcom) behind them.

Chip n'Dales Rescue Rangers (NES)
Duck Tales (NES)
Aladdin (Gen)
Yo Noid (NES)
Tiny Toons: Buster Busts Loose (SNES)
A ton of the early TMNT games, at least through Turtles in Time.
 
If I remember correctly, don't game studios have to pay for the rights to make a game based on the movie? If so, it makes sense that, assuming identical game studios and identical budgets, a movie game would be handicapped from the beginning, in the form of less money to actually make the game.
 
I would think the purpose of almost every major game is to make money. In order to help the game do so, they can do things like make it not suck, so they go hand in hand in some cases. But certainly profits before quality. If a publisher could release a game with minimal effort and still make the $, they would and do.
 
Reading over the article, I see several problems with the assumptions in there, especially around the Ghostbusters issues. GB did not miss a movie window, and was not dropped because of a reduced market. It was dropped, because Activision did not see the potential for yearly iterations, the same was the case for Brutal Legend. Some games don't need to have regular sequels, they can stand on their own, like single books or movies, but in an industry that is so heavily structured around establishing brands, original or one shot content, is not always welcome.

Now for the Dark Knight, and many other licensed games, it comes down to time frame. If a studio is experienced and is given two years to develop the game, you can get good results (Spider-man 2) but when a studio is given 6 weeks you get crap (E.T.). This issue is not the license itself, it is the time frame that delivery is expected.

The other issue is scope creep, which I think is what Iron Man suffered from. As you develop the game, you start seeing new features that would be excellent, but those should all be defined during pre-production. At most, you should identify the effort that new additions will require and mark them as stretch goals for your project, things that will be looked at once you have extra time before hitting you alpha build. Because once you hit alpha, nothing new should be added. If you look at original Iron Man demos it seems pretty straight forward, but the final product does not really reflect that, you have cumbersome controls and a lack of fine tuning (if you are a walking talk, a guy with a pistol should be a one shot kill). This will kill a project, be it licensed or not, every time.



P.S. Brisbane was not close, but released. The studio is now independent of EA and can shop for a new publisher.
 
thers only one movie game that ever exceeded expectation and that was Spider man 2. that game was and is very awesome they definelty didnt slack ass on the game but every other one ive ever seen looks and plays like shit. greatest example was the first matrix game. That game was hyped beyond belief even the stars of the films bragged about how great it was and oh yeah it was going to be released the same day as the movies!!!!!!! that game sucked so bad ( which i guess shouldnt have ben too big of a surprise since the films did too ). most movie based games are cheap cash ins especially kids movies though i did remember seeing the Cars game getting a pretty good review. as far as the matrix games go they did make up for it with the matrix path of neo.
 
All you have to do is look at what happened with Brash and Pandemic Australia along with what they're trying to do with Watchmen and you see that it isn't about companies trying to squeeze dollars. It's just much harder to make a licensed movie game because of the short time table.
 
While this may be true for a lot of movie games, look at Wanted. That game is still in production even though the movie has come and gone and it looks like a lot of fun so far. I hope it does well.
 
Some of my favorite licensed games...

Toy Story - Genesis - a good challenge for the time, especially once you got into the claw machine

Aladdin - Genesis - probably played through it a dozen times

Batman - NES - a huge pain in the ass, doesnt mean i didn't play the crap out of it

Toy Story 2 - PSX - good platformer, did very well at establishing the scale of Buzz vs. the massive environments

Yo Noid - hard as hell, especially when you had to win a card game at the end of each level or start over, but still fun to play


But yeah, there's always a tons of crappy movie games, moreso on the PSX forward, the Genesis/SNES had a lot of great platformers mostly from Disney movies (Aladdin, Jungle Book, Toy Story). But for every one of those there's 10 bad ones (NES Wayne's World, Total Recall )
 
The results on this poll are crazy. There is a shit ton of evidence to support the fact that it is simply harder to make a licensed movie game now that production cycles are so long for games. All of the good licensed movie games people are pointing to were made on consoles with much shorter development cycles with smaller teams. Publishers don't do movie games because they make so much more money on them. They do them to balance out their portfolio because they are lower risk.

There is also the fact that any licensed products regardless of the industry have increased costs due to the licensing fees. I used to work in the toy industry where licensing fees were usually in the range of 6-10% of gross sales. Because the fee is on gross sales, in reality the fee alone ends up being up 25% of the total product cost. We had one product where the unlicensed version retailed for $9.99 and the licensed version retailed for $11.99 because of the licensing fee. If we wanted to sell both products at $9.99 we would have had to make the licensed one lower quality. It is just the was licensing works.

The license holder also many times creates issues. The people negotiating these deals for the licensors are usually bonused exclusively on sales and/or profit. I've never seen a licensor who was willing to take less money in order to create a higher quality poduct. Thats not to say that that licensors care only about profit and not quality, it just creates an inherent bias that makes it even harder to make a high quality product.
 
[quote name='Salamando3000']If I remember correctly, don't game studios have to pay for the rights to make a game based on the movie? If so, it makes sense that, assuming identical game studios and identical budgets, a movie game would be handicapped from the beginning, in the form of less money to actually make the game.[/QUOTE]

Most such deals are structured around performance. If the game does well then the owners of the source material do well. If the game tanks the licensees aren't much worse off than if they created something from scratch.

Frequent;y, even if the game sucks, the licensees are still doing well because such games often far, far better than their quality deserves. Which is why the allure of a hot license is so great.

Sometimes, if the marketers of the material to be licensed don't already have a partner in game publishing, they'll go shopping the license around, offering incentives to companies to take on the project. Back in 1987 the producers behind 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' were trying desperately to get someone to do a game in time for the movie's release. After being turned down by the biggest game companies of the era, they came to my then employer, Cinemaware. We turned them down, too.

There were a bunch of problems. The time frame was far too short. It would have meant delaying most of the other projects in progress at the company. They were offering some big incentives but not enough to overcome the cost of the disruption, even if dropping everything else would have resulted in a good game in so little time. As it worked out, no roger Rabbit games were released until long after the movie have finished its theatrical run. Disney created a new operation, Buena Vista Games, with that one game as its initial sole project. The Amiga game appeared eventually and was visually impressive but loading times were horrendous and you could get killed in mere seconds after starting a level, requiring the loading all over again. Worse, by then the NES had become the focus of the market for games aimed at younger players and the Amiga was at the opposite end of that demographic scale.

So that was a big CF all around.

We also got approached to do a game around Star Trek: The Next Generation before the first episode was aired. That is how I got to read the original 'bible' for the series and then see how badly watered down the actual show was by comparison. Rodenberry wanted to do so longterm storylines of the sort that just weren't allowed in TV then because syndicators hated having to play every episode in order. Babylon 5 was one of the first shows to break free of that stricture.
 
Licensed games have about the same hit or miss ratio as games in general. It is a subset of licensed games, those tied directly to a specific movie, that tend to be awful far more often than not.

Take as an example the Riddick game, Escape from Butcher Bay. Rather than directly adapt Pitch Black or The Chronicles of Riddick, they created something new that fit into the continuity but wasn't bound to lead the player through the events of either movie. The player has some knowledge of the character from the movies (assuming familiariity) but all he can know for sure is that successfully finishing this game will lead into the events of Pitch Black.

There are good ways and bad ways to apply a license.
 
Chronicles of Riddick comes to mind as being a great game although the movie left much to be desired.

Overall, movie based games just don't work. The story/action is usually lost in translation. IMO, the issue is that developers lack the creative freedom and necessary time to make a good game. They are often restricted by the movie script. The demand to have the game ready and on the market when movie launches puts too much of strain on the normal development cycle.

Simply put good games take TIME, CREATIVITY, and A GOOD STORY (this is true for most games). For a plethora of reasons movie based games just aren't conducive to such conditions. Therefore, they fail to be fun games even though they are profitable.
 
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[quote name='62t']I think in this case we are talking about games base on the movies, which are ruched to be release around the same time and not just on the license.[/QUOTE]
Understandable, but "movie games" can also include stuff like The Godfather, Scarface, The Warriors, and the upcoming Ghostbusters. They're based on classic IP, sure, but timed releases like Chronicles of Riddick can also turn out to be decent games.

Agreed on the older NES/SNES games, but back then, games didn't take as long to make, while the production cycles of movies are generally about the same as they've always been.
 
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