Hi,
over the past few years , we have seen animated movies followed by a
corresponding game there has been starwars, shrek,toy story,avatar,how to tame ur dragon
to name a few.
How do the games help ?
Do they really make money ?
Is it just a marketing gig?
has any movie game got huge success?
Your thoughts!!
Regards
carloz
:?: :!:
http://bit.ly/q6tlr
They’re all at least mediocre, and mostly downright bad. Every one of them to this point has been about cashing in on people who don’t read video game reviews.
hey,
thnx jesse…
regards
carloz
As a rule, movie licence games are produced on short schedules (games aren’t kicked off until part way into the movie production so it’s common to have less than 14 months to make the game) by a low bidding studio (leaving the game under funded) and in creatively stifling conditions.
They exist because they can ride on the coattails of the film advertising and they’ll make money even if they’re bad. (as long as the film is strong) I’m not being cynical btw, advertising budget is a huge part of what makes modern games successful, being able to take advantage of the film advertising is a major advantage. And having a game on the shelf is just another way to leverage the brand.
Off the top of my head, Spiderman 2 was widely regarded as being one of the few movie games that was actually good (even though it wasn’t) and Chronicles of Riddick : Escape from Butcher Bay was one of the few games better than the movie it tied into. But everyone names those two.
The majority range from awful to uninspired but inoffensive cookie-cutter games. Unfortunately this is what you’ll get when you make games quickly and for limited budget, no matter how talented and well meaning the developers might be.
QFT. That game sucked. :o
I liked the first one better and it wasn’t even very good. I just enjoyed the Bruce Campbell and Tobey Maguire voiceovers, and the web mechanics were pretty fun.
I thought the graphics were great at the time, and I actually like the Riddick franchise, but I wasn’t much of a fan of the gameplay. I bought the sequel, Dark Athena, which bored me, but I finished it. I couldn’t even get through the first game again, though, which was included on the disc.
I heard Chronicles of Riddick were good.
I’ve have to say probably one of the best I’ve seen would be the Batman: Arkham Asylum. While it’s a much larger franchise than most of these movies-to-games, it played as a great sequel to Dark Knight.
Also, there are a handful of Star Wars games which are great (or were at the time of release).
Not only was this not a movie tie-in, but I didn’t get the impression that this was at all the same Batman universe from the recent two live action films. Arkham Asylum is a lot more like a darker version of an episode from the 1990’s cartoon series.
There are a handful of decent Star Wars games, but as with Batman, they weren’t movie tie-ins.
Licensed games are generally not very good either, but decent ones do exist, unlike “movie games”.
Haha same here! I thought the first Spiderman movie game fell squarely into the uninspired inoffensive tie-in category, and the fighting mechanics were solid. (that they built them off the Buffy game certainly didn’t hurt)
Spiderman 2 got top points for ambition, but failed on execution IMO, then they somehow ended up making the exact-same-game-but-worse for Spiderman 3.
Tempest - Arkharm Asylum is NOT a movie tie in. The actual movie tie in suffered a different fate.
Now I come to think about it, Star Wars Episode 1 Pod Racer wasn’t a bad game … probably helped that the scope was pretty tight and sensible. (at least far more sensible than the inclusion of pod racing in the actual film)
But yeah, movie games and licence games are two different animals. The scary thing about movie games is their deadlines are generally immovable, given the developer is trying to do too much in too short a time to begin with, the inability to delay a game until it is finished pretty much guarantees you keep it super safe or you’re going to crash and burn.
On the other hand, licence games can sometimes have the luxury to take their time, or be conceived around some sort of synergy of gameplay and content that actually works. As a rule, the less a licence game seems to be ‘striking while the iron is hot’ the more likely it is to stand on its own merits.
This has really been going on for years, even way back into the 16-bit and 8-bit eras.
You know what? That reminds me; I actually did like the Aladdin SNES and Genesis games!
However, they actually released those a year later than the film itself; it coincided with the release of the VHS release, not the theatrical release, and it didn’t even match that exactly. The game came out nearly two months later than the tape. (Disney actually used to make a lot of games that compared quite favorably with non-licensed titles. Then again, I think they also used to make cartoons, too. :P)
Licensing anything or any body is a pain in the assets! 
If you can get infront of a movie studio then you can bang out a game and get your name out there, but budget pressures and “creative control” may drive you to drink (more than often 
). Of course you can get access to things you’d never be able to afford without the movie studio support. I talked with Will Smith’s lawyers last year, as part of a side effort, and to use his image in a 3D world was six figures plus royalities! That was just Will, not any movie rights!!
As for how long (and how badly) this has been going on… ET any one?! (if you don’t know the story, google the ET atari game for a industry destroying effort in practice).
If you want to license anything, movies, other game IP, whatever, that costs big dollars. The only reason to do it is because it comes with marketing/advertisement/public draw. Some times it works (see most sport franchises), some times it doesn’t.
Cheers,
Galen
The TRON Arcade was great.
There are 3 major demographics of people who buy games:
Casual gamers, who only buy big releases ( Gears of war, halo, god of war etc ) from commercials they saw on TV/online.
“Hardcore” gamers, who frequent forums/strategy sites about games, and will buy games often.
Parents, buying games for their kids.
Movie games are designed to cater to #3. Every gamer knows that movie games suck 9 times out of 10, but a parent, staring at a wall of videogames has no idea what to buy. When they see “Avatar the game” they think, “Well that movie was really good, the game probably is to.”
Its shameless cash grabbing pure and simple.
Though 1) isn’t far behind it, is it?
7 out of 10 games with money tree advertising budget require it cause the content wouldn’t get it enough good publicity to sell.
We have seen the direct consequences of that with top game testers for digital mags being fired for telling the truth about crap Ubisoft games and with their recent desire to annoy the ones stupid enough to pay for the game instead of waiting for the crack, that will not get any better at least for UbiCrap
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