EA: Movie licenses going the 'wrong way' for game publishers

@BrianH

Yeah, unless you're counting Gears of Potter and the awesome STUPEFY!?

Also, how is EA the best publisher right now? The last good games they made were what, Dead Space and Mirror's Edge back in 2008?

(Not counting the Bioware stuff obviously: Mass Effect 2 would have been made whether EA owned them or not.)

Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard both are making more quality titles these days, if you ask me. Of course it's subjective, but judging by sales figures and critical acclaim alike, that would seem to be the case.

@BrianH

I'd say Atlus is by far the best publisher today.

While many will not be smitten by the games they put out purely due to personal tastes, they have had a steady stream of nothing but quality titles for the past 6-7 years.

@Invigilator

Bad company 2 also says hello, plus, it's not just the games that count, it's the content you get after as well that counts

@BrianH i think Sega has done decently with the Marvel movie games thus far. Iron Man wasn't bad. Captain America looks pretty badass.

@Invigilator

He called them the best PUBLISHER, meaning games they've published. Let's take a look at a few of the quality titles they've recently published, shall we?

The Sims 3
Burnout
Battlefield
Crysis
Rock Band
Mass Effect
Spore

@sonicspike41

Plus Army of Two, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Dante's Inferno, and Dragon Age!

@Alexisonfire ATLUS IS PRO.

@BrianH Why "good on them"? Not saying that most movie based games aren't crap, but that's the fault of the developers and the publishers. Nobody forced them to make crappy harry potter games.

@Spunky Monkey 190906

You knew that returns on investment often fail to justify the costs involved in securing popular properties for a video game?

@The Pork

No, I knew that following in the path of a movie is restrictive and therefore a hindrance to both the development team who cannot go beyond the orginal plot and concepts and at the same time is an impact on the budgeting to release the game on time to keep toe to toe with the movie release, which in turn lowers the level of quality from the game and considering the large amount of money thrown at these games, ultimately fail as the game is rarely good enough to justify a purchase when more time should be spent on original IPs like Dead Space.

There are movie based games that do relatively well, but they are far and few, and the ones that do exceptionally well are because they strayed well away from the original movie plot and theme and used the characters to create a new experience for the gamer.

Conclusion: Movie games usually suck.

@The Pork

No, I knew that following in the path of a movie is restrictive and therefore a hindrance to both the development team who cannot go beyond the orginal plot and concepts and at the same time is an impact on the budgeting to release the game on time to keep toe to toe with the movie release, which in turn lowers the level of quality from the game and considering the large amount of money thrown at these games, ultimately fail as the game is rarely good enough to justify a purchase when more time should be spent on original IPs like Dead Space.

There are movie based games that do relatively well, but they are far and few, and the ones that do exceptionally well are because they strayed well away from the original movie plot and theme and used the characters to create a new experience for the gamer.

Conclusion: Movie games usually suck.

@Dreyesbo

So you're saying we need Harry Potter: Hogwarts Asylum?

@Grand Kerfuffle Exactly. But given the time we had to wait for a good Batman game, I'm not keeping my hopes up on this one. Specially as the movie saga ends, and developers don't have the potential profit a new movie release brings.

@Grand Kerfuffle

That, or Harry Potter: Azkaban City.

@ironneko

azkaban isn't a city

@BrianH And Arkham isn't an Assylum.

@Dreyesbo
Lovecraft says different.

@Dreyesbo

Azkaban is a fictional prison,
Arkham is a fictional Asylum. First appeared in batman in the 70s.

@Faenix
It actually first appeared in the 1800's with HP Lovecraft's stories. Yes, Batman can be traced back to Lovecraft.

@Alexisonfire

*successful.

@Alexisonfire

Exactly, I can think of several half arsed efforts

@Alexisonfire yeah.. thats what ive been thinking myself for awhile. simple 2d beat em ups/platformers on xbla/psn would be a great idea for these games.. especially over nothing at all.

i mean.. i was a huge fan of avatar the last airbender (show, not movie of course), and i wanted a guardian heroes styled game featuring aang and company so badly. replace magic with bending, and the turn the countless undead soldiers into fire nation troops. the show was perfect for explaining fighting hordes of similar looking dudes..

but instead.. they released 3 terrible games that probably didnt sell all that well.

@Tereso

What happened with ET on Atari? That game is the best movie game of all time :/

@Tereso

Rushing the game to meet movie release, is probably in the licensing contract.

@edit

I think we've already seen a publisher figure out how to do a "movie based game." Unfortunately EA's leadership is too dumb to simply rip off the idea or maybe it's most of the studios that are too dumb to rip off the idea.

Transformers: War for Cybertron got really good scores from from IGN, Game Informer, 1Up, Games Radar, OXM and Joystiq. The Metacritic score was low because of bad reviews from Gamespot, Eurogamer, Giant Bomb and Wired among other smaller publications. People I've talked to who played the game liked it.

You're right in that many publishers and developers, pushed by the studios, think a movie game has to tie in with the story and plot line in the movie. Some movies don't lend themselves well to being a video game just like some games don't lend themselves well to being movies (or maybe that's just Uwe Boll's fault.) The developer that did War for Cybertron with the full approval of Hasbro didn't try to tie the game to any of the movies, and from what I've heard the next Transformers game that's supposedly going to be released around the time of the Transformer 4 movie release isn't going to tie in with the movie either.

IMO the problem is simply that studios, publishers and developers have to stop thinking that a "movie tie-in" game has to be completely 100% faithful to the movie. All it has to do is get gamers interested enough in a good game that they'll possibly want to go see the movie in a theater or buy it on DVD, and be good enough so that fans who saw the movie will want to play the video game.

I'd love for movie games to tell me a different story than what I've seen in the movie. Then I feel like I've gotten two stories about something that I enjoy (like Transformers) instead of just one. If I've already seen the movie I don't need to play the game, I know the story.

@GMUHistorian

Transformers: War for Cybertron didnt have much to any pressure.

This game, had to pretty much copy a book - and a movie - as close as possible AND RELEASE at the same time the movie released to theaters. Transformers: War for Cybertron had none of that. Just a basic groundwork.