I Haven't Posted In Forever

My last post made Blogged Out a while ago and I haven't posted anything since. 

Um, what to talk about?

How about the upcoming deluge of old movie-license games? 

You know, Godfather, Taxi Driver, Scarface, Reservoir Dogs, The Warriors, From Russia With Love...

I imagine the idea here is that a publisher sees that movie titles do well and asks themselves, "Why does it have to be a current movie?  Why not *any* movie?"  And I'm not sure, but it seems like EA may have led the charge with Godfather.  Hey, they're rich, and they can afford to make mistakes.  All these people imitating EA may be in for a surprise, though.  The thing that makes doing a game based on a current movie so lucrative is that Hollywood is spending millions upon millions of dollars to wash people's brains with the IP.  The movie is one of the top things in public consciousness the week it comes out.  These old movies - no.

That said, they'll still probably do better than some brand new out-of-nowhere IP, which almost always tanks.

Individually, what do I think of these games-out-of-movies?  I think Godfather and Taxi Driver are ridiculous.  (Sorry Chris S., if you're reading this.)  Maybe in a decade or two we'll have the technology to do a full-on character-driven drama justice, but not today.  I met the guy who put the Reservoir Dogs thing together and he was very excited about it because it tested well - and sure, I can see that, Reservoir Dogs is right up your 18-25 demographic, whereas a big chunk of the guys who liked Godfather and Taxi Driver aren't even gamers.  But where's the game in Reservoir Dogs?  That I don't see.  From Russia With Love, there you can do the standard movie-to-action-game translation, and ditto with The Warriors, which was practically a videogame already.

And...that's really all I had to say about that.  Here's my prediction:  none of these games will sell over a million units.  (Oh, and I mean according to TRST, which is always a smaller-than-actual number, but it's the numbers I'm used to.)

Comments

[zachary j. gamedesigner]

From russia with love could be great if the guys who did EoN are doing this one. At least from a gameplay perspective, no idea if the sales for EoN were good.

[Tony]

If EA can sell EoN they can sell FRwL. It was JFK's favorite book after all.

I think Godfather will do OK, because that film is pretty timeless, and new generations of kids are being turned on to it all the time. I think the rest of these games will tank. Jamie, you forgot Scarface... which I think will also tank.

But where are the Goodfellas, Serpico, and Sopranos games???

[Factory]

Hmm as far as old films go, while you don't get current marketing, you do get the benefits of all the past marketing, which can be considerable when we are talking about things like Godfather, but less so than things like The Warriors, which is a tad bit more obscure.
I'd disagree about the suitability of some of the films, GTA3VC was basically a Scarface film that wasn't, and it was pretty good. But then again, Reservoir Dogs would have to detour considerably from the movie to give it a good chance to be a good game.

Hmm I bet Godfather, Taxi Driver and Scarface will all be GTA3 clones, they certainly sound like it from the news so far. Given that GTA3 was very filmic, I wonder if they thought "hey let's make a GTA3 clone", and then decided to tack on a movie licence.

[Zack Hiwiller]

I'll owe you a coke if Godfather doesnt sell a million.

[Rich]

"some brand new out-of-nowhere IP, which almost always tanks."

most of the time, true. But, when they hit it big, they hit it biiiiig...

GTA
Sims
Burnout
Doom
Ultima
Street Fighter
Zelda
Mario
Halo

Fact of the matter is that a large percentage of just about everything (new and established IP) tanks. All IP does is give the title recognizability; if the game is shit, it doesn't really go anywhere. There are few notable exceptions to this, the Matrix being one of them.

[Brett Douville]

Don't forget Dirty Harry. Apparently Clint Eastwood is lending his voice to a videogame based on the Dirty Harry franchise. Although there were four or five of them, there hasn't been a Dirty Harry movie in 17 years. I simply can't see that reaching the 18-25 crowd. They're even a stretch for me, in my early 30s.

[JP]

"Maybe in a decade or two we'll have the technology to do a full-on character-driven drama justice, but not today."

What sort of technological advancement are you expecting will make this possible?

[Anne]

I think we're forgetting The Game Zombies.

The Husband works at B&N's game chain, and this is how he refers to the crowd that wanders in and announces they are tired of GTA, Halo, Splinter Cell, etc., isn't there anything interesting and different out there?

He suggests things like Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Psychonauts, Killer 7, etc., only to be told these titles are too odd, too quirky, too different.

What they want is GTA, Halo, Splinter Cell, etc., with a different frame.

He has given up on the human race as a dominant species.

[SpiderMonkey]

@Anne: Isn't that the same of walking into a music store and saying "I'm bored of The Strokes" and instead of being pointed at, say, Franz Ferdinand, or some other band within the same ballpark, you get pointed at some electronic dance group? Maybe that's a gross oversimplification, but I think maybe other consumer groups do a better job of breaking their customer down into various categories of taste, whereas with games, there often seems to be just three categories of what people buy: stuff everyone owns, stuff that only gaming 'snobs' (I should think of a better word, but I don't mean that word to have its negative connotations) own, and stuff that gaming 'snobs' wouldn't be seen dead owning.

@Jamie: Maybe this is an experiment for EA to see if their own marketing muscle is big enough to achieve the same results as Hollywood, with its flagship titles? But they'd like a fallback in case it goes wrong, since, as you say, unproven IP is ... unproven?

[Anthony]

Less risk, more profits, and established brand. It's an easy road to go down for large dev houses.