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The average game, made by an average development studio will obtain
an average sales rate. Give said game a title in common with a
recently released "A"-list film and you're pretty certain you've got
a big seller on your hands. The rules aren't written. Of course,
there are exceptions to the tedious drivel that often seems to ooze
from every pour in the film industries sweaty palms. No-one can
knock the game that’s probably been on the tip of your tongue since
you started reading this article, GoldenEye, truly a
revelation in game making, not only as to how to correctly
create a game within a film licence, but also a step forward for the
first-person genre itself. What else springs to mind? Well, the
success of the year as far as licences seem to go has to be the
rather mediocre, and often “dodgy” Enter The Matrix, not
surprisingly. This title promised the impossible and, well, proved
that currently, it’s still impossible. Ambition is one thing, but
when the film studio is hounding you for a date and the artists are
still working from level design sketches, you know that game’s got
to be short, or normal.
A common factor in the downfall of the licensed game
seems to be that of release date pressure. The Hulk, by no
means a bad game… just not a particularly good one. A little
refinement of the Dr. Bruce Banner levels and a little more thought
in the controls and it could have been a killer, more so than the
forthcoming rather-nice-looking Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The
King. The aftermath of a lot of these games is light for the
development company. Most of the people who buy the games related to
the film of the same name buy them because they like the film, not
because they’ve seen it in a magazine, or on the internet or
anywhere else they can look at it from a step back other than in the
shop or on the advertisements. These games now appeal to the
mainstream fans, and the mainstream fans will buy these games and
enjoy them, so that’s it. It’s all fine then.
The problem I have with this is that just because some
people may not like the look of a game, or have not heard of it,
they may not get to play it. This would mean that a large sector of
the gaming public could miss out on greats such as The Legend Of
Zelda, Prince Of Persia, Advance Wars and so many more, just
because they didn’t see the 20 second advert played on three
consecutive Friday nights on channel 4. I’m not saying that the
gaming public at large is stupid, nor that they buy crap games on
purpose, but currently a large majority of the public buying games
are not “gamers”. Playing games is still nerdy. Having-a-go is cool.
There’s a fine line between being a “gamer” and being “cool” these
days, and what results is two sectors of games, for two sectors of
market.
Firstly, we have the almighty PlayStation2 (bowing down
before its immense market power). The PlayStation2 offers the
biggest and broadest selection of videogames available to date on
any home console system bar none. Fact. The appeal of the
PlayStation2 is due to many factors; the marketing for the system,
the games the system boasts, the fact that all your friends have it,
the DVD player capability and, not least, the fact that it’s the
offspring of the PSOne. Sony made a strong decision at the start it
would seem. To sell a games console, you need to appeal to everyone,
and appealing to everyone with a games console means concentrating
on two things. First, games. You must have games that appeal to
everybody. Second is, of course, marketing. Marketing the machine as
a new breed of home entertainment, like a stereo or a video player,
allowed Sony to cross the gap from kids toy to high-tech equipment,
succeeding where the CD-I and 3DO had failed. Nintendo and Microsoft
seem to have been cornering small subsections of this market
lately-with the GameCube’s price drop and the Xbox Live!
Offering from Microsoft.
The second section is the gamers section. The gamers are
people from all walks of life, young or old. Sony has small pockets
in this group, those disappointed with the last days of the SNES, or
failed to see the DreamCast as the bright and shinning ray of light
Sega wished it was. Microsoft has managed to attract all the techno-ites,
with their industry-heavy box of bits, and Nintendo retain their
title of “best fans in the industry”, even though they have quite a
bit to complain about of late. But how does all this relate to the
film licences? Well, in simple terms, all those companies who spend
huge amounts of money acquiring the rights to a film of ten don’t
have to money to produce for every machine; Terminator 3: Rise of
the Robots has recently been cancelled for the GameCube, as has
Futurama, due to lack-lustre Xbox sales. This often results
in the PlayStation2 becoming the exclusive console, due to the much
larger audience, and once again, we find ourselves at the beginning
of the article.
Games companies are becoming more like film companies
everyday. We must not forget that, after all, this is an industry.
There are many reasons why games can turn out to be stinking wastes
of money, and there are many alternatives to choose from. The old
saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” seems to sum up what I’m
saying rather nicely, but to alleviate the point, it’s more to do
with taste, just like anything else. We can gripe and moan as much
as we like, but the industry is becoming a commodity market, and it
won’t be long before we’re scouring the second-hand shops for those
little gems.
Kev J. 16/11/03 Each of these articles has been
written either independently of Electronic Theatre or by an
external viewer. The opinions discussed in these articles in no way
reflects the opinions of Electronic Theatre. If you wish to enquire about pricing of any
titles for these formats not listed on this site, drop me a line at kjoyce@electronictheatre.co.uk |
