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 pore 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 last year as far as licences seem to go was 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 average.

            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. 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. This is also now their intention with the PSP. 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 often don’t have to money to produce said title for every machine; Terminator 3: Rise of the Robots was recently been cancelled for the GameCube, as was 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.