Why Can’t We Make a Good Movie Tie-in Game?

Goldeneye 007

While researching this article, I wanted to check that Cultured Vultures didn’t have one already. A quick search for ‘tie-in games’ reveals ’25 of the Worst Games Ever Made’ as one of its first results, and therein lies the problem: movie tie-in games are, almost without exception, tragic. Batman’s parents dying in an alley tragic – but while that incident gave us the Dark Knight, movie tie-in games gave us E.T. on the Atari 2600. And an STI.

First, a disclaimer: Not all movie tie-in games are bad. ‘Spider-Man 2’, a game I played on the Playstation 2, really brought the fun of swinging around a full-size version of Manhattan to life, and though the story missions were nothing to write home about, I thoroughly enjoyed travelling between them. ‘Goldeneye’ on the N64 was a party favourite, as long as no-one tried to play as Oddjob using ‘slappers only’, and ended up with a controller inserted into them. And despite the gameplay being distinctly average, 2009’s ‘Ghostbusters’ really tickled my nostalgia bone, and I couldn’t help but grin like the 6 year-old me watching the film for the first time.

So, that’s three. Out of several hundred. And I’m not counting games like ‘Star Wars Battlefront’ or ‘Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth’, because those games, while perfectly acceptable, are part of a much larger universe – they’re not related to individual films, and the worlds of these games are bigger than the events of one. Also the ‘Lego’ games are about ‘Lego’ – which is inherently awesome – and not films. Because I said so.

So why are they so bad? How could it be that a tie-in game led to the infamous crash of the Western video games industry? Why do I still buy them?

The last one of those is the easiest to answer: rampant self-loathing.

But apart from that, what causes tie-in games to be so bad? Answer number one: money. A film costs a lot to make, and I’ll take the example of James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’. It cost an impressive $237 million to make. Yes, the film made its money back ten times over, but if you’ve made an investment of over 200 mill, you expect more than just a bit of cinema. Of course they released a video game of it, and of course it was not very good. Apart from the iPhone version (which was almost alone in a sea of ‘room escape’ puzzles and Popcap games on the format at the time), the highest review I could find was 6/10. Most of them were closer to 3. And yet it sold 2.7 million units.

James Cameron's Avatar
Source: oceanofgames.com

Which brings me onto number two: marketing. Marketing a new IP is difficult, and costs a lot of money. If you’ve already marketed a movie, then half the work is done – people who like the film (these fans who choose to like things) will buy the game. Even more so if it’s a kids’ film, because kids’ll buy and like anything that has their favourite character on. ‘Hunger Games’ lightbulbs and ‘Star Wars’ tape dispensers exist, so why not a ‘Fantastic Four’ game? Wait, that was a thing? Damn.

Finally, reason number three: laziness. Game companies are full of people who have ideas for games, and write code as practice, or code for an idea that never goes towards making a full game. That dream sequence in ‘Metal Gear Solid 3’ where it suddenly becomes another game entirely is a prime example. A number of tie-in games are literally this: we have an engine, quickly design a bunch of character models and shove ‘em in there, and voila: a game. Took us a month guv’nor, but we’ll bill you for six.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE-oBn2G9cs

When a game is actually designed separately, it works. ‘Goldeneye’ started out as a rail-shooter designed to come with a light gun before a neuron fired somewhere, and someone woke from the pile of drool on their desk and shouted ‘Free roaming!’.

Can we do anything about it? Not really, the whole ‘fans will buy it, they’re fans’ argument will continue to hold firm – but we can always hope that the next tie-in game will be another ‘Spider-Man 2’ and not another ‘The Ring: Shadow’s Realm’.

Are there any movie tie-in games that you thought were actually decent? Give me a shout on Twitter @GodOfChicken and I’ll give them a go!

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