GoldenEye on N64
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License To Ill

You have to feel sad for Vin Diesel. Aside from his career shift from bad-ass Pitch Black to The Pacifier (or, as I like to call it, Adventure In Babysitters 2: First Blood), the former $20 million man is perhaps the only person in videogame land, and certainly in Hollywood, who believes that a video game can be as good as the movie or TV show that inspired it. I don’t mean its ability to make a profit, which, if that were any question, would have meant the death of the latest Hannah Montana GameBoy Advance title. No, I mean the ability for a licensed show or movie to spawn a respectable counterpart, a good game on the level of, say, Katamari Damacy or Ninja Gaiden. The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay is one of the few great movie-based games ever made, but Vin, a nerd at heart, actually created his own video game developer, Tigon, to make the title. Calling this rare is an understatement. It’s hard to imagine Nic Cage consulting with Ghost Rider game developers between takes with Eva Mendes. Right. 

In all fairness, the actors aren’t usually the ones to blame, or to praise for that matter. As many gamers now know, awful licensed games are usually the result of tough movie timing and stone cold economics. Let’s call it the Star Wars effect. According to “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” an entertaining book on ‘70s cinema, George Lucas was one of the first creative people to see the potential for movie tie-ins. The scrappy director demanded he keep the intellectual property rights to Luke, Lei and his whole universe, a rarity at the time. 20^th Century Fox happily let him have them, making George incalculably rich once Galoob started calling. Lucas success with licensed toys, Thermos (TM) mugs, posters, cereals and such changed how studios viewed movies. A common theory is that three out of five movies lose money, one out of five make money and the final one-fifth break even. After 1977 theatrical releases and, later, television shows could actually recoup based on tie-in sales alone. Coincidently, 1977 also marked the release of the Atari 2600. To marketing geniuses, your movie-based videogame is the equivalent of a Mork and Mindy lunchbox, except with higher overhead and potential profitability. They are called movie tie-ins, not videogame-tie-ins, so the producers will do everything within its power to make sure all movie-related paraphernalia is on the shelves when the theatrical release happens. Unfortunately, video games (should) take longer to make than lunchboxes. (Perhaps learning from George, his friend and colleague Steven Spielberg, via Atari, allowed game designer Howard Scott Warshaw six weeks to create E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600. Insiders say he was paid well to live in infamy.)  

The other dynamic is money. The best known secret in Silicon Valley is that The Godfather was the most expensive mainstream videogame ever made, even if it looks like a strange candidate. Anyone familiar with the title knows it is a well-packaged, if not well-playing take on Grand Theft Auto III, so tens of millions money didn’t exactly go into R & D. The visuals are nice, but other games, such as Gears of War or recent Final Fantasy titles, are much more stunning. It took millions to pay for the professional voice actors, use of Brando, James Caan and other likenesses, and aggressive marketing. However, the biggest chunk almost definitely had to come from licensing. Paramount Pictures wasn’t going to just give away its billion-dollar license. The Godfather has brought some solid games, including two next-gen updates coming on the Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii next month, but the average consumer would be hard pressed to believe he or she was playing the most expensive game in history – because the money was gulped before game development even began. And we’re also talking about Electronic Arts, the largest third-party game developer/publisher, which has access to Madden and Sims money every year. The real trouble comes when a smaller publisher doesn’t have as much money to spread around, as was the case with The Matrix, Aliens vs. Predator and countless other movie tie-in product. If there’s a fight between buying a movie license and buying more research and development for an original property, time shows most companies will go to Hollywood. Besides, the movie promotion saves them serious cake on the marketing side. 

Now, nearly 25 years after E.T., game companies are trying different approaches to movie games. For instance, EA, not wanting to throw (another) awful Superman videogame into the universe, capriciously delayed its Superman Returns title shortly before the theatrical release last summer. The company said it would aim for the DVD release, buying it an extra six months or so. The game still bombed, but at least it wasn’t because of brief development time. Another technique is to steal entirely. Critics shunned Ghost Rider at last year’s big gaming convention, calling it “Ghost of War” (God of War) or “Ghost May Cry” (Devil May Cry) in honor of the titles it obviously aped. That said, the game does take from some of the best experiences in recent memory, as opposed to playing like Advent Rising or some other painful title. It also is bargained priced for the older Playstation 2 and PSP systems, so 2K Games saved money on R & D and development costs while still possibly selling more. 

Strangely, some of my best movie-based gaming experiences have had little to nothing to do with the movie itself. GoldenEye is the pinnacle of Nintendo 64 gaming, but it barely even followed the plot. And am I the only one who loved The Goonies arcade game – and its adventure-based sequel – despite the lack of Baby Ruths? I think not. I really don’t care if a video game is timed with a movie release, just that it’s really good. To be honest though, the opinion of hardcore gamers doesn’t really matter. I’m not really the mainstream consumer they are aiming for – otherwise movie-related games would have gotten better ages ago. 

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