Avalanche CEO Christofer Sundberg has been having a good old moan, righteously proclaiming that more bad games need to be canceled rather than pushed out the door in a bid to make some short-term cash. He especially picked on Ubisoft Montreal's stunningly lazy and slapdash videogame adaptation of James Cameron Presents James Cameron's Avatar By James Cameron, saying games like that give licensed products a bad name.
"I still believe publishers should cancel more projects in case the developers fail to deliver quality, before the investments become too high," he proclaims. "Avatar is a great example of a game that should never have come out, regardless of how much money it made. I don’t know if it was profitable or not, but games like that give licence-based games a bad reputation, and that reputation is already at an all-time low."
Sundberg has a very good point. A game like Avatar surely made a ton of cash, but it may also have left people feeling burned out on future products and done long-term damage. Still, if they're the kind of stupid prick that thinks Avatar was really deep and had an important message about the environment, they're probably the kind of stupid prick who'd play Avatar: The Game and not realize it was a load of wank.
Publishers should 'cancel more projects' says Avalanche CEO [Develop]
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
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Contest:
10:00 AM on 02.27.2010
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Sick burn.
To be honest I had a bit of fun with the Avatar game, it was worth the £9.99 I paid for it. Would have been royally pissed off if I bought it at full price though. As for licenced games, I think it takes a special brand of, as you so subtly put it, "stupid prick" to buy one and expect it not to be shit.
I'm not even kidding.
On a side note, Ubi needs to get out of the PC title market segment. It sucks as a company, even more than EA and that is sayin' something....
I really don't think he means if you liked the movie or the game that you are a prick. From what I took from the post was that he is talking about those types of people who like to take avatar a little bit too seriously. And we are all well aware of just how big of pricks people can be about something after having a "life changing experience" just by going to the movies ha!
but ONLY if it had been made as a game. not as a licensed movie tie-in.
Jim wrote, "Still, if they're the kind of stupid prick that thinks Avatar was really deep and had an important message about the environment, they're probably the kind of stupid prick who'd play Avatar: The Game and not realize it was a load of wank." So I'm saying that if someone did find Avatar the movie meaningful, or resonated with its message, or if they played and actually enjoyed the game, then that's perfectly fine and doesn't make them "stupid pricks".
Avatar doesn't do much for me, and I've never and probably never will play the game, and I think it's ridiculous when Jim writes a review and people call him "stupid" or "fat" or whatever just because they don't agree; I think Jim feels the same.
But I think the respect works both ways.
Nobody who knows anything about games is going to expect upcoming games based on licensed movies to be good. So, while I agree with the assessment, singling out the "Avatar" game is probably a bit unfair.
After all, "Batman: Arkham Asylum" is one of the only movie-based IPs in recent years that defied the predetermined rule of all licensed games being crap.
Plus, they had 3-4 years to make the game! It's not "it should not have been made", it's "it shouldn't have been that crappy".
Arkham Asylum is the only exception that I am even aware of, ever. I only played the demo so far (I'm not a Batman fan, so meh!) but it was really fun.
As for the game, they aren't targeting you and me and all of us "serious" gamers who obviously despise license games for the crap that they are. They're targeting the broader crowd who will buy Avatar: The Movie: The Game for themselves or their kids simply because it is "official" merch. People love official merch, which Yogurt knew and tried to explain to us all back in the 80's. "They put the pictures name on EVERYTHING!!!"
"But the movie was a load"
Agreed.
My Boss: I'm going to get my daughter the Twilight game for DS.
Me: They actually made a game about that?
My Boss: It's one of those "Scene It" game. She already has the actual board game of it, but she really likes Twilight.
Sigh.
Just as the Harry Potter games use the likeness of actors within those movies, the Batman game uses the atmosphere of recent films to capitalize on popular interest. Indeed, while you may have thought I made an error in my statement, I said precisely what I intended when I suggested Arkham Asylum is movie-based IP.
I under stand where your coming from I just think he was speaking more from frustration with those types of people. But you do make a very good point if you do take what he says literally then it does seem like an unfair generalization. Thanks for your well done response to my comment its always nice to see civilized people able to communicate there difference in opinion with resulting to childish bickering.
Ten years from now, if we're playing the 27th Spiderman game based on the 27th Spiderman movie, it doesn't bode well for the future of the entertainment industry as a whole.
Batman Arkham Asylum is most certainly NOT based around the movies nor is it a movie-tie in.
Batman Arkham Asylum was a good game exactly because it was an independant production separate from any movie license. The devs based the Batman from the DC Comics batman, and most inspiration came from the DC Comics.
No dude, I agree with you. My sister had that game & it was a surprisingly fun platformer. Disney put out some solid movie tie-in games in the late 90s/early 2000s, "Tarzan", "102 Dalmations", my personal favorite "The Emperor's New Groove".
Didn't "Avatar: The Game" disappoint sales-wise as well? I think it was based on poor timing. Had they released the game AFTER the movie, I'm sure that consumers would've been more likely to blind buy the game. They would be more open to the whole "blue cat people action" thing.
Guess I'm that kind of stupid prick. Whatever. :/
Sure, the game was made by people who care about the franchise. This is probably why it's one of the franchise IP games that's actually good, as I noted previously. I find it extraordinarily difficult to believe that the game would have been made if the recent Batman films were never made. In other words, this game exists because of those recent movies.
I don't really see where you're actually disagreeing with me, unless your point is that the IP also draws from comics. I do think it's somewhat disingenuous to suggest the game would exist without the movies providing a built-in audience. Long story short, this game received the funding it did, which made the game possible, because of the movies.
I had the Emperor's New Groove as well! IT WAS AWESOME
Though if I ever played it now I'd probably hate it.
You guys already know to steer clear of "movie: the game" titles. If the game didn't sell well, a lesson may have been learned and they'll avoid doing this in the future: This is how the free market works. If it did sell well, Ubi most likely saw it as a pleasant surprise, not because they thought the game was a masterpiece. They aren't dumb.
In other words, if a consumer chooses to buy the "Avatar" game and has a bad experience with the game, that consumer is less likely to return to games in the future.
A lot of the time, parents will buy their kids these kinds of games. Now, to a certain extent, some kids are more forgiving of bad games (my brother's love of some of the awful Pokemon battle games is a good example), but you're not building trust into the market and ensuring a broader sense of positive experience with a given game if you're just out to make a quick buck off the latest movie.
In other words, *if* developers actually spent more time and care creating some of these games based on IP franchises, they would, in turn, ensure a broader gaming demographic in the future. Those kids having positive experiences with games are the ones who are more likely to return to games in the future when they have greater purchasing power as adults and wage-earners.
In my opinion, shoving bad movie-based games at kids by marketing to parents isn't the greatest idea for growing the market over the long term.
Would people who aren't hardcore gamers care about publishers? Nah. Let's allow ourselves to be entirely too stereotypical for a moment say that half of em probably still call their impulse bought 360 a "nintendo" or a "playstation". The mainstream world is still somewhat like that.
If I recall correctly, Ubisoft got approached into doing the project, not the other way around. They most likely saw it as a quick buck, and that money will be re-invested into games that we actually do care about.
Does it degrade the quality of the gaming market overall? Absolutely, just like a good 60% of released games do. This is just a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
I certainly agree that most games could be better and many could be a great deal better. Regardless, in my opinion, publishers should market better games to parents so that the kids who play these games have a positive experience and are more likely to become part of the overall gaming market as adults.
Taking advantage of the average parent's inexperience with games to sell a crappy product isn't endearing anyone and is more likely to stagnate the market in the future.
He's saying (and I agree) that Arkham Asylum is a comic-book based IP. I'd say 99% of the inspiration for that game came from the comics or from the Batman animated series and I think it's safe to say that game was going to be made whether the movie existed or not (which is why Pandemic was making a Dark Knight specific Batman game).
It would be far more difficult to sell a publisher on a premium game like Arkham Asylum without starting from the broader base of popularity that a couple of tremendously successful Hollywood movies bring to the table.
It's not a matter of what some of these developers (and Batman fans) want to do. It's a matter of what makes economic sense and how the people holding the purse-strings manage their money and justify the expense in terms of potential profitability.
Still though, even if the game was only made because the movie existed, the game has nothing to do, nor draws from the movie. That's why it's not a movie based IP. The Harry Potter analogy doesn't work since those are games based on the movies using the likenesses and art style from the movies as opposed to the books.
I also realize this point is completely off topic but whatever.
hahah
Now if he wants to make the argument that video game publishers should throw away money they've already spent on development as well as more money for penalties or lawsuits associated with terminating their contracts with the IP holders, then he might have a point. But that wasn't what he was saying because he's a fucking idiot.
If someone is not familiar with Batman comics or any of the previous animated series, they will still feel at home in Arkham Asylum if they're familiar with the recent Christian Bale movies. It's the rare example of a game that pleases both long-term fans and relative newcomers to the franchise. In satisfying most fans of the movies, comics, TV shows, etc... it has to draw from all of these sources and carefully choose the resulting representation. This is similar to Harry Potter in that you have different kinds of fans depending on where they're coming from in relation to their familiarity with the books/movies etc...
To get back on topic, this is precisely the sort of game that more developers and publishers should explore. In the end, following the script of a movie too strongly may limit a game's possibilities.
As Heavy Rain demonstrates, there is a good reason why the division between games and movies is usually somewhat segregated. The user interacts with these forms of media in very different ways, and, therefore, games often require a very different narrative flow than movies.
Creating more unique stories while at the same time drawing from popular franchises may be a winning combination for future movie-related games. I feel Arkham Asylum is a perfect example of what I'm talking about in relation to this kind of unique game-oriented development trumping the more traditional movie tie-in style game when it comes to using popular franchises as video game vehicles.