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Posted By Shaun K. about 8 months, 3 weeks ago
Episode 7: Licensed Games: Threat or Menace
Welcome back to the show where we introduce the debate and you continue it. This week’s topic: Shaun and Oda discuss and debate the merit (or lack therefore of) licensed video games.
Thumb Wars is a weekly show hosted/produced by Shaun Kronenfeld dedicated to starting and encouraging dialogue and debate on a wide variety of topics within the video game industry. Look for a new Thumbs Wars every Sunday. Comments, opinions, and thoughts are not only welcome, they are the entire point. Feel free to follow Shaun on Twitter @bigred_13 if you feel so inclined.
Arkham City would probably be my favorite game of this generation had it not been for the Uncharted games. Good lord is Arkham City an amazing game. War for Cybertron is also pretty damn good. Hopefully the upcoming Deadpool game can live up to these high standards!
The Batman argument at the beginning does not make any sense. Strip everything batman related out of those games and you dont have a game at all. So really that point I dont think is valid.
Also, I don’t think anyone disagrees that any movie licensed games are good. Almost never. So really the debate should have been more about movie licensed games and generally a licensed game.
I’m going to chime in about Arkham City:
First off, while I do understand the idea that the gameplay itself could actually have been made into any generic, original game, Arkham City was made FOR Batman (the character) and his fans. The story, the setting, and even many of the elements of the combat are centered around him. Could you take Batman out and insert another original character? Maybe, but not only would it be unrecognizable, it also wouldn’t work as a whole. It would significantly change the atmosphere and story.
Actually, it’s not merely that particular licensed games fail because of lack of effort, it’s that any game is going to fail if the effort put into it is lacking.
I think the point that MOVIE-licensed games are poor has strong merit. That’s because movie-licensed games are shovelware; they have to be put out within a certain time frame, because the game has to be able to capitalize on the recognition of the movie title.
I think the big difference is between licensed and movie licensed games.
Hmm. Good topic choice.
The thing with can make license games so HORRIBLE or so good is the marketing logic which is done before development ever begins. A developer can think “A Game with License X will sell Y number of copies regardless of quality. We can maximize profit by lowering production-value and reduce our risks.” OR “What can we do with this license to make an expensive game which will make it into a best seller?”
And just because a developer decides to sink the time and money into a license game doesn’t mean it will be good. It means it *might* be good, but it definitely becomes a risk.
Horrible license games are all about avoiding risk. Let’s not spend time balancing the design, or playtesting, et c. Considering how risky video games are as a business, I can’t really blame developers.