E3 2012: Company exec Eric Hirshberg says adapting Hollywood films is a "good business" to be in, but explains that the genre has shifted.
LOS ANGELES--Activision has not lost faith in movie-based games. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg explained that the company remains committed to investing in games based on Hollywood films.
"That's still happening, and we're still in that business, and we still think that's a good business, but it's really shifted," he said.
Hirshberg did not elaborate on the "shift" he was speaking about, but did call out the Transformers and Spider-Man franchises as examples of where Activision is succeeding with movie-based games.
"Now if there's an advantage to the character, the way that Transformers gives you tremendous creativity to play with in terms of what the characters can do as fighters and vehicles in one character," he said. "That's great for gaming, it's the same with Spider-Man."
The next movie-based game Activision will publish is 007 Legends, due out this October. That game features missions from past James Bond films, as well as those that take place during the upcoming 007 Skyfall film.
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
"That's still happening, and we're still in that business, and we still think that's a good business, since we are being paid handsomely to make some s*itty game that no one really plays. It's nothing personal gamers, only business " What he meant to say..
Ok, it's official. Activision is freaking crazy. Of all the ignorant stupid statements, "Movie-based games still viable" is the biggest. You know why they say it right? Because those games are so wretched, so poorly funded, and so poorly managed that I think they turn a profit just by the amount the do manage to sell. All they do is play off the hype of the movie and little kids convince their parents to purchase it.
The only movie based games I like are these: GoldenEye 007 on N64, Speed Racer on Wii, the Super Star Wars trilogy on Super NES, and that one Termaintor 2 game on the Sega CD. Other than those pretty much most of the new movie based games kinda had that rush E.T. feel to it that makes me want to vomit.
@Sindroid I did try two of the Riddick games but I never saw the movies, pretty awesome games there.
After Activison's two latest movie games Men in Black and Battlefield, they look fucking pathetic now.
The only time a movie game has been good is when the developer was given the time to make it not forced to realease it just so that it is released at the same time as a film.
Game Based on a Film = Crap.
Game Based on a Franchise Name, with an original idea for a story for the game = Good.
@Norrie91 There is merit to your opinion but... There was "Enter the Matrix". I disliked that game a great deal. It was based on a Franchise with an original idea... Heck, it had "the other side of the story" for the second Matrix movie... still crap.
I don't think there is a decent way to cross the gap between movie-to-games or vice-versa.
The only way movie-based games can be viable, is when the publisher spends more money on the making of the game, rather than on requiring the license to make it.
Take Activision's statement on movie-based games still being viable and then read Gamespot's review of 'Men in Black : Alien Crisis' (published by Activision) for PS3.
There were a few good movie-to game transfers, but most of them are terrible. Transformers, Chronicle of Riddick, Spiderman, Batman, 007, The Warriors, Toy Story and a couple Aliens games were pretty good. For every one of these games however you get crap like Superman, Iron Man, Lord of the Rings, Watchmen, Bolt, Battleship, Clash of the Titans, The Mummy, BloodRayne and many many more. the reverse is true too. Games being made into movies haven't fair well either. Mortal Kombat, Silent Hill and Hitman weren't too bad, but movies like Dead of Alive, Doom, Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros and Wing Commander were horrendous. What was Hollywood studios thinking?
@XanderZane blood rayne is not a movie game its has a movie based on a game and the 1st 2 games where decent heck the first game was steller the movies suck because uwe boll made them and all his movies suck
It's against my gamer religion to buy movie based games because 9 times out of 10, they suck. Sure, there are SOME movie based games that are good, but majority of the time, many are rushed in order to coincide with the release of the movie itself. The only people buying movie based games are uninformed gamers and casuals.
The problem with movie based game tie-ins is that they can't possibly meet our expectations. Time constraints, flow of information between the movie makers and game makers and differences of opinion, direction and vision often turn into the disaster games we see today. That and the typical -must have- impulses we all share. We see the movie, now we want the game, the t-shirt and the fancy lunch box right? Movie and game producers feed off of our insatiable appetite for more!
Enter the Matrix. The only good movie-based game? I'm sure there are a couple of other good ones, but my point is, I can't remember any worth talking about.
Whatever Activision meant by "The Shift" - It SHOULD mean "The Internet". Thanks to the internet, gamers are better educated about products. The games industry publishers are not going to be able to solely rely on licenses and branding to sell their games. Right now, the bottom line is that if you're going to develop a licensed video game (ie: sports, movie based, comic book based, etc...) you still have to make a quality product. Hence the success of Arkham Asylum & Arkham City Versus Spiderman's Edge of Time. A license is supposed to help boost sales of an already great product. A license doesn't make a product great. And thanks to the internet, gamers have learned not to be fooled by the box art.
WB, unlike Activision, is wholly owned by DC. Which is why Batman has had a couple good games now. As such DC is not financially burdened by licensed time contractual constraints to get product out, unlike the Marvel games which Disney has yet to get full control of (i.e. Activision still having Spider-Man). You own the IP, you can QA it for as long as needed.
Marvel is also delayed by those flawed film deals with Sony and Fox, which now also hamper Activision's own financial success at times with X-Men and Spider-Man film products.
4 Like It's a good business because they know kids will buy it regardless of quality. It's one big cash grab that the developers either don't take seriously, or are rushed to get it out to retail before it's ready.
3 Like Of course they think it's still viable, just like the 10 year old Call of Duty game engine.
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1 Like Given time or a little innovation, movie-based games can be good. The problem is that Activision is probably the worst one to be singing the praises of movie-based games, as the worst ones usually come from them, especially when timed to coincide with the release of the film. The only time I can recall that an Activision game released concurrently with a film has been decent is Quantum of Solace.
There are absolutely top-notch film-licensed games out there though. The Warriors, The Godfather, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to name a few. The latter was produced in a rush, but it was so ingeniously made that it didn't matter.
2 Like The Warriors was a great game. Though it didn't have the pressure to be released alongside the movie because the movie came out over 20 years before the game
Considering how many manovie based games activision push out i am truely surprised by their opinion of them.
2 Like "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay" probably the best movie-based game ever made.
2 Like The Only time where I truly enjoyed a "movie-based" game was Aliens versus Predator 1 & 2. Why? Because it delivered something awesome to the fans of those seperate films and it spanked those movies silly.
1 Like The problem of Movie-based games is not that they don't sell. They are a good bussiness because they are based of famous franchises. The problem however is that those games are usually underdeveloped, short and bland fun, and are basically made to rake money from the fans of given movie franchise. I still remember Escape from Butcher Bay which is an example how it should be done.
what do you expected from these clowns, they want money and little innovation. Just rip off what is good from other games and put noticable characters on them. The Batman series is a few exception to this genre. But most are cash cow for the publishers.
@Halloll There aren't a lot of new IP's aside from indie games. Thank them to push the slow moving business of video games.
This is almost the excact same thing I was thinking about the other day. I was thinking why in the hell do they continue to pump them out. Then I realized they of course have to be making money on them. That means enough people are buying them to keep em' coming. At least no one is forcing us to play/buy them, but come on people you cannot possibly like them that much, can you?
1 Like I said it before i'll say it again, Activision is about brands and brands that make money. If there going to publisher a game or make one they want a brand that is proven to make money. Nothing is wrong with that. Just to bad the games are bad or boring.
3 Like Games based of Hollywood films. They consist of two things they have linear gameplay and weak story.
Making a game from a movie is inherently difficult, almost all movies are dialogue oriented to convey the story. It is therefore problematic for developers to create a game that resembles the movie, but playable for the gamers.
To the extremes, movie games that I've seen is either overtly story driven that may leave gamers to feel as though they are just tagging along for the ride, or the game feels so different from the movie that people may question why the game is even named after a movie. The in-betweens are usually poor marriages between movies and games that feels neither movie nor game, thus ends up with little attention from anyone.
Some of the movie games that I have seen to have remotely worked is LOTR and Batman, which is due mainly to the long running nature of the movie (multiple sequels in Batman's case) and extended action that the movie exhibits which allows developers to create a good balance of story telling and gamer interaction.
Other alternatives are movies like Rambo, just shoot like crazy! They could make good movie games too.
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