Game developers pay the price for poor movie games

[rjy01]

Look at this.

Yeah, Laura Croft: Cradle of Life's poor returns couldn't possibly have been because of a bad script.

[XOR]

thats what they get for being sellouts

[jamotto]

Sounds to me like a bunch of finger pointing.

This is just a bad idea.

quote:

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Now Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment is planning to make video game developers pay the price for poor games - literally - by making its royalties depend in part on the reviews the developers' games get.

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[LostInSpace]

"Paramount blamed poor box office results of its ``Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life'' film on the poor quality of Eidos Interactive's critically panned ``Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness'' game, which was released first."

To me that is just BS that paramount would blame a game for that suck a@# movie. In my opinion, the best way is for the movie companies to review the game itself even before it hits the shelf. Why aren't they doing that in the first place. Right now the door is wide open for movie makers to blame game companies for bad movies.

[weegee_101]

Well, for starters Paramount didn't have the rights to Tomb Raider at first anyhow. If I'm correct they're leasing the rights for the movies, and they have to get Eidos' approval for each movie.

I would blame the movies for the game's failure, but that would be more childish fingerpointing.

[Onikaze]

I made this post on the GG forums a week or so ago , but people seemed to ignore and kept saying "yeah we need better games, stupid devs" (thats paraphrased btw)

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here is a loose translation of how I see this WB exec's Bizzspeak : "HMMMM this IP that we have exploited for years returns XX amount of $$ all the time. so when we have a videogame with this IP , lets put it into our nice little equation, ahh here we are. I predict we should make this much regardless of quality." and when that doesnt' happen it's someone elses fault. So basically this is just a safeguard so whatever happens they still get the amount of money they assumed to begin with. ei THey just take more of what little profits the game is making.

I'm sure someone is smiling and polishing their monocle because of this. I'm alo afraid that even though the PR BS seems to say they want better games really it's just getting them more money.

If these were "beloved" and "precious" IPs then they would be taking a more hands on approach. Just like McFarlane did with Spawn action figures, He kept final approval and right to refuse the final product if he wasn't satisfied. The result was a huge hit for him and a boon to the Action figure industry. All because it was his IP and he cared what happened to it.

So now with this Safeguard in place for WB I think they are going to deliberate less on who makes the games since they have a way of making a predictable amount.

I'm only going to mention a little about how a lot of pro reviews now are really jaded and bored with gaming almost in general with comments like " It's a good solid game but not innovative" or " Geared towards kids " giving it a lower score.

Anyhow WB seems to be crying and saying that they are the victims of evil devs and/or publishers. however, it seems to me is that they are not practicing "Due Diligence" in regards to the IP, and they don't intend to.

I'm sort of rambling so I'll end with this from Penny Arcade wednesday :

quote:

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Tycho Reads From Your Letters

Wed, May 26 2004 - 9:54 PM

by: Tycho

I just received this excellent mail from a developer.

WB's plan is a great one. As a person that has made one or two crappy licensed games myself (even for Warner Bros.) I welcome the idea someone saying, ÔÇ£hey quit making shitty ****ing games you *******ÔÇØ. ItÔÇÖs good for the industry and I donÔÇÖt like shitty games any more than the next guy.

Now, with that said am I going to get more time to do them? Am I going to get more money? Are the Movie studios going to quit catering to the lowest bidder and go with the quality studios? The biggest and last question, are the movies studios still going to wait until the last three months of production and insist on changing the entire ****ing game because one of their fat executives played it for five ****ing minutes and didnÔÇÖt think he liked it? When answer to those questions equal no, then and only then with shitty movie licenses quit being produced.

(CW)TB "

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