Hollywood and game makers are becoming wary of each other.

[Captain Vegetable]

Diffx: Go back to your math, cocktouch.

[The_Meach]

Look, WB just wants to protect their product. The product they spent a shitload of money developing and marketing. They are entitled to do with it what they see fit.

They auction off the license to make money. Which they did. Which is why I don't sympathize w/WB at all. The 'purpose' of Enter the Matrix (if games have a purpose) was to make WB money. Which it did. Measured in gross tonnage.

Look. Say I agree to build a house for a real estate developer. I build it and then he sells it. Then he comes to me and whines about how it's not 'aesthetically pleasing' enough for a bunch of architecture profs that he had come down and 'review' my house. Eff that. The house can sell. That's all that matters. If I build a friggin' P.I.M.P. house, the developer can make more money. If I build a dive, well, geez, he'll still be able to sell it (at dive prices) and I won't be doing business with him anymore (and he shouldn't have hired a crappy house builder). That strikes me as quite fair.

Now, the only difference btw the above scenario and what WB is proposing is that they will have the Review Clause in the contract from the beginning (which is their right). I'd wager a substantial sum that the Suits at every developer from Seattle to Dallas are telling their guys, "Don't sign this crap." I know I'd never take a job where my pay is influenced not by whether the public will pay for it but by whether a critic likes it 'enough'.

I believe teh_Market is inherently fair. What you put in is what you get out. Introducing aesthetics is a bad idea when we're talking about ppl getting paid/financial contracts. If you make a better licensed game, you'll see better financial rewards via the natural flow of the market; nobody at corporate gives an Eff about what GI/EGM think b/c WB's only concern is how much money Enter will make (and it will make the same whether it scored 68% or 72% at GameRankings).

[Damian79]

I think you guys are missing the point of the idea. Instead of increasing the royaly price for bad games, they are reducing the price for royaly for good games.

[gamevet]

I don't know if you noticed, but a swarm of unnecessary commas descended upon your reply.

.

I had a swarm of unneccesary beers as well.

I think you guys are missing the point of the idea. Instead of increasing the royaly price for bad games, they are reducing the price for royaly for good games.

They're doing both. If the game is bad, they in turn will raise the licensing fee, if it's good, they'll lower it.

Ah, but if a game is to lauch near release of the movie, it needs to start development when nobody will have any idea what sort of quality the finished movie will be like. Not to mention that the movie studio perpetuates making the games being unpolished by pressuring the game's deadlines. A lot of games not tied to liscences, that have minimal restrictions on their timetable, end up being bad, so it's really no big surprise that a game that's got a lot tighter schedule to work in ends up being substandard. There's two ways to remedy that: The studio cooperates with the game developers from day one of pre-production, with maximum disclosure of resources relating to the movie, to give the game as much development time as possible, or the studios resign themselves to the fact that a fully-realized game need a respectable amount of time to be worked on, which in many cases will mean that it ships at least a few months after the movie comes to theatres. Those are the only real options if quality is what they're really after. But that won't happen, because what they're really after is maximum profits for the short-term, and that means pushing a game out the door when it has the strongest product awareness.

They're saying "we want a delicious chocolate cake in half the time most delicious chocolate cakes require to make", and then throwing a hissy-fit when corners are cut.

EGM had an interesting article on this about 2 years ago. One annonymous developer talked about how the publisher set a deadline for the game to be done by. The game developer had a game about 75% complete and was forced to close the deal, before they were finished with the game. Who got the blaim for the bad product? The developer, but they had no say in the matter, nor the budget for making the game in the first place.

[Damian79]

Hmm... Yeah, that isn't right. But 70% isn't that hard to get considering the likes of gamepro and fan sites. Also, testing the games before release isn't going to work. I mean, what would happen if they think it is a bad game? Do they just scrap the game completely?

But something has to be done though, there is a clear difference in quality between 8-bit licensed titles and todays licensed titles.

[gameoverDude]

I found the Genesis Aladdin game to be better (surprise!). These were also good:

- Terminator (Sega CD)
- EA's LOTR games
- Batman Returns (SNES)
- Batman (NES)
- Rambo 3 (Genesis)

-Terminator 2: Judgment Day ~ The Arcade Game (Acclaim does right on this one)
-RoboCop (Data East, arcade)
-Rambo 3 (Taito, arcade)
-Alien 3 (Acclaim, Genesis)
-The Punisher (Capcom, arcade version ONLY- The Genesis version is profane)
-Alien Vs. Predator (Capcom)

Dropping royalty prices for good licensed games is not a bad idea. Jacking up license fees in the event of a game being horrid could cause the publishers to pressure reviewers to give at least a 70, so I'd question that.

When EGM griped about the "upgrade syndrome" on SNES SSFII, Capcom got pissed at them and pulled advertisements- which had to have cost the mag beaucoup bucks.

The publisher will already answer to the customer if the game is just junk. One who is disappointed with the game goes forth and posts his thoughts on a message board, warning others to not touch it with a twenty-foot pole- meaning some prospective sales for the title are nixed.

Rather than raising royalty rates, a licensor should subscribe to "Screw me once, shame on you- screw me twice, shame on me"- don't allow devs who butchered a previous license a chance to strike again.

[Damian79]

Rather than raising royalty rates, a licensor should subscribe to "Screw me once, shame on you- screw me twice, shame on me"- don't allow devs who butchered a previous license a chance to strike again.

That is pretty much all devs lately.