Gaming the movies, for fun and profit

The Baltimore Sun

Soulless. Repetitive. Clunky.

Those are some of the kinder words that critics have bestowed on video games based on Hollywood films.

But many of those games have still sold well thanks to the movie marketing blitz that accompanies box-office releases. For example, the Enter the Matrix game, which one critic called "astoundingly dull," sold 2.3 million copies in the United States. The James Bond title GoldenEye: Rogue Agent rated an average of 65 percent -- the equivalent of an F -- from more than 200 reviews, according to GameRankings.com, but it sold more than 1 million copies.

"Licensed games have a bad reputation," said Bill Kispert, vice president and general manager of Universal Pictures Digital Platforms Group. "And it's probably well deserved."

Stung by the reviews, game developers and filmmakers are taking a new tack, aiming to substantially alter the way games are made and financed.

The changes include urging studios to share more resources with developers, getting more creative input from film directors and finding ways to give developers extra time before commercial releases so the games look better.

The latest to make these promises is Brash Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based company that launched this month. Thomas Tull, producer of such films as Batman Begins and 300 and an avid player of video games, is impressed by the company's oath to make only high-quality titles.

One of the biggest difficulties has been the conflicting production schedules required in the making of games and movies.

"Most studios can make a really good movie in 10 to 12 months," said Kispert, whose group works with developers to turn Universal Studios' movies into games. "Good games take a lot longer to make, sometimes up to two years."

So if developers start work right when a movie gets the green light, they'd have half the time that's usually required to create a game. The result often has been games that are unpolished or buggy.

Another big obstacle has been the lack of involvement by filmmakers who have no interest in games or are too busy making the movie. That can cause further delays in getting scripts and updated scenes to developers.

Even when the directors are passionately involved, things can go awry. Andy and Larry Wachowski, the brothers who wrote and directed The Matrix, may have become too involved with the interactive spinoff, Enter the Matrix.

"The game was designed as a fighting game," said Geoff Keighley, editor of Gameslice, an online industry newsletter. "But the Wachowski brothers insisted that there be a driving level. So the developer had to kludge one in there. It was so bad, the wheels on the cars were literally square."

The Wachowski brothers also were dead set against having the movie's protagonist, Neo, as a playable character in the game, even though market surveys indicated that was what fans wanted most.

Sometimes the movie itself limits what developers can do.

"Film is linear storytelling where the audience sits passively and watches the story unfold. And games are interactive," said Billy Pidgeon, an analyst with research firm IDC. "A story that may be good for one may not be good for the other."

With all those restrictions, it's no wonder that some game developers have soured on making movie-based games.

"It's really hard to get a top-quality team interested in working on a project that's not their own," said Mike Wilson, chief executive of game producer Gamecock Media Group. "You're not going to get anyone who's a rock-star developer."

So why bother shelling out the licensing fees, which can reach tens of millions of dollars for popular movies?

"It's an easier sell when Mom and Dad are at [a store and the title is familiar] because of the movie," Keighley said.

But many in Hollywood are tired of that model. Jesse Alexander, executive producer for the Alias and Heroes TV series, was disappointed with the game that Acclaim Entertainment Inc. developed for Alias in 2005. The Chicago-based game publisher has since declared bankruptcy and sold its name to a company in Beverly Hills, Calif.

"These types of games are done assembly-line fashion by people who are only interested in making money," Alexander said. "Very often the products are inferior. And then the whole franchise suffers, because people get a bad experience."

Alex Pham writes for the Los Angeles Times.

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