The Warner Revolutions

Under the direction of Jason Hall, ex-CEO of Monolith, the game licensing group of Warner Bros. is rolling out a new plan to insure the quality of games that are based on their movie properties. In short, the plan will penalize publishers for making licensed games that score under 70 percent on various sites that publicly rank games, such as GameRankings.com. The penalty will be an increased licensing fee. This tactic, hopes Warner's Hall, will give a strong incentive to publisher to make better games, otherwise face a higher licensing fee.

While I love the end-goal of making better licensed-based games (who wouldn't!), I do not think this plan has a chance...

o This plan cannot overcome the fact that most movie (or television) licenses -- 99.9% of them -- do not have the genetic material necessary to become good games. So, even with razor sharp incentives inches behind a publisher's back, it's just not possible to make a compelling video games from a movie license -- with exceedingly rare exceptions. With all the media product that spills from Hollywood each year, not including kid oriented product, I'm guessing 5,000+ original productions (not including each episode of a TV series), maybe one to three per year have potential in the video game world. And often none.

Turning to Hollywood is a folly.

o It's dangerous to let reviewers know that they have potential power in the contractual license-fee equation. Rather than use aggregate sites like GameRankings.com, it'd be smarter to select two dozen or so well respected review sources worldwide, and not reveal who these sources are. I can see publishers being very leery of signing any licensing deal that puts their fate in the hands of reviewers who know that they are playing a part in how the publisher itself gets paid.

o Third-party developers working on a Warner license should be concerned that their publishers will merely pass the pain along to them. So, if the game's ratings don't reach 70 percent, then the developer, not the publisher, takes a revenue hit. If this happens, then Warner's plan has no sting.

o A better way for Warner to spin this deal is to allow publishers to earn a better licensing rate for high review scores (rather than penalize them for low scores). For example, scores above 80% result in a reduced licensing fee for the publisher, since value is being added to the overall brand. Scores above 90% get a better break still for the publisher. The idea is simple: Reward for doing good, rather than punish for doing bad.

o Finally, what if the game industry turned Warner's plan against the movie industry? For example, what if Eidos could penalize Paramount Pictures for making a Tomb Raider movie that wasn't "fresh" according to Rotten Tomatoes? Anyone think that a major studio would ever sign such a deal?

Nope. Neither do I.

In the end, I don't see Warner's plan lasting long. Or am I wrong?

Comments

[Lucas Meijer]

I think the whole idea is a bad one, and no publisher/developer in its right mind would put their fate into the hands of a handfull of game reviewers. The whole game review business already has got quite a smell to it, with publishers paying for reviewers to fly over, put 'm in nice hotels, in trade for a big article... surely it doesn't need to be a positive one, but I don't think the hotel will be as nice next time if its not...

I don't think it makes any difference if you have to pay less of a lisence fee if you do good, or if you have to pay more if you do bad. Those are essentially exactly the same, just on a different part of the moneyscale.

I can totally find myself in the idea behind the plan though, but I think the plan itself will never fly...

Bye, Lucas
ps does anybody have a buddy at gamespotter.com ? :-)

[Evan Erwin]

I think this is right up there with clinical insanity. Let's face it, for every one quality, mature reviewers out there busting their chops on quality sites like Gamers with Jobs, there are a ton of fanboys who will glady trash good work for their own gain or sadistic glee.

IGN is inept to the point it hurts. Must I say it? Okay, McGriddles theme. There, it's out.

On a serious note, IGN is by far the most popular, but usually the most incorrect, reviewer haven out there.

This will backfire soon enough. Give it time.

[Saul Bottcher]

The best word to describe this idea is "presumptuous". It's like something straight out of a Dilbert cartoon.

Maybe I missed the other news release... the one about game reviews being objective now?

[Mick F.]

Funny thing is, Matrix Revolutions (the 3rd movie) got a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes. Maybe Warner should have spent more time in screen testing. : )

[Factory]

Hmm but if you have a game that would score highly in reviews why would you need to stick a licence into it?
IMHO the movie companies, if they are really serious about making good games, fund the developers directly, and just not release the crap games.

[rob]

Wasn't there already talk of a lawsuit against Paramount by a game publisher, for ruining Star Trek to the point that nobody wanted to buy the publisher's licensed games? Whatever happened with that?

What's the typical food chain in a movie-licensed game? Does the publisher typically bid for the right to do the game, or is the studio initiating it?

[Byron Gaum]

Basing the royalties on reviews is wrong - because they can be very biased. Instead, the studios should simply just work more closely with the developers/publishers and ensure that the quality that they expect from the game be maintained throughout development. This will help to ensure that their brands are not blemished. In the past, studios have only been too happy to take the money and run for their licenses. But now that many of their brands have been mutilated by gaming companies, they should be much more careful.

[J.]

Jason Hall has the most enormous testicles in the game industry, to unveil a publisher-centric proposal like that.

Never mind that he got that job after running Monolith for so many years. Hey, Jason, how long do you think that studio would have lasted if its publishers had welched on their payments? Probably not long enough to make No One Lives Forever.

Oh, and I will be very surprised if Matrix Online makes it to ship.

[Zoltan]

A think the fundamental issue what both the Warner proposal and yours Scott doesn`t address here is risk mitigation. Let`s see yours first:

AFAIK the typical outcome of publishing a game is either very small sales or scoring big time. Now, looking at a successful videogame it brings probably about $12-14 million USD profit (as I remember from one of your earlier posts about Payne II). In this case, having a reward of, say $2 million is not _that_ significant - sure it`s a large sum of money, but it`s only about 15%. Moreover, it doesn`t do anything to mitigate the risks: If the game would suck, it still sucks.

Warner`s proposal is still worse, in that it doesn`t even reward you, but punishes you, thus _increasing_ the risk. For example, if your game isn`t very profitable, say you just break even on the sales, having to pay an additional $1-2 million of license fees can really break your back. Now what this deal does is raising the barrier of success _even_higher_. I don`t really see how this tactic could be successful... reminds me of the 80s era where the bosses used to fire some guys so the others get intimidated and perform better. I just don`t think you can do that sort of thing in the game industry (how can you create something that`s supposed to be _fun_ if you fear being fired?).

To be a bit more constructive I`ll tell what I would do if I were some Warner exec: Basically I`d try to mitigate the risks of the developers (and their publishers) AND give the developers some incentive to work on the product:
-making the contracts with the actors to appear in a small spot in the game - it doesn`t cost much (perhaps a week or less) and having the name of a star on your box would directly translate to higher sales in my opinion
-giving the developers some really cool resources that`s uncommon in the industry - "Hey, if we sign the deal, we can use those two special effects from Industrial Light & Magic!"
-and generally giving them the ability to work closely with the makers of the film: participating in the shootings as an observer, having access to resources that don`t make it to the film (there are tons of them I guess) etc.

Zoltan

[J.]

Except, Zoltan, he hasn't come out touting the importance of working closely with developers and trying to nurture them and the product properly. All he's done is flex muscle and declare that any do-nothing developer who dares to get Warner's money damn well better shove hard on that square peg so it'll fit in that round hole.

Because we all know how universally successful games based on movie properties have been.

[David Thomas]

Hi:

For what it's worth, we hashed this over at the International Game Journalists Association site:

http://www.igja.org/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=1&showtopic=243&fromblock=yes

While I wont claim that this short discussion was definitive, it might be of interest to this group that the journalists that weighed in were pretty leery about this plan as well.

It turns out, we journalists would rather not be responsible for the business of game quality in any direct sense.

Odd, but true.

David

[Mark]

Just curious, Scott, do you post at the Gaming-Age Forums? This post reads like a virtual facsimile of one I read over there a day or two ago.

[Jerane Alleyne]

I wouldn't be suprised if this were to give way to payola. I'm not aware of the relationship regarding publishers and game reviewers in this manner now, but it would really raise some interesting points if all of a sudden we start seeing 80's and 90's for movie license games. Probably a little extreme, but that would be something to see if it happened :D

[Tadhg]

I think it's a good idea :)

Partially anyway. The idea behind using gamerankings or metacritic is sound enough, because they reflect an overall average of what many (sometimes hundreds) of reviewers in the industry say about a title. Therefore it would be pretty hard for one reviewer who had a beef to really influence the stats.

Across all the ranges of such stat sampling, a reasonably good average figure does emerge, and is reflective of a certain standard of opinion. There are high marks, and there are low marks, but it all balances toward the middle.

In a sense, it is not unlike a bonus/incentive scheme, although with a downside attached.

The problem with it, as Scott points out, is that the source material from their movies and whatever are frequently so thin that there's no real game material there. So does this mean that the WB are going to liberalise out their licenses, effectively turning them into good-games-with-a-name-tacked-on affairs?

Historically, those few great games that do come
from licenses have had that liberalised aspect. Dune 2, Alien vs Predator, GoldenEye and The Two Towers are all games that are essentially made 'in the spirit' of their source material, but they have plenty of leeway when it comes to the gameplay and the plot and that sort of thing. They are games first and media properties second.

Compare that with 'Enter the Matrix', which slavishly follows the movies' cool bits, with not an ounce of originality of its own, and poor engine to boot. It's a media property first, and a game second (or fifth).

[Scott Miller]

-- "Scott, do you post at the Gaming-Age Forums?"

Nope, wasn't me. I've never been to that forum.

BTW, since writing this blog update yesterday, I've heard from two execs from two top publishers, who say they'd never sign the deal that Warner has proposed. We're talking two top publishers.

Warner's plan will fade even more quickly than our memories of their last two Matrix movies.

[Jay Moore]

We had a simuliar forum dialog on GarageGames and since we're no longer 'part' of the large AAA machine that needs to borrow IP from the Hollywood marketing machine my opinions are from an amused observer point of view. I find the entire concept having gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Scott and Zoltan offer some very compelling ideas about why Hollywood IP doesn't translate well into games. There is formidable body of industry discussions on why Hollywood stories don't translate into great gameplay - lacking the 'DNA' is an excellent point.

Great books are hard to write, great movies even harder to produce (especially when based on a book) and great games the hardest because they are so interactive with the player and usually are only tangentially influenced in terms of fun on the story/movie on which they may be based.

My point is that reviews simptom of the illness the solution - When you understand how game entertainment is built you know that to make better games you have to change how the IP deal is done.

Games are not like action figures and plush toys that can be added like so much merchandising with a punchlist approach. Yet, you hear over and over how little time and creative resource gets allocated to making a movie game.

If a script for a movie is such a driver for movies, how can studios think the design document for a game be possibly be as easy or quick to get right? Movies don't get greenlighted until all the pieces are in place like, the right producer and director and all the 'right' talent is associated with the movie. How is that different than getting the right gameplay and dev. team with the right engine technology and artists associated with a game.

Great games take more time to produce and test than movies. Instant games are rarely good. The time in which the deal is getting done nearly always cuts into the mission critical time the game needs to be completed in. Games that get done in 9-18 months almost always show it.

If those doing these deals are trying to contract these teams with term sheet ideas like we'll penalize them if they don't get good game reviews I'm sure we'll see more of the trend of 1 in 10 movie games getting really good reviews.

I'm sure no Hollywood talent would work under simuliar conditions - box office revenues are now as influenced by internet 'buzz' as professional reviews - game sales are headed in the same direction.

Until publishers grow up and use the economic clout that game entertainment has to the consumer to better architect deals with Hollywood (for movies that have the right DNA) games will continue to be merchandising grist added to the movie marketing hype mill.

[Mark Hanna]

I don't really think the issue with games being made on licensed properties have anything to do with the lack of "DNA" behind them. I guess the reason why most of them tend to fail is due to the fact that the dev teams get pressured into sticking to a deadline to release a game in conjunction with a movie release.

Great games take time, theres lots to consider: creative, art direction, sound,etc. ANY game made off a license can be good, you could take certain scenarios from the movie and implement fun ideas for different gameplay around it. The main problem is the fact that the ideas for the movie/script never get communicated correctly to the developers/publishers. Maybe this will never improve or ever work.. I dont really mind as I think the more the original a game is, the better! :)

[Saul Bottcher]

Forget this DNA angle. Saying that movie licenses are thin/weak compared to "original" game premises is a cop-out.

What matters is the freedom given -- and skill used -- to adapt the premise to the new medium. I can't imagine a movie premise that *couldn't* become a good game, so long as the game is treated as a re-interpretation, not a duplication.

Think of how Tomb Raider was made into a movie, reverse that process, and you have a template for how a licensed game should look in comparison to the source movie. (This is why movie people should not meddle in a game's creation - they're trained to accomplish the opposite of what's required).

[PaG]

The weird thing with this is that there already is a system for rewarding good games and punishing bad ones: the royalty system itself. If the game is popular, it makes more money and the publisher gets richer. That's a pretty good incentive for making good games.

I see this move as a money grab by Warner: that's yet one more excuse for them to pay less for the work of developers. If they gave a bonus, as Scott proposes, for critically popular games then I might (might) believe that want to do this to get higher quality game, but as it is it's just a way to get more money in their pockets and less in ours.

[brian]

scott, it's nice to see you read other people's blogs too, especially from the likes of Mark Cuban (blogmaverick.com).

[Mark Ventura]

"I'm guessing 5,000+ original productions (not including each episode of a TV series), maybe one to three per year have potential in the video game world. And often none."

That seems ridiculous to me.

[Scott Miller]

-- "scott, it's nice to see you read other people's blogs too."

Well, of course! Actually, I only read about 12 or so others regularly. I like Cuban's because he's an up front guy, and being a billionaire, he has a rather unique viewpoint. Also, he's not full of himself like a lot of rich types.

I wonder how long before we see the first Fortune 500 CEO start his or her own blog? There's currently (unless I've missed that it's happened already) a golden chance to go down in history as the first to do this. And in ten years I bet it'll be commonplace for CEOs to have their own blog. In fact, for smart, progressive companies, it'll be part of their required job description.

Mark Cuban is setting a great example.

[Brad Renfro]

Seems odd that they'd announce such a radical idea without first making sure they had people on board. Seems even stranger that they'd announce this kind of business stuff to a bunch of gaming newssites. Maybe it's just some weird guerilla marketing aimed at hardcore gamers.

[Richard Sahlin]

So if a WB movie gets average reviews of less than 70% and the same happens with the movie-license game, the publisher ( or maybe passed down to the developer - afterall shit runs down ) - will have to pay a fine to WB?
Even if the game gets better average reviews than the movie, but still below 70%????

I have a _very_ drastic suggestions - setup a WB QA department, if the game does not meet their 'quality' ( how on earth they could measure that ) goals then send it back to the publisher with CONSTRUCTIVE comments on how to improve it....

[Jerane Alleyne]

A WB QA department? That'll be the biggest joke in history. An impartial and professional group should be used at the very least.

I'm trying to remember when the games based off of well-known IPs were all branded as poor games. I'd guess that would be from E.T. for the 2600, but before that, Star Wars, was a great game I thought. It seemed more the case that the bad/good ratio of these types of games wasn't that much different from "regular" games. There have been some really bad ones over the course of time, but there have also been some pretty good ones, at least popular ones...admittedly, more from the major arcade and 16-bit era as I remember it. I think that might help explain somethings though. As game mechanics have evolved, storytelling in movies hasn't really. I think this worked better in the earlier gaming environment, with fairly simple (compared to now) and linear gameplay. But in a time where we want non-linear, open style games, movie based games are at a slight disadvantage, as they can be 'forced' to follow a predetermined format and way of playing in a gaming environment that doesn't often welcome that.

Of course, a bad game is a bad game, and that's something where the blame can be shared. I don't claim to know much about the process involved with publisher-developer-IP owner, but no doubt they all have their hands in the jar. I remember Activision's lawsuit and claim against Paramount's mishandling of the Star trek franchise. It might have a ring of truth, but can that truly bear the sole responsibility of a bad game? Its still one of the most lucrative IPs that can be used for good games, and says as much about the confidence of Activision to produce something successful IMO. Now if it were about interference from the IP owners, that would make a more compelling argument I think. Developers left to their own devices could probably get away with more successful games (given the particular talents of a developer of course), at least critcally.

I'll stop there...think I've said too much...