Licensed games - a kiss of death?

Licensed games. We've all experienced our fair share of video games churned out to be released alongside a film or TV series. And despite constant promises of changing practises they almost always fall well short of what consumers expect. There are of course many reasons for this, but how does a licensed project affect the developer and why would a developer want to work on a licensed project with limited creative freedom and a harsh deadline?

As an editor I can often opt out of playing a licensed game. Experience tells me it's probably not going to be the best use of my time, but for once I took care of review duties on Thor: God of Thunder and this is what inspired me to write this piece. Licensed games are something of a sore area for developers and publishers, but all the disappointment these games generate is something that drags the industry down and something that needs to be addressed.

Turning to licensed development can be a means to raise capital to build a studio and create room for original games, and it can also be a saving grace for a developer struggling to find financial backing for their own original projects. But licensed properties don't hold a lot of benefits down the road. Since the developer has no rights to the property, they aren't creating any longterm value, and after completing it they may find themselves in the exact same position of having to take on contract work to pay for wages, thus getting caught in a spiral that may not end until the developer is forced to close down.

Exhibit A - The Matrix

If you back up a decade or so in time The Matrix was the hottest license property you could imagine. David Perry and Shiny Entertainment jumped on the opportunity to work on a game set in the Matrix universe and collaborate with the Wachowski brothers.

It was an opportunity to big to pass up at the time, but admidst Interplay's troubles (Shiny were sold off to Atari mid development) and increasing pressure to deliver the game in a timely fashion - the end result was a buggy game and a missed opportunity. Enter the Matrix (2003) sold well, a reported 5 million copies, but it also soiled the Shiny brand and can also to a certain extent be seen as the first true sign of Atari's start down the road of ruin. Starting with Enter the Matrix Atari seemed to be betting the house of one single title each year, and from a quality standpoint they kept coming up short.

Shiny Entertainment went on to create The Matrix: Path of Neo, according to Perry "the game they always wanted to create in the Matrix universe", but by then the second and third movies had dampened the hype for Matrix video games. Path of Neo also failed with both reviewers and buyers, and a year later Shiny Entertainment went on the auction block. They wound up being bought by Foundation 9 Entertainment and merged with The Collective in 2007 to create Double Helix Games. The last game to officially bear the studio name was Sega's movie license The Golden Compass, not the most worthy of ends for a studio responsible for creating Earthworm Jim, MDK, Messiah and Sacrifice.

A separate story of the Matrix is that of The Matrix Online (2005). There are some similarities, as the game suffered from being abandoned by its original publisher Ubisoft, but Warner Bros funded development and Sega eventually published the Monolith Productions developed MMORPG. It never caught on with people, and was later shifted to Sony Online Entertainment where it finally died on December 31, 2009. When development begun The Matrix was still a massive license, but with the two latter movies hype faded. Sega who published it and Warner Bros who owned the studio and the rights to the game jacked out just a few months after its release and handed the game over to Sony Online Entertainment who ran it for a few more years. It's hard to imagine anyone coming out a winner from the whole Matrix ordeal even if Atari did make some money on Enter the Matrix at first, but the cost of delivering an unfinished and buggy experience to millions of gamers is hard to estimate.

Exhibit B - Grin

Swedish developers Grin were out of luck back around the generational shift 2004/2005. They lost out on a deal for a fighting game called Vultures with German publisher CDV, but were fortunate enough to have Ubisoft come around with a deal to develop the PC version of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. Studio founder Bo Andersson told Gamereactor in an interview a few years back: "Ubisoft saved us at the time, we were making pitches barely paying the staff at the time".

After two successful GRAW games on PC, Grin were approached by Capcom and Keiji Inafune to reinvent their sleeping Bionic Commando franchise. Grin had some promising tech (Diesel Engine), and Inafune was impressed by the multiplayer in GRAW. A massive opportunity for the studio, and a chance rarely granted to western developers. Grin jumped on it and there was a lot of initial excitement over the project as the old NES game was a classic many gamers had fond memories of. The deal also sparked publisher interest in Grin, and somewhere it was decided to bring on more games and expand the studio. Studios were started in Barcelona and Gothenburg and these were tasked with prinicipal development on Wanted: Weapons of Fate and Terminator: Salvation. It's easy to see where Grin came from, not many years ago they were close to extinction and when opportunity knocked on the door to make a quick buck on licensed games they went with, even if it meant putting a lot of strain on the core staff of the studio. Development on Bionic Commando no doubt suffered as a result and perhaps part of the blame for taking on to much work was a result of the studio having trouble delivering milestones in a timely fashion to Capcom.

One year prior to Grin filing for bankruptcy in the summer of 2009 everything was still fine on the surface. They released a spruced up remake of the original NES Bionic Commando - Bionic Commando Rearmed for PSN and XBLA and it performed really well. But beneath the surface there were a lot of things going on. They were tasked with development on Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2 (eventually developed by Fatshark and released earlier this year) and Square Enix signed them to create a Final Fantasy XII spin-off codenamed Fortress. Meanwhile development on Wanted: Weapons of Fate and Terminator: Salvation had stiff deadlines to meet. According to a contract game designer who worked on Terminator: Salvation a short period of time the objective with the game was to "have it out on time, regardless of quality" (speaking to Swedish Blogemup). The game was meant to sell on the strength of the brand, not the quality of the game itself. Grin had 12 months to create something that would pass through Microsoft's and Sony's submission processes, basically.

Grin wouldn't be the first nor the last studio to take on this kind of work, and if they were falling behind with milestones on Bionic Commando it's easy to see how it presented them with an offer they simply could not refuse. Ultimately the quality of the three products they released in the spring of 2009 - Wanted: Weapons of Fate, Bionic Commando and Terminator: Salvation - spelled the end of Grin. They had already closed down the studios in Barcelona and Gothenburg when Square Enix decided to pull out of the Fortress contract, there was simply no way to prevent a full closure of the studio.

Grin is an obvious example of the dangers of working on licenses as the developer is vulnerable to the whims of publishers and license holders while not building any long term value in their own brand. It may also be an example of the dangers of rapid expansion. Regardless the Grin case provides developers and publishers with important lessons.

Exhibit C - Sega and Marvel

Not that many years ago it was regarded as a must for any major publisher to have a set of strong licenses to complement their existing video game brands. Sega jumped on board, partnering with Marvel for a game based on the upcoming Iron Man movie, in 2007 they also secured the rights to make games on The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America as well as sequels to Iron Man and Hulk. While not as strong as the Marvel licenses held by Activision (Spider-Man and X-Men), Sega figured that there was money to be made.

Things didn't turn out that way, and Sega representatives have since admitted that not only are they uninterested in extending the deal with Marvel, but they have lost money on the projects - and they look at it as something of a industry-wide dilemma (slumping sales of licensed games).

The first couple of Iron Man titles were developed by Sega owned Secret Level (later renamed Sega Studios San Francisco). Neither game did well, Sega closed down the studio, and farmed out the rest of the Marvel titles to independent developers.

What the whole ordeal cost Sega is hard to tell, but the lesson is simple - licenses that aren't top tier and proven as video games are rather risky.

Exhibit D - Riddick

"I'm hitting a brick wall trying to explain to my superiors just how great this game is going to be." A Vivendi PR rep speaking to Gamereactor about Starbreeze Studios' The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay at a PR event in Stockholm. "They treat it just like any other licensed game."

Of course, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was anything but your typical licensed game. Sure it was based on a movie license. Sure it was set to release with the second (and not so good) movie in the series, but Starbreeze were also guided and helped by Vin Diesel's Tigon Studios - a they were given access and support seldom afforded developers of licensed titles.

The game may not have gone on to sell millions like Enter the Matrix, but it was critically acclaimed and it elevated Starbreeze Studios to a position where they would go on to create The Darkness for 2K Games (2007), and on to work on a cancelled Jason Bourne title (EA) and the long-rumoured re-envisioning of Syndicate (Project RedLime).

For Starbreeze Studios there is an obvious danger in relying to heavily on developing licensed games as they don't really add any value to the company. They need to do a good job on every project to keep the offers coming in, and perhaps mixing in one or two original IP's is something they should think about doing.

The Future of Licensed Games

Rather than farming development of licensed titles out to external developers, many publishers have opted to develop them in-house as of late. The results still vary, but there is also the chance of creating an identity within a studio for creating games on a license and thus spark a better creative environment. This also creates easier communication between developer and license holder, a with fewer cooks there is a better chance of a great game emerging.

But there is an obvious danger of designating a studio as your developer of choice for a certain license. It may be hard for the studio to hold on to talent, and likewise to recruit new talent. As many fully owned studios focused on developing licensed games can attest to, you're likely to be the first one on the chopping block if the publisher needs to cut costs.

Obviously, there are many different types of licenses - working on a game based on a Disney Pixar movie isn't the same as working on the Batman license or on the next James Bond title. Trying to make a decent game out of the latest Marvel movie isn't the same as working with Vin Diesel's Tigon Studios to bring the next chapter in the Riddick saga to gamers.

One of the key aspects to consider is the difference in time frame between a major motion picture production and that of a major video game. If you want a strong game to launch alongside the movie, the developer needs to be in on the project from the early planning stages in order to allow them time for prototyping and iteration on gameplay mechanics. Unfortunately there is no other cure to the problem of poor licensed games than spending more money on them, but the problem here is that there is an unwillingness to do so and the effect of a longterm abuse of fans is the massive mistrust amongst gamers towards any licensed property.

Perhaps the most important development is the realisation that a license does not equal easy money these days. The immediate reaction might be to slim down the budgets even more, but as the minimum cost of bringing out software on the major platforms is something that will no doubt continue to climb, it's not a solution that works. Will the end result be fewer licensed titles? Probably yes. Will we start seeing more licensed games going the digital route? Certain licenses yes, while the more mainstream ones that target kids are likely to stay as retail products for the foreseeable future. Will we see more of the properly handled, produced and developed licensed titles? The answer is probably yes. License holders are beginning to smarten up to how the video game industry works and as sequels for movies are planned out years in advance there is hope for video game development to be included early on rather than being tagged on as an afterthought a year out from the street date of the movie.

It's encouraging to see a developer such as Double Fine going down the licensed route with Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster. It's not your everyday licensed project as I'm sure you are aware, but it's a good example of what happens when an idea for a game marries well with a license. Double Fine didn't have to come up with a concept for a Sesame Street game - they had an idea for a game, learned that Warner Bros were looking for developers to take on Sesame Street - and thought it was a perfect fit for their game concept. That sort of thing is not likely to happen often, but the key here is to build a game around some great mechanics that are great regardless of the license. The usual scenario sees developers trying to come up with mechanics that fit the license and end up with something that just simply doesn't play well.

It's hard to fault a developer in need of money to sustain their operations to sign up for a quick cash-in licensed game. Of course, they're probably only temporarily able to stop the bleeding and they're likely to find it even harder to secure a publisher for their dream project after having a shitty mess of a game on their resume. Nonetheless, there are obligations to consider and while it's easy for gamers to fault a developer for a crappy game, the decision to make it may have secured wages for the next year for a few dozen employees. The problem is on a structural level, and it is in the interest of all parties to try and eliminate these problems as much as possible.

The quality of licensed games are never going to be on par with the best of the original video games the industry has to offer. Simply because the studios who have proven their qualities with original work don't have to pick up licensed projects to pay the bills. But there is no reason for us to continue to suffer through ill conceived, messy and cheap cash-ins these days. Vote with your wallet and force publisher, license holders and developers, but don't be afraid to buy the odd licensed gem to come out.