What happened to Movie tie-in licences?

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

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The late 80's, early 90's were jam packed with them.

Some very good, some seriously BAD.

Did development costs become too prohibitive to make something which ultimately was a promotional vehicle for the film?
 
I think perhaps games simply outgrew movies and they weren't needed to drive the sales of games.

The fact that games are being turned into movies now suggests how the market has changed.

Plus........... E.T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!;;
 
Gimpymoo said:
The late 80's, early 90's were jam packed with them.

Some Rarely very good, some almost always seriously BAD.

Did development costs become too prohibitive to make something which ultimately was a promotional vehicle for the film?
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Fixed ;)

I think the only ones which were really any good were the AvP games and some of the LOTR ones. The rest were almost always generic platformers with a re-skin :p
 
I'd imagine for publishers it's a matter of the cost of the license and the already out of control cost of AAA games versus the potential recoup.

We've come a long way from every movie being turned into a near identical to the last side scroller by Ocean regardless of suitability.
 
I remember Robocop on my ZX Spectrum and thinking the animations and graphics amazing. The two years+ development cycle of a modern game kind of put the movie tie-in to bed I feel. Most movies, unless it's a hugely CGI biased movie are done and released within eighteen months, sometimes less. There just isn't time to do it properly and release at the same time as the movie.
 
Mockingbird said:
The only one that comes to mind recently is Mad Max, which was by all accounts pretty good.
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They aren't even related.

I haven't seen a direct movie-game in years that was any good. It's unfashionable now, the dire state of such games made sure that nobody would buy the things. Not even kids want/buy whatever crappy Pixar/Disney dreck that comes out.

The best devs can do is take the name and run with it, like Mad Max, Batman and Star Wars. Any attempt at making games based directly on films is a massive folly and everyone knows this
 
KNiVES said:
The best devs can do is take the name and run with it, like Mad Max, Batman and Star Wars. Any attempt at making games based directly on films is a massive folly and everyone knows this
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Lucasfilm Games (as LucasArts were originally) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure was one of the finest film tie-in games ever created and proves more than adequately that it is possible.

Generally the output was cash-in tosh though, not as bad as Films based on games though ;)
 
KNiVES said:
They aren't even related.
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Mad Max the game is a direct prequel to Fury Road.

As for direct movie tie-ins - as Miss Chief said, their decline is almost certainly down to the increase in length of development cycles. It now takes longer to make a game than it does to make a movie from start to finish, so barring the franchises that are planned out years in advance companies can no longer get a good quality game to coincide with the movie.
 
Well co-ordinating a game such that it gets released when the movie does can be quite hard, especially as AAA games should have long development times of multiple years... Miss your intended release window and you lose the value of the licence in terms of the hype generated from the movie.
 
I think the general consensus is (Telltale games seem to get away with it with Lego, because....its Lego. Star Wars and Avengers without the charm of lego would just be very average games IMO, not sure if technically because of lego it counts as a 'movie tie in') that movie tie ins are generally turkeys.

Also I am guessing that obtaining the license costs a stupid amount of money.

Actually thinking about it, the last REALLY good movie tie in I can remember is Goldeneye on the N64.
 
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