No more Movie Tie-In Games - By Cory Fisher

Reference Article: http://kotaku.com/5936240/most-movie-tie+in-games-kind-of-stink-ihope-this-one-wont

More often than not, the world has thrown us a top notch director with an A-list movie

that promised a video game that spared no expense in making sure that it wouldn’t fall

short in creating the same amazing experience the film had. I can’t believe we still fall

for these lies.

It isn’t until we’ve finished a game that is shorter than the actual movie, and costs 4 times as much, that we realize that it was probably a bad idea to purchase. The first ever movie license game came out approximately 27 years ago, based off the Indiana Jones movie ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ , and people think it owes its success due to the fact that it had nothing to do with the movie in the first place. The funny thing was the director of the film, famous Mr.Spielberg, was extremely impressed with the games end result. So impressed that he wanted the same creators of the game to work on his ET movie tie-in game, the amazing game that was buried en-mass out in a desert?

Ever though our expectations for these games are already low, designers seem to find a

way to lower them even further. It’s hard to believe that there is only one movie licensed

game that made it into the Metacritic’s top 100 list, and it wasn’t like the game got 10th

or anything as well, it was all the way down at number 90. On the other spectrum of

things, the list of 100 worst games created houses more than 15 movie or TV licensed

games.

The weird thing is, it’s been proven that a good game can gross an amazing amount of

income, amazingly these games can gross even more than the movies themselves. For

instance the Tron game out grossed the film, and Goldeneye was easily one of the

greatest tie-in games of all time. The thing that made these games so successful was

the fact that they weren’t released alongside their respected movies.

Not being released alongside the movie makes designers realize that the game has to

stand alone, opposed to being released as side merchandise that has the intentions of

riding the success and hype of a film. It is unknown why every tie-in movie game isn’t

made with the realization that waiting will yield better results, but it’s something that

should be looked at when decisions to make more of these games are made.