Frank rose: Deep media

This excerpt is from the blog Deep media written by Frank Rose.

'It’s no secret that movie tie-in games are generally atrocious. Just this year we’ve had the displeasure of experiencing another round of The Lord Of The Rings games, Terminator Salvation, The Godfather II, Up, and a slew of others. It’s not just that these games were poorly designed and hastily put together; they are also unabashedly derivative. None of them provide more in terms of story than their cinematic counterparts; instead of offering a fresh experience, they expect players to play through a plot they’ve already seen at the theatre. Even the few titles whose developers were given the time and license to provide compelling gameplay—King Kong and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, for instance—fell victim to the issues of poorly constructed games: Their storyline and characters felt all too familiar.'

This expresses what I have been thinking for several years now. The games that are created from the back of a film are always awful. This is most often due to the game being produced so fast so it can be released for the film. These games are created for the sole purpose to make money because of the films release. Of course a toy story game will sell just before the third film is released but it seems that the developers have no interest in making a good game. This puts people off buying these type of games because it uses the same narrative or characters as a film. More often than not the game will be an adaption of the narrative from the film, however sometimes it may be an extension of the film but may not sell as well as it could because of its association with lack of originality and just being a bad game.

For me the idea of using different narratives from the same game world in different medias will suggest a lack of originality in the games industry which is already struggling to create new ideas. The issue is not really transmedia storytelling but the adaption of one narrative told several times which begins to bore the audience and is starting to ruin the games industry.

The industry seems obsessed with creating the same game 100 times and calling it something different. I'm not sure it needs an excuse to do this using the same game world over and over. Haven't we seen enough star wars games? some would argue that you cannot have too much of a good thing but soon the games could be so far from the original narrative they will be almost unrecognisable.

A rare few have succeeded in being more than being a decent clone. The first Riddick game, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, not only pushed the boundaries of first-person combat and stealth but created a new story arc separate from, but consistent with, the films. As Riddick, the player could experience first-hand what being a feared, ultra-violent assassin was like without knowing every plot twist. But Starbreeze wasn’t finished there: The developers released another game in the series (the only film-game sequel I can think of besides Star Wars), Assault on Dark Athena, that built on their previous success and added yet more mythology to the Riddick canon.