“10 Ways To Make Better Games Based on Movies” |
| 10 Ways To Make Better Games Based on Movies Posted: 16 Aug 2010 01:49 PM PDT At GDC Europe today, which takes place before the big Gamescom gaming event in Germany later this week, veteran game developer Don Daglow spoke about how the film and videogame industries could work together to produce better videogames based on movies. Daglow, who's been making games since the 1970s, has plenty of experience with movie-based games, everything from Tron Deadly Discs on the Intellevision, to Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers with Stormfront Studios, the studio he founded. And while his presentation was targeted to filmmakers looking to create games based on their properties, it still presents some interesting points for the rest of us. Here are the 10 ways that he suggests film-to-game projects can be improved: 1. Will this film make a good game? Daglow started his list with three questions, and this was the obvious first query. But maybe it hasn't always been so obvious -- he cited an example of when, back in 1982, Atari bought the license to develop a game based on the Dustin Hoffman movie Kramer vs. Kramer...about a family going through a painful divorce. Daglow pointed to out criteria that would help people evaluate if their property might make sense as a game:
Daglow pointed out how so many times he was approached by film studios to make a game based off what little they knew of gaming. "They'd come and say 'I've seen Grand Theft Auto. They've sold millions, give me one of those.' I'd explain that it would cost lots of money, it would take years to make, and just couldn't be done in the timeframe they were looking for. Then they'd say, 'Well then we'll find someone who will do it.'" As for how to figure out what type of game you should make, he pointed out a few suggestions:
3. Is there time to build the game? Believe it or not, Daglow said that he had plenty of movie studios not really understand this. When it comes to deciding whether to release a game with the theatrical release or the DVD release, he said that studios should always go with the theatrical if possible. "DVD represents a significant event for the film, but it's not a significant event from a marketing perspective." In terms of timing, here's what Daglow recommends:
4. If questions 1 through 3 don't yield a good game on time, don't build a game at all. "A bad product can damage the brand," said Daglow. "Sometimes management will make you proceed anyway, yes. But in an ideal world you do not pass go and collect $200." 5. Do you want ancillary licensing revenue (e.g. licensed toys) or do you want to broaden and deepen your franchise? This is an important decision producers need to make, Daglow said. "You can actually make your property much more valuable with a game," he pointed out, "but for some people, they look on their spreadsheet, and for them it's like a toy -- so that's how it will be treated." If all you're looking for is ancillary revenue, Daglow suggests licensing it to experts -- one of the studios with a proven track record for building movie-based games -- and let them do what they know best. But if you're working on building the franchise, you want to still work with experts, but also learn from them. Because even though you're working with experts, you learning how to become a better partner over time will result in a better game. 6. Accept that game developers and filmmakers need each other as creatives in complex crafts. Daglow points out how when one side doesn't respect the other. bad projects occur. "One time many years ago, on a project far, far away, we were talking with a publisher for a major Hollywood property," he described. "We're getting to know our producer -- he sits in his chair and leans back to say, 'I have some ideas about how we can direct this game so that this will be a new kind of storytelling experience. We will for the first time take entertainment to a place film and games haven't gone before, and we will show people something truly new." Meanwhile, Daglow and his team could just imagine this producer picturing himself climbing the steps at the Oscars to win best film and best movie-game adaptation. Turns out the producer was a trainwreck and derailed the project for about nine months before he was finally replaced. But in general, Daglow said that respect can be a huge issue. He'd often come across producers who had the attitude that they knew game development just because they had played some games. He said that filmmakers simply need to respect gamemakers and vice versa. Daglow also mentioned that film producers ought to look at game studios with employees who have worked together for quite a while, unlike how in Hollywood each movie has a new team created for it. "Games studios are more like a soccer team and less like a film production team." 7. What film assets can the developers use, and how fast can you get those assets to them? Daglow mentions just how much this can benefit the production of a game. "When we did the Two Towers game we got a truckload of assets from Peter Jackson. I'm talking tens of thousands of still images. It really helped." He also pointed out that nowadays many of the assets used for CG renders in the movie can directly be translated into the game. However, he also recommends that film studios be careful to work with a studio that understands really good security of these assets -- "What happens to your property if three months before release a rough cut of your film shows up on the internet? With any developer you share materials with, insisting on this stuff is important." 8. The best way to have a quality game is to give clear, fast, firm decisions on approval submissions. "I have seen games that were weeks late solely on the issue of approvals," Daglow said. "There are people within the Hollywood community who feel the need to reassert the importance of the studio." He even mentions a particular instance where one individual slowed down an entire game because he felt like making everyone wait for his approval. "We reported this issue to our publisher, that person's manager at the studio -- but that person was untouchable," said Daglow. "We lost six weeks waiting for someone's approval and lost a lot of sales because of it. This was a major studio that did that." As for how these sorts of issues can be avoided, Daglow makes a few suggestions:
9. Accept the differences between games and film. This seems sort of obvious, but the way an audience experiences a game is very different from movies, some filmmakers don't quite get that. "In games, the player co-writes the script and does blocking on the fly," says Daglow. You need to accept that there have to be some differences in a game when the player is constantly moving around or changing the camera angles. He pointed out how some producers would say, "That's something the character would never do, why are you letting them do that?" And he would respond, "If there's nothing for the character to do, there's no game." Daglow continues by pointing out that in films, everything is controlled, but in games you're having a continual dialogue with the player. "If a player is confused, good game design is always answering the questions quickly. We go into a journey where we're chained to the player -- we're leading them and then they're leading us." 10. Talk to each other constantly between approval points. Game development is like a good marriage, it requires more communication than just the key events. "Be exchange students immersed in each others' cultures. And keep asking questions -- you never want the idea that you're interfering with development to stop you from asking questions." At the end of his presentation, Daglow also made the point that games and movies are appreciated in different ways, and that this is where the intersection can be so meaningful. "All of us can think about films where we left the theater and had a deeply emotional moment and maybe looked at life a little differently," he said. "I recently spoke to someone who told me, '28 years ago I played your game all the time. I remember that so fondly.' That's another kind of special relationship we can have with an audience -- where a game becomes an important part of their lives." And that's where Daglow sees the potential of the two industries working together as really exciting. "We're going to create things that are better than either of us can create on our own." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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