“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

part 3 – Game Company Myths About Films

Myth #1 – Games take longer to make than films.

As with most myths, this idea is rooted in truth.  From the point at which a major (non-animated) film begins principal photography to the day that it is released to theaters, rarely takes as much as 2 years.  The most successful games, however, often take at least this long, from start to finish.  What this myth overlooks, however, is the amount of time that a film can spend in development and pre-production (these are two distinct phases that come prior to filming).  When this time is added to the film’s production and post-production process, films can often take at least as long to make as the most ambitious game.  The challenge for both industries is to find a way to successfully pursue both timelines, in parallel, rather than waiting until it is “too late” to get started on the game.  I believe that the solution to this problem lies in how the projects are financed, but that is a topic for another article.

Myth #2 – Filmmakers don’t respect game developers.

On the contrary, the people who actually create/produce films consistently express a tremendous level of respect and appreciation for their gaming counterparts.  Many are also gamers themselves and most acknowledge that creating games requires a unique set of creative abilities that they do not possess.  This level of intimidation and respect may actually explain why so few film creators have felt comfortable trying to embrace the interactive entertainment medium.  Nonetheless, this “second class” perspective persists amongst game creators for two very simple reasons:

Game developers have had virtually zero exposure to their film creative counterparts during the crucial stages of building a game and making the movie.  Even those game developers who are working on major projects that are slated to release alongside blockbuster films have traditionally been separated from the people creating the film by several layers of individuals who have little (if any) creative/production experience in either field.  It would not be uncommon for the lead designer on a film-based video game to be separated from a film’s director by at least the following people:

1. The internal game development team’s Producer.
2. The external game publisher’s Producer.
3. The film studio’s consumer products/licensing executive.
4. The film production company’s mid-level executive who had been tasked with interacting with the film studio’s consumer products division.

Given all of these people who are concerned, to varying degrees, with ensuring that the game production doesn’t disrupt the film production, it should be unsurprising that the Lead Designer doesn’t feel that the film Director or Producer considers them worth the time of day.  Meanwhile, the film Director or Producer may have no idea that the game’s Lead Designer may have critical questions that only they can truly answer.

Myth #3 – Games based on films have to suck.

This myth effectively encompasses all of the issues that we have discussed so far.  And, if prior performance were necessarily a predictor of future performance, this statement would certainly be true.  Despite nearly 30 years of film-based games (going back at least as far as E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark), one would be hard-pressed to identify even a handful of film-based games that are widely considered to be more than mediocre.  There is no reason why this trend must continue to be true, however.  In fact, many successful film properties (Indiana Jones, Aliens, Lord of the Rings, Inglorious Basterds) could be easily correlated to similarly popular games (Uncharted, Halo, Warcraft, Call of Duty).  As we have seen, there are 4 basic reasons why the quality of film-based games has proven so consistently inferior:

1. Talent – Licensees do not hire top-tier game developers for licensed games.
2. Communication – Game developers have extremely limited, if any, access to their creative counterparts, much less the ability to influence the creative direction of the film in order to ensure that it will also make for a great game.
3. Timeline – Game developers almost never have enough time to create high-quality games.
4. Story – The story/narrative elements of the game are afterthoughts for the screenwriters and film directors

When these four, highly-solvable, problems have been addressed, there is nothing preventing film-based games from achieving high levels of quality (and the financial success that accompanies it).