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The Almighty Buck Entertainment Games

WB Using Game Reviews To Calculate Royalties 111

Posted by simoniker from the novel-concept dept.
Thanks to The Hollywood Reporter for its article discussing Warner Bros. Interactive's decision to use average review scores in calculating the royalty rates videogame makers must pay to WB. The article explains: "Games based on Warner Bros. licenses must achieve at least a 70% rating [calculated via GameRankings.com and similar services], or incur an increase in royalty rates", with WB's Jason Hall commenting: "An escalating royalty rate kicks in to help compensate us for the brand damage... the further away from 70% it gets, the more expensive the royalty rate becomes... If the publisher delivers on what they promised -- to produce a great game -- it's not even an issue." However, Bruno Bonnell, CEO of Atari, makers of Enter The Matrix, which didn't include this contract clause, comments: "We sold four million copies. That's $250 million worldwide... and Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70%? Are they joking?"
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WB Using Game Reviews To Calculate Royalties

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  • I would penalize them for Enter: The Matrix (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jgoemat ( 565882 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @02:33PM (#9250672)
    The game had some fun elements, but it wasn't really a very good game. I think it did hurt my opinion of The Matrix. Come on, 70% isn't that much to ask for.

    • Re:I would penalize them for Enter: The Matrix (Score:4, Funny)

      by einTier ( 33752 ) * on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:44PM (#9251683)
      It didn't hurt my opinion of the franchise any more than the sequels did.

      For whatever that's worth.

      • Yeah, but the game was a bit of a precursor. Then the sequels nailed the coffin shut.

        All in all, this isn't a bad idea. I mean, come on,one of the big corps is actually going to assess their output using something other than the bottom line!

        Having said that, I foresee a rise in Game review payola. Anybody want to handicap various game reviewers and how much they can be bought for?

    • Re:I would penalize them for Enter: The Matrix (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3&gmail,com> on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:44PM (#9251686) Journal
      Come on, 70% isn't that much to ask for.

      Only because scores are inflated most of the time. In a proper rating system, only 30% at most of games would get 70% or higher. (It would probably be much less because game quality is probably close to a normal distribution.)

      That's my problem with this, actually; you're giving the power to the media. How do you trust people who get paid by game developers for favorable reviews to be unbiased about this sort of thing? Not to mention the fact that the sample size is too small and doesn't have enough variety. If there was an easy way to know what the average Joe's satisfaction with certain games was, that would be much better.

      Rob
      • In a proper rating system? So according to you, in a proper rating system, 50% of students would achieve less than 50%. The rating is not indicative of the ranking of the game relative to all the other games out there, it is a measure of how perfect the game is. Is it not possible to have multiple "perfect" games, at least in theory?

        In cases like this, you need to look at the intent of the grading system. In this case it is to measure it against perfection or possibly to measure how bad the faults are.
        • Actually, game ratings have nothing to do with how perfect a game is. A game that gets a 10 out of 10 in a review is not necessarily perfect, just better in all aspects than any other game that's out at the time (unless there is another game that is just as good, in which case that game would also get a 10). Ratings are necessarily subjective; you can't reasonably give a game a 10 unless you know that most other games aren't as good as it.

          Rob
    • " I think it did hurt my opinion of The Matrix"

      it hurt my opinion of the matrix less than the 2nd and 3rd movies did

  • The fix is in (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TerryAtWork ( 598364 ) <research@aceretail.com> on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @02:34PM (#9250699)
    or will be, shortly. Any time big bucks depend on some web site operator's opinion, that web site operator is going to get a great offer...

    Gotta start a game rating web site.... :-)

    • Re:The fix is in (Score:4, Interesting)

      by BinaryOpty ( 736955 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @02:37PM (#9250740)
      Like IGN, Gamespot, and Gamespy don't already get under the table offers to give games better ratings. Read those sites once in a while and you'll realize bias that strong is most likely a paid bias.

      • Too true (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Scorchio ( 177053 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:13PM (#9251204)
        I don't doubt it. I hate to be cynical, but those "Best of E3" lists they were all posting looked more like lists of "publishers and developers we hope to be securing advertising revenue from real soon now".

        Games reviewers are not only running the risk of losing advertising income from publisher whose games they game poor ratings to, but they're potentially damaging future relationships with that publisher. The exclusive previews of a new game may well go to a competitor who game a less damning review.

        I remember a game I worked on in the mid 90s - one magazine gave it around 40%, another magazine gave it 92%. The difference? The journos from the second magazine were treated to free dinner and beers. It really is that skewed.

        • Re:Too true (Score:3, Interesting)

          by gl4ss ( 559668 )
          been to gamespy owned sites lately?
          me neither, because it's fucking full of crap.

          the ass licking that came few years ago(8+) into magazines has in the past years crawled into high profile web sites as well, they MUST provide "oh this is going to be good" shit for the gaming houses in order to get their review copies early enough, not only that but they essentially base reviews entirely on preview information provided by the game developer. and yes, they can't rely on that because PR data doesn't include a
  • Who's paying $62.50 for a game?

  • Yes! Hopefully... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Micro$will ( 592938 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @02:40PM (#9250775) Homepage Journal
    this will be expanded to gamers as well. If your game sucks, you must pay me royalties to play it.

  • As long as it goes both ways... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mike Hawk ( 687615 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @02:42PM (#9250799) Journal
    What happens when the game publisher alledges the IP owner let the brand go to shit? [slashdot.org] Make a crap game, licensing fees go up in real-time, let the original go to crap, licensing fees go down in real-time. Both parties are accepting significant risk so just write it into the contract. Sounds like good business to me.

  • Not joking! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @02:42PM (#9250813) Homepage Journal
    "We sold four million copies. That's $250 million worldwide... and Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70%? Are they joking?"

    Math aside, the Matrix game sucked, and I don't think I'll ever buy any more Matrix games. It absolutely makes sense that bad games should be responsible for brand damage.
    • Math aside, the Matrix game sucked, and I don't think I'll ever buy any more Matrix games. Exactly! And the method makes perfect sense, because it's being used to determine the royalty rate for future games.
    • no thats bullshit, its the publishing companies that take the risk in hopes of profiting. its a gamble for them, they invest in a game, advertise for it and then if it makes money, they make a lot, if not, they loose money. but in either case the publisher makes the decision to invest or not to invest.
      • That's right, and in this case the publisher is making the assessment that the traditional model doesn't work (because it's too hard to tell whether the game will be good before it is released), and stipulating new contract obligations in order to mitigate that risk.
  • ...Warner Bros. is refusing to pay any more royalties whatsoever to anyone remotely related to the last two Matrix films, citing the "brand damage" clause in their contract.
    • since when does the license holder pay royalties to companies for use their brand?
      • I would assume that royalites would be paid out to the Wachowski Brothers for their scripts and their piece of the "Matrix" pie that they own the rights to.

        I assume you are saying now that Warner Brothers is saying that the Brothers damaged the Matrix brand that they (WB) owned a huge portion of and thus aren't going to pay out to anyone who has damaged the brand.

  • Good medicine (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BW_Nuprin ( 633386 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @02:51PM (#9250916)
    As someone who has worked on crapped-out shovelware licensed GBA games, I believe this is very good news. Often times the license games skimp on design phase and go straight to development, usually using a cookie-cutter engine and game mechanics from a previous title. With some penalties in place, perhaps companies will spend more time thinking about how they can make "Michigan Frog Racing" fun, or just find something else to do if they can't do that.

  • Make it a double edged sword. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BurritoJ ( 75275 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @02:56PM (#9250995)
    I think that a brand damage clause is reasonable. If for no other reason than the selfish desire to see fewer braindead/marketing driven tie-ins. The clause should cut both ways though; if the game is awesome and wins GOTY or similar awards then the royalty rate should be reduced commiserately.

    burritoj

  • Very reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JMZero ( 449047 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:01PM (#9251054) Homepage
    At one point, "The Matrix Online" was a game license that was very valuable - a marquee game. There was a lot of goodwill out there. "Enter the Matrix" exchanged a lot of that goodwill for money (as did the last two movies).

    Now they could have got money out of that franchise with anything from any developer. But if the game was excellent, they would have retained a lot more goodwill - and possibly helped maintain the franchise in the face of the lackluster sequels. That could have been worth much, much more than these sales figures.

    Look at the value Ubi Soft has created in the "Prince of Persia" franchise. PoP was dead, no value. Now it has lots, even if Sands of Time didn't sell as well as it should have. Sega is still milking Sonic the Hedgehog on the basis of a couple good games a decade ago.

    These things have tremendous, very real value. It makes sense to protect this value via contract - and pegging things to game reviews is as good of an idea as I can think of.

    • Re:Very reasonable (Score:1, Redundant)

      by Kanasta ( 70274 )
      maybe i should start a review site then.
    • PoP was dead, no value

      No vaues?! The name was obviously not as valuable as the Matrix, but the fact that it was a new Prince of Persia games was certainly one of the things that got my attention and made me interested in the game (and glad it did; that game was awesome). I'm sure that's true of at least some other people as well.

      • The name was obviously not as valuable as the Matrix, but the fact that it was a new Prince of Persia games was certainly one of the things that got my attention and made me interested in the game (and glad it did; that game was awesome). I'm sure that's true of at least some other people as well.

        Me too, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that a lot of the current gaming mass market remembers (i.e. has even played) the original series (or hell, let's just hope they forgot the terrible earlier 3D

      • Do you remember the previous 3D Prince of Persia for the PC? Neither does anyone else. You can probably still find it in a bargain bin somewhere, along with "Lemmings:Revolution part 39" and "The Incredible Machine: Less Enjoyable than Ever".

        I too had fond memories of the original PoP, but I certainly wasn't going to pick up a game (like the previously mentioned, abominable PoP 3D) on the strength of the license. I guess I overstated the case a bit, but Sands of Time has certainly revitalized the brand.

  • Great Idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dr. Bent ( 533421 ) <ben&int,com> on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:01PM (#9251055) Homepage
    I'm for anything that discourages the production of video games based on movie/tv/book franchises.

    Video games are interactive. The "story" is told by the user and the charecters are defined and developed by playing the game (at least, in a good game, they are). When you have the baggage that comes with charecters that have already been defined by movies, television, or books, you take away power from the user for no good reason whatsoever. The less of these types of games there are, the better.

    Oh, and yes...I'm aware that I can't spell.
    • I'd beg to differ there, to an extent.

      I would say that a vast majority of the TV/Movie franchise games out there are terrible, so what you're saying makes a lot of sense and the points you make are valid.

      Having said that, there are some significant exceptions. One of the greatest space combat sims I've ever played was X-Wing. X-Wing built a lot on the existing Star Wars franchise, but the gameplay was incredible. The game initially appealed to people because the franchise is very compelling, people kno
    • I'm for anything that discourages the production of movies based on books/short stories.

      Movies are audiovisual. The "story" is told by the use of composition, lighting, sound effects, and music. When you bring the baggage of literary devices, such as omniscient narration, metaphor, or wordplay, you're taking power away from the director for no good reason whatsoever.

      As games become more mature, game designers will develop more techniques to translate traditional linear stories into a non-linear interact

  • Paying for Quality v. Paying for Reviews (Score:5, Insightful)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:11PM (#9251180) Homepage
    The biggest problem with Hall's manifesto is that he's not paying for quality, he's paying for good reviews. There's a big difference. While there is usually correlation between a truly good game and the reviews, particularly when using meta ranking sites, it doesn't always match up. Take Black & White, for example, which was highly rated by the press. Two years later, B&W was lauded at by the very same magazines for its overwhelming boredom. Or Deus Ex 2, which also received comparetively high scores from the media but among fans and consumers hurt the Ion Storm brand far more than it helped? Good reviews does not always equal quality. More importantly, ti doesn't always equal sales either, and quite practically that's what Jason Hall should be most concerned about. Would more people have bought Enter the Matrix had it been a decent game? Probably. Does Enter the Matrix hurt the next Matrix game? Unarguably. But you can't chart the quality of a game with game reviews alone. Relying on those is too simplistic, and too impractical.

    If Hall actually gets to put this into place - which I doubt he will - why wouldn't Developer X unofficially bring on Mr. EGM Reviewer as a "consultant," with the thanks taking the shape of an HDTV? Allowing game reviewers to ultimately dictact the size of multi-thousand dollar royalty paychecks is a big mistake. I read game magazines all the time, and with the rare exception it's pisspoor writing stitlted with poop and boob jokes. I wouldn't trust them with determining my family's income, so why is Jason?
    • You'd be surprised how many things in business are done, not because they're the right way to do things, but because they can be easily measured. It's really rather frightening.
    • I think game reviewing isn't quite as high-level as it should be - but it's something. DX:IW got decent reviews (4 stars-esque) - and I don't think it was unfairly overrated. Hardcore fans may not like some aspects - but its a solid game.

      B&W certainly was overrated, but only just after its mega-hyped release. It's probably the best example I could come up with to highlight bad game reviewing. In some sense, though, I can't really blame the reviewers for this one - as I liked it too until I'd played

    • Deus Ex 2 was great. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Inoshiro ( 71693 )
      I spent a good week and a half playing through it, the same way I enjoyed DX1. Yes, they changed things. Yes, some of it was missed (the skill point system was great, finding extra multitools when exploring doesn't really make up for its loss as a way to reward more play).

      Most of the stuff (positional hitting and universal ammo) make a lot of sense once you beat the game. It helps it flow better, and the game is definitely worth a good playthrough. Just get it with an open mind, and you'll see how good
      • About the first 1/3 of the way through DX:IW I kept waiting for the game to get good.

        The middle third, I thought the game really blew. (And I posted about it everywhere)

        When I finally finished the game, I realized that it actually was pretty darn good, and enjoyable.

        If they had done something to reduce the number of times the game would load a new environment, I would have liked it a lot more. But in general, DX:IW was a pretty darn good game. (In my opinion...)
      • I played the first, I guess probably three times over. I've played the second now twice through, and I'm just not impressed. I'm not one of the people who bitched about the skill system - I liked it. I could handle the poor system performance as well. The ammo system didn't bother me. What bothered me more was that there really wasn't any choice at all. Throughout the game, the same factions kept bothering me. There was nothing I could ever do to piss anyone off enough that I closed a door or burned
        • You're able to satisfy everyone constantly throughout the entire game, right up until the end. It's lame that you didn't have to choose at some point irrevokibly. Even if you kill certain leaders or piss off a group, they'll still work with you later.

          I also missed the skill system. The further I got into the game, the more multitools it took to crack locks. I started to wish for a way to allievate this. However, to balance it, it did force you to make some choices about to open/do with them. Granted,

    • Charging for bad reviews (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @12:57AM (#9256130) Homepage
      He's not actually paying for good reviews. He's charging for bad reviews. There is a big difference. Nearly all games these days recieve a 70% or higher. A truly atrocious game like UFC has earned a 61% on metacritic. Resident Evil: Outbreak even breaks above 70%.

      With the tremendous score bloat these days if a game gets below %70 its pretty safe to assume it's junk. Heck, Shrek 2 is above that mark. The only excuse to release a below-70 game is running out of funding, and even that's a mark of bad management.

      Honestly, the movie studios taking notice and demanding a little bit of quality is a great thing. Movie licensed games bring in a large number of non-gamers to our world, yet turn off people in droves. The poverty of gameplay is legendary. Now, if only we could make the same arrangement on game to movie licenses...

  • Enter the Matrix a Good Example (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mmport80 ( 588332 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:12PM (#9251188) Homepage
    Enter the Matrix is a good example why this is a good idea. Atari could have put anything out and earned a fortune. In fact this is done with many brands - back in my gaming hay day THQ were infamous for this.

    It's a great idea, as it protects the brand by discouraging game publishers trying to make a quick buck.
  • The Matrix: Reloaded and Revolutions hurt the brand MUCH more than Enter The Matrix could have. Besides having a much larger exposure, they were also much worse, in comparison.

  • Oh, great (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:25PM (#9251398) Journal
    That is bad for end users.

    The consumer is best off when reviewers are impartial and unbiased.

    We already have to deal with product managers doing everything they can to convince reviewers to give high rankings to sell product. The video game industry suffers particularly much from this, with game publishers taking reviewers (often young people that are not paid much for their review work) on special trips or given gifts. It's hard to find a good, unbiased source of reviews.

    So now, there are two more variables -- reviewers are *directly determining* income of developers, and one movie publisher now has incentive for rankings to *drop* if they are near the 70% mark.

    This reminds me of an article I read once before -- I believe that it might have been a MacUser article by Andy Ihnatkno. Andy was reviewing a software package, and was contacted by the product manager at the developer early in the week, asking
    how the review process was going. Now, normally Andy wouldn't say anything, but the product manager was insistent, and finally he reluctantly said "Well, I would have liked it if you hadn't forced me to do task X manually." The reviewer thanked him and hung up, and Andy got back to reviewing.

    Next morning, Andy recieved a package via courier. It contained a new version of the software package, and a handwritten note from the product manager -- "I hope that you'll consider trying this version". It turns out that this version contained the automation feature that Andy had mentioned that he missed. That afternoon, the product manager called up again and asked "What do you think of the product?" Andy again mentioned something that the product didn't do, and next morning, another brown package arrived via courier. Andy thought "You know, this really isn't how the review process is supposed to work" -- but the software *was* getting better. Some poor developer had clearly spent a frantic 24/7 over the weekend adding and testing code. This continued on for a bit, and finally Andy finished his review -- giving the software package a good rating.

    This is, surprisingly, a bad thing for the end user. Yes, the software package had some new features when done, but here is the problem. A reviewer will only find a certain percentage of the lacks in a software package -- some will go unnoticed. The user depends on the reviewer reviewing the entire package based on his analysis of the lacking features and bugginess of a subset of the package. The reviewer's opinion can then be extrapolated to the entire package. If the developer can change things as the review is happening -- something like a student changing stuff as his professor is grading his assignment -- this leads to a disproportionately good subset of the product and an inflated rating.

    Furthermore, it's already a hard thing to pan a product, knowing that it will cut into sales -- publically criticizing people is something that humans don't like to do. How much harder will it be to pan the product of someone like Will Wright, which the reviewer might know personally, knowing that there will be a *direct* impact on the income of that developer?

    I could see reviewers refusing to review products where their ratings are used in such a manner as a policy. This can only tend to distort ratings and increase pressure on them to mis-review products.

    My guess is that this may be an attempt to help compensate the movie publisher if the movie publisher was the one that did a good job. Enter The Matrix, the game in question, has frequently been criticized as being a bad game. The reason that it sold well may be more due to the efforts of the movie publisher than the developer -- heavy marketing effort from the movie, and a good movie coming out.

    This pay-based-on-review policy will tend to decrease royalties for licensed games (especially movie releases). These are frequently done on an extremely tight schedule to ensure a game release shortly after a hit movie. This tends to mak

    • Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Have Blue ( 616 )
      I wouldn't have any complaints about that Inhatko story if the final, well-reviewed featureful version became the final version of the product as well (i.e. the one sent to all the people who paid for it). If the reviewer used the product normally, as the vast majority of buyers would, then it's extremely likely that his suggestions improved the product for the vast majority of users, and his good review would be reflected in their experience. If he was using only a subset of the product as you suggest, or

  • Okay by me. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xanderwilson ( 662093 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:25PM (#9251404) Homepage
    If it encourages developers to spend less time and money on crappy media-tie ins and more time on original stuff (and above-average media tie-ins), I don't care if WB or any other conglomerate wants to shoot themselves in the foot.

    As a fan of certain properties (certain comic books for example; WB owns DC), I'm crossing my fingers that there might finally be some incentive to do a decent job with the characters I want to see. So bad news for the WB as they try to find someone to make another Superman game. But good news for players if we ever see another Superman game in stores?

    Unfortunately for the developers, though, game reviews are too arbritrary a test. And sales don't necessarily have everything to do with quality. It's the excitement of the (first) film that sold Enter the Matrix, not the quality of the game. That first film is also what sold the sequels, but that's another topic.

    Alex.

  • Great tool... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:30PM (#9251484)
    for any reviewer who has an axe to grind against a given game developer.
    • And which reviewer doesn't have an axe to grind about those selfish developers, who keeps making all those mainstream games not paying enough attention to the proper color of blood in their games?
  • That Enter the Matrix game sold because of the movie. There was nothing special about the game itself, and thus deserved the 67.

    Talk about developers losing perspective. I'm still waiting for a half decent Simpsons game. Oh no, wait a minute. I'm not. (Hit and Run fans need not apply.) You need more than to use a good licence as a crutch, people. Get used to it. Make better games.

    (Of course, it's also laughable that an article in the "Hollywood Reporter" failed to spell Richard Roeper's name c

  • I've got a better idea... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:42PM (#9251660)
    "An escalating royalty rate kicks in to help compensate us for the brand damage...

    How about compensating the ripped-off consumer that paid 49 fsking bucks for the lame game in the first place.

    Oh, and I see you also sell CD's. How about compensating the ripped-off consumer that paid 16 fsking bucks for the lame album that had one good cut.

    Do I sound angry? Do I sound ripped-off? Better pull your head out of your ass, mr record/game company executive before it's too late.

    • I don't see any obligation for them to pay you back. Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment. [Ching ching ching] Alright, what were we talking about? Right. Games/CDs. Support the independent game developer and the independent artist. Give them your 15/8 bucks or whatever. Wait for reviews to games (maybe even on ones that you positively KNOW will be good... I'm thinking B&W here) or CDs. Ask your friends for their opinions about the items.

      The point is they didn't lie to you. If you h
      • You are absolutely right. They do not have an obligation to payback the consumer. But what bugs me is that it's the consumer that gets ripped. If the game was so bad that it damaged their franchise, shouldn't they test market it before they let it go out the door and have consumers waste $250 million buying it? You see, the pigs shouldn't be able to have it both ways. If they want a quality game, it's their responsiblility to make sure it's quality before it ships.

        I maintain that if their franchise
        • The franchise was damaged, sure, but it isn't your franchise, so that's really a moot point. There's one glaring flaw in your logic though: you didn't have to buy the game. That's how capitalism works. If people don't like the game, they don't have to buy it, and it will sort itself out.

          What needs to change is what defines mainstream in the first place. If we have a market of people buying games simply because of the franchise upon which it's based, then we'll never win because the publishers know they
          • There's one glaring flaw in your logic though: you didn't have to buy the game.

            Of course I didn't have too. But I did because of the franchise. That's the whole point. If they want to be proactive about the quality of the franchise, they should do it before they damage it and screw consumers with shitty games. The trouble is that the pigs want it both ways. They want to throw everything out and see what sticks to the wall and screw everything else.

            I do understand where you're coming from with the
            • If you're unsatisfied with a game or CD, simply delude yourself into thinking that it's great and that you definitely got your money's worth. Amazon is a good place to help you along with this denial. Simply find the customer reviews for your item, skip past all the negative ones and try to agree with all the five star ratings, no matter how badly punctuated and fully "capped" they are.

  • Interesting idea... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:44PM (#9251674)
    This is an interesting and valid idea, if its inherent flaws could be worked out. I'm glad WB recognizes the tendency for licensed games to "suck", but I wonder if they recognize that LICENSORS (ie: themselves) are often to blame for that?

    10 years ago I was Producer on several games based on WB licenses, and I can tell you, all they care about is how it looks and how accurately their IP is depicted, etc. They end up with their hands in everything, and if their decisions affect gameplay, so be it. They aren't gamers. They don't recognize that gameplay comes before visuals. It's very difficult to make an innovative game when you have this group of non-gamers telling you what you can and can't do with their characters.

    • Amen, Brother!

      Been down that path. They are a big PITA to work with, for exactly those reasons.

      Also comments like, "Make it hipper...edgier."

      (Can you make it vauger, more nebulous?)

      But don't discount license games (even on the GBA). Yeah, there is a lot of crap, but so many get made that there is a new school that looks on these arbitrary character sets and rules as a jumping off point for making some interesting, well designed games.

      Sadly, it seems GBA reviewers are folk who feel that being a GBA revi
    • That seems like the biggest problem to me. As long as they give the developer enough leverage to make the game great. But if it comes out and WB spent all their time sitting in the developers office making game decisions they don't have any right to do anything with the royalties except suck it up.
  • ...running an election American Idol style. How are they going to prevent stuffing the ballot box? Worse yet, why wouldn't WB want to stuff the ballot box themselves? This just sounds dirty.

  • Hurting the developer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Scorchio ( 177053 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:47PM (#9251715)
    This is a unsubtle way of shifting even more of the financial risk of a project onto the developer rather than the publisher, especially the smaller teams who are relying on any profits to keep the place running for another six months. Anyone who finds this clause presented to them in a contract should make sure there are counter measures against the publisher imposing any of the following:

    - An insufficient budget, forcing the developer the cut features that make the distiction between a good game and a average/mediocre game.

    - Design changes at later stages or without renegotiation of the schedule and funding. Forced changes from those without a full understanding of the game can easily muddle the gameplay and result in a poor final product.

    - A too short or too rigid deadline, forcing the developer to submit an unfinished or unpolished title.

    It's all too easy to perceive the situation where WB or a similar publisher enforces situations like these resulting in an average (50%) game instead of a good (75%) game. They then pull out their own increased royalties and profit, leaving the developer with a smaller than expected sum that may not even break even.
    • Warner Brothers isn't the publisher. It's the licensor of the intellectual property.

      If better games get made because of this, I'm all for it. Who wouldn't want better games?

      If fewer games get made because of this, I couldn't care less. There are already more games out there than I will ever be able to complete in my lifetime.

      If "respected" game reviewers get paid off to give a game a good review, I'm all for it, because I will be able to safely ignore 100% of the game review magazines and websites for

  • What about the dissenting opinion? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @04:03PM (#9251936)
    Who can forget the insanely high review that Gamepro gave to "Street Fighter II: Special Championship Edition" for the Genesis? I remember that sparking a whole slew of conspiracy theories that Gamepro was paid off by Capcom. Can you imagine the reprecussions of a reviewer who happens to disagree with most reviewers on a game now that future royalties are on the line? It would give the payoff conspiracy theories a lot more credibility since there would be a concrete link between the review and the revenue the game generates.

    NOTE: I really don't want to start a flamewar over a 10-12 year old topic so if you think that SFII:SCE was the cat's meow then I apologize for making your blood boil, but there were many SF2 fans who owned a Genesis (including me) who feel that we were given an inferior product compared to the SNES version which scored lower.
  • I actually did not even bother to look at Enter the Matrix because I doubted that Atari could provide a quality game. I think the franchise holders should encourage quality franchise spin offs such as video games and punish low quality spin offs that may damage the franchise. I think this should go the other way for games made into movies. Every company that has a valued franchise such as the matrix or LOTR or Sesamie Street wants to protect the franchise and keep it from getting over saturated or devalued.
  • This will only manage to delay decent games, cancel mediocre games, and developers who are just trying to ear a decent living will get their asses handed to them because the game designers haven't a freaking clue how to put together solid content... oh yah and it will be all management's fault.
  • Yes I think game developer should get rewarded (or penalized) over the overall score the game received not just its sales. After all a game with a good score will sooner or later be picked up and score more sales, while a game that got good initial sales but sucks (ussually a franchise) will have great sales the first weeks then be abandoned and ultimately sold at retail. Its a no brainer.

    Unfortunately we dont live in a perfect world. What would happen is:
    Developers of bad games who sold great will sta
  • "We sold four million copies. That's $250 million worldwide... and Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70%? Are they joking?"

    In this case, the movie promoted and sold the game and the game studio had little or nothign to do with it's success. Because the game was buggy and crap but the licence sold it. So they should penalized.
  • Gamerankings.com has an interesting page where you can see the average rating of a game review site.
    I belive that these numbers should be around 50% but they are around 75%

    Link [gamerankings.com]
    • I think part of the problem is that (for whatever reason) there is a perception that anything rated below 70% is not worth playing, and that 80% is the minimum of a really "good" game. The problem is that cuts out 70% of the review spectrum. Currently, a game rated at 50% is probably rather bad, when 50% should really be 'average.' By making 70% 'average' it means reviews have that much less specificity when comparing games.

      Maybe it has something to do with how tests are graded (with 70 or 80 being a 'pass
  • Think this is an awesome idea? Now developers will be forced to, I dont know, make good games. Albeit they aren't forced totally, but if more channels/networks would follow suit And enter the matrix was horrible, atari shouldnt be allowed to make games anymore.
  • However, Bruno Bonnell, CEO of Atari, makers of Enter The Matrix, which didn't include this contract clause, comments: "We sold four million copies. That's $250 million worldwide... and Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70%? Are they joking?"

    Mr. Bonnell made a game that sucked royally. He did severe damage to the brand in that if the game was decent, a sequel could be made that would do equally well. Also, the game would have sold much more than 250mil if it had gotten a good review

  • After saying: "We sold four million copies. That's $250 million worldwide... and Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70%? Are they joking?"

    Bruno went on to elaborate: "I mean, seriously, if we'd bothered to fix all the bugs, sort out the half finished textures and play tested the damn thing we couldn't have released the game until after people had seen Matrix Revolutions. Who'd buy want to buy the game after seeing that train wreck?"

    Unfortunately Bonnell was unable to continue
  • The result, insists Jason Hall, senior vp of Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, will be better games.

    Wrong, Mr. Hall. I think your result will be less games.

    I'm no professional game developer, but as far as I'm concerned I'd rather not even risk going with a liscenced product if it means I might have to shell out a rather hefty amount of money because the "reviews" say my product sucked. Hopefully, the rest of the game development community will use this as an excuse to explore some fresh idea
    • But, going back to the NES days with Nintendo and their limited licenses, less games = better games because you are less spread out.
      • That's true, but I'm sure Nintendo kept a handle on the quality of their games a little more intimately than just screening the review sites. Someone in the article even stated that the best way to determine the best games to release under your liscence is to play them. Personally I think this should be the goal strategy for any company trying to produce a game under their intellectual properties. Saying that this approach might be too expensive, take too much time, etc. just seems to be a cop-out as well a
        • Then the probelm becomes, games I enjoy may not appeal to the target audience. So I hire an expert that knows.. wait a minute thats the game reviewer and he does it at no cost to me.

          Seriously. 30% of slashdotters are over 40 and think pong was the pinnacle of game design. Soem of us are over 30 and think every thign went south after Pac man. Others are over 20 and firmly believe that everything since Final fantasy 6 nothing is nearly as good. And thos under 20 think Anything that doesn't change color more

  • I review games for an online publication, (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bmnc ( 643126 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @08:13PM (#9254472)
    and I think in some sense that publishers/developers being punished for releasing shit games is a good idea, simply because it pains me everytime I review some half-assed product that I know many consumers will be burnt by.

    Yes, this could lead to the review system being corrupted (further!!!), but I think that readers of reviews quickly learn which review sites are honest, and which ones are being bribed/corrupted, simply because their experience of a game will not match up with a corrupt (or inept) review.

    A punishment system is dearly needed to financially cripple "shit development houses", so that they are not in a position to spew force further crap into the marketplace. In a Darwinian sense, we need to select against these houses (and select for good houses).

    I would obviously prefer it if it was the norm to return games that one is unhappy with, but I understand that this is not common since retailers have concerns that consumers are copying and returning the software.

    My feverent hope is that consumers will increasingly use retailers that have something like a 1-week return policy (without the third degree, thank-you very much) and that the retailer will have a little checklist which the consumer can tick off why the game was returned (if they so choose), which will be attached to the software being returned:

    Consumers reason for game return:
    [ ] Unwanted present
    [ ] Review inaccurate: (review site/magazine)
    [ ] Not fun
    [ ] Not long enough
    [ ] Dated features
    [ ] Buggy
    [ ] Overpriced
    etc

    The sooner developers and publisers are financially hurt for releasing titles which are inadequate, the better. Power to the people!

    (BTW: I review for http://vgnz.com , feel free to slag my reviews ;) )

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