Binge & Purge: More Bang for your cash-cow bucks

[Noogle]

Binge & Purge: More Bang for your cash-cow bucks by James

PALGN Feature: License games will one day rule the world. No, not really, but they will win Game of the Year awards – one day.

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[ObsoletE]

you bring up interesting points, but where does licencing begin?

there's a plethora of AD&D based games, are these to be considered licenced games? if so, then didn't Neverwinter Night's win some GOTY awards? as well as the Baldur's Gates, Icewind Dales and Planescape Torment...

if you don't consider AD&D licenced material, then Knight's of the Old Republic should be mentioned... you mentioned the Star Wars Syndrome, well, KOTOR i'm sure must've won at least 1 GOTY award, if not, for shame... other SW games which probably won awards include the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, and Dark Forces...

i know this is probably not the point you're making, rather that developers, or rather distributers, are taking cash-making shortcuts by utilising existing materials rather than investing in writers... i dunno, i can see good and bad points to this, playing other chapters in a mythos is certainly good, as in your example of Riddick... most SW games are based on the same principle, but sadly only a percentage of them work, but then with so many SW games, this is still quite a few

the best ones (IMO) are always the ones that share the same ideals as the source material... (again with the SW examples) Dark Forces = good, SW Demolition = Bad... this doesn't always work, but if you've got that, you're halfway there...

it also helps if you like the source material... i'm a big Buffy fan, and although Chaos Bleeds wasn't great by any stretch of the imagination, i still enjoyed it... but then being written by actual Buffy writers probably helped it along...

i'm also surprised you didn't mention T3: ROTM... or was that too easy a shot?
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[Noogle]

Well, I didn't want to dabble too much with specifics and illustrating how a lot more games actually partake in the ethos of licensing was just to reverse some of the demonising license games have suffered (even though most of that they brought upon themselves).

But you're right: Star Wars, D&D, Star Trek, Buffy - all of these are at least creating an interesting grey area between original games and license titles and perhaps we should look at them first. Star Wars, for instance, tends to offer some incredibly terrible games - but once a Studio like Raven or Bioware get to combine their development experience with a set franchise which already boasts a whole backdrop, the results get interesting. I don't quite count AD&D in that, because pen-and-paper role playing still constitute being games, so the leap between the two isn't that much (if anything, digital games limit the scope of traditional RPG).

Sure, few of these games are impressive. But they are getting better and better - at some point license games and their cousins will be at a natural advantage purely because they already have the grunt work taken care of. You make the perfect point in that these games should share the ideals of the source material. After all, it's the least fans should demand.