Licence to Kill?: The highs and lows of making licensed video games

Making video games from licensed properties is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you have a ready-made fan base just waiting to snap up the product you create. On the other, you have a ready-made fan base just waiting for you to mess it up. For many years, it was almost a cliché that licensed games would most likely be terrible, particularly those based directly on movies (GoldenEye excluded). Only licensed sports games previously seemed immune from the fate, but now a number of studios have starting bucking this miserable trend, primarily by taking inspiration from what makes the licensed properties great, and then creating games that, at the very least, do not suck, and sometimes are truly magnificent. Digital Spy decided to investigate this new licence to kill.

Rocksteady Studio's Batman: Arkham Asylum is often feted as the video game to have so expertly avoided the cavernous licensed game trap. It would be fair to say that expectations were pretty much zero ahead of the game's release in 2009, published by Eidos. After all, Christopher Nolan's re-energising of the Batman film series with Batman Begins had been accompanied by a limp game tie-in (made by Eurocom and published by EA), while movie follow-up The Dark Knight, did not even get a licensed game. It seemed that a Batman renaissance was destined to remain on the silver screen, but then British developer Rocksteady surprised everyone with a truly fresh take on the Batman universe.

Just as Nolan did so successfully with his films, the studio stayed true to the folklore of the Batman character unfurled over the history of the DC Comics series, but then created a story, narrative and atmosphere that was designed specifically for the video game medium. Arkham Asylum, which was followed this year by the equally magnificent Arkham City, excelled by using the licence in a totally different way, but also making you genuinely feel like you were playing the Dark Knight, fighting a galaxy of supervillains.

Unpicking how Rocksteady so succeeded with the Batman licence would take more space than we have here, but it's no coincidence that Arkham Asylum writer Paul Dini made a name for himself in comics before shifting to gaming. Rocksteady marketing manager Dax Ginn said that the team worked extremely closely with DC Comics, the publisher which introduced the Bob Kane-created Batman in May 1939, meaning authenticity was only a phone call away.

"We didn't have many question marks as the people who make the final decisions and know Batman inside out are just a telephone call away," he told us in October.

"They give us all the support and all the knowledge that they have, so all we have to do is focus on making a great game. When we get to the point where we say, 'Would Penguin do that? Or would Riddler say that?' we just ask them, and they say, 'Well, in episode blah blah blah, that happened, so there you are'."

Mostly, though, Ginn feels that Rocksteady was able to make the most of the Batman licence by taking the prospect seriously. All too often, particularly with superhero games, developers underestimate just how much harder they have to work to make a great game. Studios sometimes get handed a licence by a publisher, and then misinterpret the nuances of the property and its ravenous fanbase, leading to a game that may sell because of its name, but pleases no-one.

"I don't know how other developers operate, but other developers working on superhero titles may view those titles as more of a kids' property or a family property, which means that they don't take it seriously. I am just theorising here, but it's not the feeling that is within Rocksteady," he said.

"We saw this as a really golden opportunity to make an incredible game and Batman is an amazing character. There is not a lot of laughing that goes on at Rocksteady, we are just really hard-working people and we take our jobs really seriously. I have never been on set at Nolan's films, but I imagine it's a similar feeling."

Spider-Man is another superhero property to see some positive video games treatment of late. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and the recently-released Spider-Man Edge of Time rejigged the licence in innovative ways, particularly the former game, which introduced four different Spider-Man universes each with their own unique atmosphere and gameplay. Neither game hit the heights of Rocksteady's Batman, but they certainly showed an impressive and fitting use of the illustrious licence. Dennis Barnardo, the associate producer at Activision who worked on both games, agrees with Ginn that authenticity is the key with licensed games.

"When you do a licensed game, you have to start with the character and start with the universe and make sure it's authentic, and not focus so much on making it cool. You know, as weird as it is to say, that's almost secondary," said Barnardo, who joined Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment in September.

"In a Spider-Man game, you have to make sure that he moves and talks and really feels like Spider-Man. Whenever you're doing another property, it's the same thing.

"You've got to start with that character, start with that universe, and make sure people believe that you're in that universe, then just build the game and story around that. I think with the movies increasing in popularity, games increasing in popularity, it's becoming increasingly important to make sure those licensed games really are fun and true to those gamers."

Superheroes are not the only licensed properties seeing positive signs in video games adaptations. Travellers Tales has done a magnificent job with taking big properties, such as Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter, and transposing them onto the Lego universe. The Lego Video Games matched great gameplay with a sense of humour that made familiar properties feel fresh and interesting for their younger target audience.

This autumn, Ubisoft released a companion game to Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's Tintin movie. Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn was by no means a classic, but the game at least partly recreated the buccaneering exploration spirit of Hergé's incredible character, albeit in a very linear manner. Developer Ubisoft Montpelier gorged on all 24 Tintin books and closely observed the unique elements of the universe for the game, as well as working closely with movie legends Spielberg and Jackson. But Drew Quakenbush, senior producer of the game, believes that passion for the licence was what made the difference.

"We have been really mindful of the Tintin legacy and the Tintin universe. Fortunately, I have got a team of rabid Tintin fans. They know the comics inside and out. They have grown up with Tintin in their blood," he told us in September.

"I have seen [Jackson and Spielberg] every three months, probably, for the past two years. It surprised us, to be honest. They are interested in this game, and they are interested in games, period. These guys are not just brilliant filmmakers, these guys play games; they seriously play games.

"The advantage to us is that they understand how to make games and the challenges we face, which are unique compared to filmmaking. They understand that with the film, the experience wraps around the story, but with the game the story wraps around the experience."

Quakenbush said that approaching the Tintin licence from a video games perspective meant not "just shoehorning gameplay into the story of the movie", but also the challenge of always staying conscious of the values of Tintin.

"The way to go about it is to be respectful of the values of who Tintin is. Tintin sometimes uses a rifle, but what is he going to do with it? Is he going to shoot someone between the eyes? No, he is going to do something clever like shoot the sand to spray it in the enemy's eyes. That's the approach we took with this game," he said.

"We don't want to create a Tintin first-person shooter. Tintin is a clever kid and he uses things in [an] environment, and he does it with humour and he does it with style."

Released last summer, Transformers: War for Cybertron was widely viewed as a positive new step for the Transformers video game franchise, which had struggled over the years to say the least. Again, the game succeeded by focusing more on innovation than adaptation, as High Moon Studios avoided Michael Bay's hugely popular yet rather vacuous films and instead created a unique story set on the planet of Cybertron involving a civil war between the Autobots and the Decepticons.

Game director Sean Miller urged publishers like Activision, who hoover up big licences such as Transformers, to make sure that they find a studio with the "passion" for the project.

"I think that finding studios that have a passion for the licence is an important thing. Like our studio is filled with Transformers fans," said Miller.

"I can't speak of other licensed products, I just know what has helped us with this particular licence, which is that we love the back story and we love all those characters.

"So when we treat it, we treat it and we're making the game that we would want to play about our characters. I think that's an important element, because in a creative field like this, when you can marry someone's creativity with something they have a passion for, you're always going to get something that's better than it ever could have been."

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