VIDEO Dark Times for Star Wars gaming...

I read a really interesting article a while ago about the decline of video game adaptations tied into movie releases.

The general gist of it was that as video games have evolved the production cycles for them have gotten longer and budgets have inflated massively. A modern AAA title can take just as much time and money to make, than a summer blockbuster now, if not more so. On top of that they've become much more widely adopted than they were ten years ago, with audiences having much higher expectations of what a video game can deliver. It's also harder to trick a parent into buying a video game for their child based off of brand appeal alone because more and more parents now have grown up playing video games. They know the score.

Because of that developers are more likely to make a game that shares the same universe without directly tying into the movie, if they're interested in making a tie-in at all.

Let's use Battlefront as an example to elaborate my point. We all know that the game was rushed out of the door to meet deadlines and launch alongside TFA, and that stunted development time clearly shows. However a direct tie-in to The Force Awakens would have had even less dev time, as the whole development team would have had to wait for story details before deciding on what kind of game mechanics would gel with the movie's plot the best, art teams would have to wait for the final approved designs before starting to build the in game assets and casting would have had to be completed before they could hire the actors and/or soundalikes to record the dialogue. This would have crushed development time into something a fraction of what Battlefront had.

These kinds of problems are why movie-based games have always had such a toxic reputation, even in the days of the SNES when games were built by a couple of people in a shed deadlines were extremely restrictive and had a negative impact on the final product. For a major video game developer, with hundreds of employees working on their products, that's just not feasible for them any more. Neither is it profitable.

It's for this same reason that almost all of the movie tie-ins that get made these days are made for mobile phones, where development teams are far smaller and production time is much quicker.

 

I love the new Battlefront; the Hutt Contracts are so compelling and it's all so slick. However, the game was way too bare and shallow at launch. It's taken the free DLC and the additions in the Season Pass to bring it up to standard, which is a pity.

I wonder if EA will promote the Rogue One content heavily come December, since that will likely be the closest they get to a video game tie-in.

 

The jury's still out for me. In my opinion we're extremely lucky that a publisher with the resources of EA has taken on the franchise. We've got big name developers making big AAA releases, and apart from Battlefront (which was still a reasonable game) none of them have been rushed out for a bit of quick cash. We've got Visceral, Respawn and Motive confirmed to be making games.

I think with the talent of these developers (including Amy Hennig of Uncharted writing for Visceral) and the resources of EA this could be a new golden age.

All we need is for Bioware to get in on the act. Please?

 

People discredit mobile gaming too much.

Rebels:Recon Missions is a lot of fun, as is Uprising. And both are way better than any gutter trash level late 90s games

 

Galaxy of Heroes, Force Collection, and Commander as well. Got those and the ones you listed on my iPad, although I uninstalled Uprising since it runs like crap on my iPad 2, and will pick it back up when I get a new IPad later this year.

 

With a company like EA controlling SW gaming, you will continue to see mediocrity until the license runs out. EA has no incentive to put anything but a bare minimum title out there for whatever concept they are given. They KNOW it will sell because it's Star Wars. The need to have the game actually be well made is not as high as for other IPs. There is also a point at which X dollars worth of investment will get the maximium profit for the shareholders. After that point, while more dollars worth of investment will make a better game, the profit will not be as high so why do it.

 

Yeah, I remember being excited as a kid whenever a new Star Wars game was announced and I'm interested in seeing what they could do with today's technology, but now that EA owns the license, I don't see how it can get any good.