Love them or hate them, movie licensed games are big business, but they are apparently also very hard to make. In an interview with GameObserver, Activision’s Luxoflux explains the pitfalls and success strategies of making such titles. They recently developed Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, which was above-average compared to other movie-based games, and previously made Kung Fu Panda and Shrek 2.

Joby Otero (Chief Creative Officer) and Chris Tremmel (Creative Director) of Luxoflux studio explain the process of making such games. There apparently IS some cooperation between the movie and game studios, so much that they even claim their Kung Fu Panda game influenced some parts of development of the actual movie.

With regards to Revenge of the Fallen, Luxoflux explains that Breakaway, the Autobot sniper in the game, “was originally designed for the film” but was dropped from the movie. They also claim that Hasbro is one of the best partners to work with when making movie games. Furthermore, they take the time to comment on Ubisoft’s “Media Convergence” strategy, which promises to produce unparalleled film licensed games.

One thing we’ve found with movie games is the importance of interfacing with the film team to uncover some of the more memorable aspects of the movie. Usually it comes down to 4 or 5 big scenes. Once we know those, we structure our game to synchronize with the movie at those points, but we plan a story and gameplay that expands to show things that may not be in the movie. If you were doing a non-movie game, you might still plan the player experience around 4 or 5 big turning points, but you might not structure development the same way. For a film game, you’re not likely to see what those 4 or 5 moments will look like until at least ½-way through the film’s development. So you wouldn’t start building the corresponding levels until ½-way through the game’s development. This approach has interesting side-effects. For example, on Kung Fu Panda, the film team knew what would be the biggest action scenes early on, but they hadn’t yet planned the details. Early in their development, they focus on the emotional scenes. Meanwhile, we focused on action -- figuring out fighting moves and other core mechanics. Since much of that was done by the time the film team started detailing their action scenes we could see how it had influenced them to a degree.

psxmeup via gameobserver.com »