Sega’s VP of Marketing of Sega of America Scott Steinberg has said that movie-license games are set to get better, in a recent interview with Next Generation. “As publishers and the different movie studios are recognizing how important videogames are to the marketing of a film to the [target] demographic, movie studios realize that they can’t trivialize the interactive space" he said. "And you know, in 1991 or ’92 the [movie] studios saw videogames as sort of chump change. They’d bounce perhaps a property six months before a game, basically when the movie was in the can, and publishers tried to crank it out with using an existing engine, threw a couple of artists on it, and shipped a 16-bit game." However, Steinberg says that things have changed: "the whole industry, both industries, have coupled together and have evolved or advanced their craft to a point where both are taken extremely seriously and that just wasn’t the case two years ago.”

Gamers normally react with an understandable cynicism for movie tie-in games. They're often a temptation for publishers as the film works to help sell the game. Movie tie-ins are a lucrative proposition. They're not without potential though. The most consistent weak point I find in the games I play is plot. A decent story can really help you to overlook a lot of flaws in a game. I think Metal Gear Solid 2 is a good example of this: the boss fights really aren’t that great and the gameplay is quite simplistic. But the characterisation is pretty good, the cutscenes amazing, and before you know it you’re dragged into the game. If games take inspiration from movies and are given enough time to re-apply these inspirations in imaginative ways, then there’s no reason that the next great batch of games could be movie franchises. Thanks to CVG for the lead on this story.

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