This week, the video game industry got another infusion of boomer energy with the announcement of a new Indiana Jones game. Meanwhile, there is also a James Bond game in the makingand Ubisoft announced that it is working towards an open world Star Wars game—The first in a potential flood of new games taking place far, far in the galaxy once EA’s exclusive deal with Lucasfilm expires in 2023. Major publishers hoping Hollywood delivers their next blockbuster hit could be smart business or just another fad. In either case, it feels like an ominous sign of creative surrender just months into the next console cycle.
While Hollywood is rushing to it rights to video game filmsthe gaming industry now seems poised to lean more and more into Hollywood’s established blockbuster franchises. These are not the market synergies I was looking for. Both mediums (and their respective business leaders) have a lot to learn from and contribute to each other, but spending years and hundreds of millions swapping the same old (mostly white) stories is a bit worthless. Hollywood is already growing full by eating its own tail and creating endless sequels and reboots –Independence Day: Resurgence, Jurassic World, Ghostbusters. S.The crossover to gaming feels even more tiring.
“Some great studios do licensed games,” said Geoff Keighley, host of Game Awards wrote on Twitter yesterday. “What is your dream studio / franchise collaboration that you hope to see someday?”
Your favorite developer’s fantasy creating a game in your favorite genre from your favorite piece of existing fiction, as if Square Enix were creating an open-world RPG based on Frank Herbert’s Dune, is nothing new. Those fantasies are becoming more and more a reality as the cost of making balloons for big budget games leaves the public domainshers to seek safer bets. The success of Dark Knight movies led to the Arkham trilogy, followed more recently by Insomniac’s Spider Man and Miles Morales and even Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers: the popular studio behind the Tomb Raider reboot and work on a beat ’em up based on everyone’s favorite Marvel characters.
G / O Media can receive a commission
This is not a bad thing, nor is it a guaranteed success, as shown by Square Enix’s disappointment about it Avengers. Some great games have emerged from this pitching process, but it can also be a recipe for heat imagination. Hitman creator IO Interactive moves from its unique Agent 47 to the attempt to win the James Bond license. Wolfenstein developer Machine Games will revive Nazi puncher and colonialist theif Indiana Jones. Meanwhile, it has been decades since those stories felt creatively fresh and relevant.
Disney is pulling Lucasfilm’s video game legacy out of the Sarlacc pit with Lucasfilm Games, a sign that the mega-media company is likely to want to flood the market with newly licensed games in the same way as with movies and TV shows. All of this is of course based on the existing canon, and everything is owned by a company with a net worth in excess of most countries’ GDP.
EA got a lot of shit for its 10-year deal to be the exclusive publisher on it Star Wars only games to release, until 2019, a total of three. Now it looks like the monkey’s paw wish has been granted, and we’re about to get a lot more.
“We want to partner with the best teams who can make great games on all of our IP,” Douglas Reilly, VP at Lucasfilm Games, announced yesterday. In particular, Reilly said he expects games “across a wide variety of platforms, genres and experiences,” with many “professionals” at Lucasfilm Games to ensure developers shape the creative vision of the customizations. In other words, an open world Ubisoft game is just the beginning. For comparison, during last December’s investor Call Disney announced nearly a dozen new Star Wars movies and TV.
And of course there are also all kinds of things Star Wars games EA is working on. A spokesperson for EA said Kotaku yesterday that the terms of its exclusivity agreement with Lucasfilm have not changed and will remain in effect until 2023. According to a source aware of the deal, only EA can publish Star Wars games before 2023, after which the collaboration with Lucasfilm will continue, but will no longer be exclusive. This means that of Ubisoft Star Wars The game will be released in the later part of 2023 at the earliest.
S.Some of these games might be great. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in 2019 and 2020 Star Wars: Squadrons were a lot of fun, but I don’t know we need a dozen more games on a big budget to play in that space. I would just as much like Respawn or EA Motive to make something original, Ubisoft too. Despite the eye-roll-inducing name, Phenyx: Immortals Rising was pretty cool, even if it was awesome from previous Ubisoft games and Nintendos Breath of the wilderness.
It’s easy to imagine how studios can mix and match game genres and mechanics with already established and beloved fictional worlds. It is much more difficult to conceptualize all the ideas and projects that will not see the light of day because of that media consolidation.
“None”, former Naughty Dog developer and The Last of Us director Bruce Straley wrote with a friendly wink in response to Keighley’s thought experiment. “We need all that talent and money focused on creating new content, new IP and innovation in the AAA space Geoff.”
Blockbuster game publishing has never been a bastion of risk-taking and creativity, but it could age even further if further monopolized by the existing entertainment monoculture. So no, I wouldn’t like to see BioWare make another one Star Wars RPG, and I’m far from thrilled at the prospect of Machine Games trying to confuse themselves in an effort to rehabilitate tomb raider Indiana Jones into something less culturally revolting. As always, it would be great if video games are trying to make something new. Where else will Hollywood’s future blockbusters after all Comes from?