Which, in many cases, wouldn’t have reached store shelves if it hadn’t have been for the license.
Who would have bought that piece o’ crap ET game for the 2600 if it hadn’t have been for the name ET on the box?
Here’s Costikyan’s “ludography” for the curious:
http://www.costik.com/ludograf.html
This may be true, but what the game accomplished was the first “translation” of giant monsters into strategy game terms. Without Sheboygan, I doubt Crush, Crumble and Chomp, Mail Order Monsters, or They Came From Hollywood would have arrived when they did, if at all. I think it served to expand gamers’ notions of what kinds of subject matter a strategy game could cover, and paved the way for games that emulated non-military subjects like the Alien movies, slasher flicks, haunted house stories, etc. My other favorite Costikyan boardgame is Bug Eyed Monsters, which took the same novel approach to 1950s B-movie alien invasion.
Paranoia and the original Star Wars RPG were real masterpieces of game design, IMO. Although I had a personal dislike of the mechanics used in the Star Wars rules, it was impossible to deny their elegance, ease of use, and flexibility. Paranoia was an incredibly original game and, like Idar has noted, a total bellyaching blast to play in the right company.
If you don’t like it, you might want to see what you can get for it on Ebay.
Good example, Mark. It’s one of only a few anomalies though. The temptation to just churn stuff out and cash in is huge, I think. The Treasure Planet game just happened to end up in the hands of a creative developer who cared, but how often does that happen? I wonder how well it did sell, relative to the success of the film.
[size=2]Edit: Took so long to post that Jesus beat me to the ludo-link.[/size]
Toon was also a very well crafted (and punny as hell) game considering its subject matter. For anyone not in the know, it was an RPG that let you create and control Loony Toon style cartoon characters. Hilarious with the right people. Unleash your inner-Mel Blanc.
There was a good quickie boardgame released in the pages of (I think) Dragon magazine back in the early-mid eighties where a bunch of dwarves had to fight a giant. The giant was represented by 3 counters, one for each of his feet, and one for his club. I seem to recall that the feet were like 20x the size of the dwarves. I don’t recall the name of the game, however.
A developer I know once pitched a Scooby Doo cooking game. It was awesome and would have been hilarious. To a large extent, it’s the publishers who insist on mimicry. Sometimes it makes sense (using the Buffy engine for Indiana Jones) and sometimes it’s just boring and obvious (Scooby Doo as a platformer… duh!).
Which, in many cases, wouldn’t have reached store shelves if it hadn’t have been for the license.
Who would have bought that piece o’ crap ET game for the 2600 if it hadn’t have been for the name ET on the box?
I don’t have the figures in front of me, but if I did, I have a feeling they’d show that the ratio of good games to crappy games is roughly the same whether or not those games are based on licensed propeties. In other words, the ratio of KISS: Psycho Circuses to Goldeneyes, Freedom: First Resistances to Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Sixes, and Aliens vs. Predator expansion packs to Aliens vs. Predators is about the same as Daikatanas to No One Lives Forevers. If I accept your and Costikyan’s word for it, however, I need two separate conspiracy theories to explain a single observed phenomenon: Most games are pretty crappy. According to either Occam’s Razor or the lipid-membrane hypothesis of chilling injury, you guys need to look for a simpler, more universal explanation.
Here’s another problem: My experience with non-game programming leads me to believe that a project is doomed unless there’s someone with a clear vision overseeing the work. If everyone’s asinine suggestions are given equal weight, you’re going to spend the rest of your life developing a big crappy pile of crap. So unless you’re creating a game all by yourself, somebody’s gonna have to obey you and in so doing sacrifice the precious flower of his unchecked creativity. In that case, what difference does it make whether the idea is something stupid like Scooby Doo or something stupid that squirted out of Greg Costikyan’s extended pineal gland? Either way, the pursuit of unlimited creative self-actualization has been stifled. I hate to resort to quoting Monty Python, but now we see the violence inherent in the system.
And furthermore, since The Creature Who Ate Sheboygan and Toon are thinly veiled riffs on Godzilla and Warner Brothers cartoons, how are they different from a licensed property? Other than the fact that Costikyan couldn’t be bothered to give the original creators a little financial reacharound, I mean. Games based on real licenses and games based on the fake licenses that emerge from Costikyan’s limitless imagination are both attempts to apply a rules system to existing stories and images. Inherently, they’re neither good nor bad, except in their execution.
squirted out of Greg Costikyan’s extended pineal gland
Re-Animator. Best. Disembodied Head. Cunningilus. Scene. EVAR!!11!
(EVAR [tm] 1999-2003 Fark, Inc. Used with Permission.)
–scharmers
It probably was the inspiration for Crush, Crumble, and Chomp, and from that, Sparky’s labor of love…
However, while I have a first edition copy, I haven’t played it in nearly 20 years.
Costikyan really annoys me. At least a blowhard like Romero actually was integral to a couple great games before his head exploded…
[quote=““Union Carbide””]
Stomp…
“Goldeneye”
the 100th FPS shooter clone riffing on Wolfenstein 3D/Doom
“Aliens vs. Predator”
the 101st FPS shooter clone riffing on Wolfenstein 3D/Doom
Those aren’t good examples of great games. They are FPS shooter clones dressed up with new IP and a few new weapons.
“If I accept your and Costikyan’s word for it, however, I need two separate conspiracy theories”
There is no conspiracy theory invovled, though thank you for the gratuitous implication that I’m somehow out of touch with reality. Commenting on an industry trend one doesn’t like does not equal a claim that the Illuminati are plotting to destroy gaming.
“So unless you’re creating a game all by yourself, somebody’s gonna have to obey you and in so doing sacrifice the precious flower of his unchecked creativity. In that case, what difference does it make whether the idea is something stupid like Scooby Doo or something stupid that squirted out of Greg Costikyan’s extended pineal gland?”
The difference is that I don’t think Greg Costikian’s game ideas are stupid. Your analogy only holds up for you because you dislike his games and thus apparently think working on them would be the intellectual equivalent of Scooby Doo. Nothing I can do for you there. If you can’t see the difference between working for an inspired game designer on an interesting original project and working for Joe Schmuck on Barbie’s Dream Castle: The Game, then I can’t really help you out. One involves learning from someone you respect as you work, the other involves taking orders from a stooge and waiting for the next opportunity to come along.
“And furthermore, since The Creature Who Ate Sheboygan and Toon are thinly veiled riffs on Godzilla and Warner Brothers cartoons, how are they different from a licensed property?”
Toon is based on all sorts of cartoons by various studios. If the game had been licensed from Warner Bros., it would have to be all about roleplaying stock Warner Bros. characters with set characteristics rather than roleplaying whatever cartoon characters you want to create, be they original or based on a Hanna-Barbara character, Underdog, Rocky & Bullwinkle, the Pink Panther, or dozens of other famous characters not owned by Warner Bros. Seems like a fairly large limitation to me. It would completely blunt the fun of the game if you could only choose from WB characters. When I ran some Toon campaigns my players made up their own characters instead of running unlicensed versions of Bugs Bunny et al.
"Other than the fact that Costikyan couldn’t be bothered to give the original creators a little financial reacharound, I mean.’’
Unwarranted and kinda sleazy cheap shot. As mentioned above, Toon is based on all cartoons, not just Warner Bros. Was he, as a small paper RPG developer, supposed to license the characters of Hanna-Barbara, Warner Bros., Harvey, Popeye, et al just to make a game about cartoons? Likewise, Toei does not own King Kong or any of Harryhausen’s giant monsters. The idea of giant monsters is not owned by any one company.
I’ve made Scooby Doo games.
I’ve made Tonka truck games.
I’ve made Bugs Bunny games, Fred Flintstone games, Batman games, Dexter’s Lab games, etc. etc.
Hell, I made a game based on Disney’s Doug.
There are limitations that come with that kind of design. But I found that it was also kind of liberating. You know who your characters are, you know what they do. So does the audience. In my mind that means that half your work is already done when they see the title page. If you do it right the characters are your manual. The trick is to create a game where you use those expectations as part of your design.
You’re not going to make the same choices with the Powerpuff Girls as you are with Batman, or Gundam. But I’ve made interesting games using all of those characters, and I’m proud of the work I did, and of the response that they got from the audience.
Yes, at the end of the day they’re not yours. But I never got any “interference” as long as I showed the licensors that I understood and respected how they viewed these characters.
JUNE 21, 2003! But more importantly, when’s this coming out?
“The temptation to just churn stuff out and cash in is huge, I think. The Treasure Planet game just happened to end up in the hands of a creative developer who cared, but how often does that happen? I wonder how well it did sell, relative to the success of the film.”
I think you get the churned out crap not because the publisher demands you make a crappy title, but because too many people actually making the games are as clueless as the publishers and the gamers themselves about what the market wants.
What Greg C. doesn’t understand or refuses to acknowledge is that you can be creative and innovative working with a license or on a sequel – maybe not on every attempt, but on some of them. Hell, we just witnessed the creative and innovative mess that was MOO3, the sequel to a sequel. Where were the “suits” who should have been putting the brakes on that runaway trainwreck?
What’s so horrible about working with a license? Come up with a new and innovative idea for a game, and see if you can attach a license to it. I think that’s the best bet.
But you won’t be able to play it on Xbox Live… damn.
Does it ever work that way? Seems like a rare occurrence, if it does. Usually seems to go the other way: your company purchases a license, or gets one as part of an extended licensing deal, then you have to figure out how to make something playable out of it, usually in a hurry in order to get it to market before the fad burns out or before the movie’s too far gone from theaters for anyone to care.
I agree. I like working on licensed projects equally to original ones. Another difference between the two (much as I hate to say it) is the “public” feeling of the license. Sure, you have the character police checking to make sure you’re using the license well, but it’s not a lead designer’s “precious baby.” Never underestimate the abject misery of working alongside someone who created the concept and has a huge ego.
Also, many licensed titles suck because of the time/cost factor. The title has to get out in time for the movie release or the publisher is spending a comparatively low amount of money for it. Since they usually mandate a certain number of gameplay hours, the decision of what kind of game to make usually comes down to:
“What are we sure we can do on this short schedule with a very small team that will have at least 12 hours of play time?”
That doesn’t leave much room for the next great innovative game concept. :-)
It might be worth noting that Greg Costikyan is a consultant who does game design, and, as such, must make sure that he has a reputation in the field so that he can get gigs. Although I doubt his intention was to cause a huge, slashdotted uproar, it can only help promote his career to be so talked about.
Being a consultant in this industry is scary. I was once talking to a woman who was starting a game studio, and she was looking for a good designer. I mentioned a consultant I knew that lived near her, and she said "we looked at him, and he only knows how to make ‘old games’ ".
“Goldeneye”
the 100th FPS shooter clone riffing on Wolfenstein 3D/Doom
Ok, man.
The difference is that I don’t think Greg Costikian’s game ideas are stupid. Your analogy only holds up for you because you dislike his games and thus apparently think working on them would be the intellectual equivalent of Scooby Doo. Nothing I can do for you there. If you can’t see the difference between working for an inspired game designer on an interesting original project and working for Joe Schmuck on Barbie’s Dream Castle: The Game, then I can’t really help you out. One involves learning from someone you respect as you work, the other involves taking orders from a stooge and waiting for the next opportunity to come along.
Again, you’ve used your own words to say exactly what I’m saying: the presence or absence of a license is irrelevant. The important thing is whether or not you’re working with good people on a good design. Although it may shock you to find this out, there is no objective criteria by which we can scientifically prove that Scooby Doo is any more or less stupid than the plot of Void Raider, Greg Costykan’s “game of space privateers”. Believe it or not, there are people whose imaginations are more inflamed by Barbie and her dream house than by monsters eating Sheboygan. As I said and then you said and now I’m saying again, the object is to apply a creative rule set to some essentially arbitrary theme. I’m not sure why you’re so hung up on the source of the theme.
I guess I’m going to have to agree with you there. Good point.
June.