Licensed Games: Getting the "Feel" Right

We’ve been making licensed games based on traditional mediums (i.e. film, television, comics, etc.) for decades now, yet there still seems to be difficulty in translating those works into an interactive medium. Working on an existing franchise is something many developers prefer not to do, as the restrictions that they come with often create too many roadblocks when trying to design the game. Others enjoy it because of the big advantage that working on existing franchise grants them, people will buy the game even if it isn’t any good.

 
The quality bar for these games is often pretty low, so it’s not surprising when they end up receiving mediocre review scores. This is sometimes the result of not having enough production resources to polish the title, but I’d guess that a lot of the mediocrity has more to do with not properly translating the action in the story into a fun interactive experience. One popular method of designing a licensed game is to examine which actions in the story correspond to popular video game genres and then to pick one of them to define the central gameplay.
 
Using the Star Wars movies as an example, notable actions in them include shooting, dueling, and aerial dogfighting; I’ve seen numerous Star Wars games that were based around each of these actions. In addition to those conflicts however, protagonists also struggle with maintaining peace by manipulating the Senate, fight temptation to break the Jedi code, and attempt to train obstinate Padawans; these particular elements may find their way in a game’s story occasionally, but seldom do they define the gameplay.
 
These kinds of conflicts--while not particularly prevalent in video games--play an important role in defining the license. Putting these conflicts in a game’s story can seem sufficient in generating an experience similar to the source, but turning it into actual gameplay is the best way to utilize an interactive medium to achieve that goal. These conflicts do not involve violence or fast-paced action, so attempting to turn them into fun experiences can appear to be not worth the effort. This one-sided approach to gameplay is very apparent in superhero games.
 
Superhero games almost always fall into the action category with each of them containing very few if any distinguishing elements; when looking at trailers for these games I can almost always expect to see the hero button-mashing his way through hordes of foes, and he’ll probably also get into some boss fights that require QTEs, because QTEs make everything better (I’ll probably go into more detail on that sarcastic remark in another post). Superheroes have over several decades devised countless strategies for dealing with their enemies, yet in games they can get away with repeatedly running into dangerous ambushes head-first.
 
This has even been the case for someone like Batman, who often relies on his wit more than his strength to overcome obstacles. This particular hero does more than just rush into large groups of enemies, he also analyzes crime scenes to track down foes and utilizes his gadgets as well as the environment around him to successfully apprehend criminals. To make a game that gives the player the unique feeling of being Batman, developers would have to implement both a detective mechanic that requires players to analyze environments and crime scenes, as well as a system where the player must use their surroundings and their gadgets to take down criminals; this of course brings us to the games Arkham Asylum and Arkham City
 
Looking at the reviews for both of these games, a popular sentiment that keeps being brought up is that the game lets the player “feel like Batman”. The games also benefitted from a great story, score, and combat system, but getting the right “feel” is what truly made it stand out. Adding in extra mechanics made the experience feel unique, so players will favor it knowing that they will be playing something that gives a vastly different experience than every other superhero game that only aspires to be a good action game. Arkham City does not “feel” like an action game, it “feels” like a Batman game.

                 

Arkham Asylum Reviews