Licensed Video Games

We all know that games based off of movies or other licensed material is typically not worth playing, but why in particular does this happen so often? One such game that our text book goes into detail over are the games from the Harry Potter franchise. It goes into many different ways that the games attempt to expand on an existing universe and by all accounts, I would be willing to give the makers of the games that. However, this does not necessarily make it a good game unto itself and therein lies one of the major problems that cause most games based off of licensed material to fail to garner a larger audience outside of devoted fans of the franchise: the lack of freedom that game developers are given when attempting to create a game that has to constrain itself to preexisting standards that could be from another medium.

There are precious few licensed games that do well. Many of the games in the Star Wars Universe such as Force Unleashed or Knights of the Old Republic have been critically acclaimed and sold very well, while other licensed games from franchises like Harry Potter might have sold profitably, but are not considered by most as good games. Because many of the games in the Star Wars universe take place outside of the scope of the original movies, the developers of the games are given a larger amount of freedom to create their own vision than games like Harry Potter which are constrained to the events that occurred in the novels and movies. Force Unleashed and Knights of the Old Republic build their own stories while still expanding the existing Star Wars universe; the Harry Potter games simply offer the player a new way to experience events that they probably have already witnessed in another medium.

While I do admit that licensed games as they are today are an easy way for game companies to turn a buck (due to low development costs due to a fewer number of designers needed for the game), I feel that licensed games that allowed the developers to explore and expand the existing canon would do better in both quality and profit. A licensed game may attract fans of the existing franchise, but a good game based on a license will attract both the fans of the franchise and regular gamers as well.