Warner Bros. to peg license royalties to game reviews

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-05-26 07:43pm

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/05/26 ... 99292.html

Warner Bros. to peg license royalties to game reviews

The Matrix makers will demand higher payments from publishers who produce poorly reviewed games based on their properties.

While game reviews often have an effect on a publisher's bottom line, that effect has never been quantifiable. However, now, Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment has begun directly tying royalty payments from licensees to ratings from game-review sites.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter last week, WBIE senior vice president Jason Hall revealed that his company is now using review-aggregation sites such as GameRankings.com to determine royalty rates from publishers licensing properties based on Warner Bros. movie, television, or other media. If the game does not achieve an average 70-percent rating, the publisher will have to pay a penalty in the form of higher royalties.

"An escalating royalty rate kicks in to help compensate us for the brand damage that's taking place," Hall told the Reporter. "The further away from 70 percent it gets, the more expensive the royalty rate becomes. So, frankly, if the publisher delivers on what they promised--to produce a great game--it's not even an issue."

However, Warner Bros.' pricing scheme would have been a huge issue with Enter the Matrix, the best-selling game of 2003 based on a Warner Bros. title. Buoyed by prerelease enthusiasm for The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, the cross-platform Enter the Matrix sold four million copies worldwide.

But those good sales were in spite of the game getting middling ratings: On GameRankings.com, the PC and PS2 editions have an average score of 66.8 and 66.9 percent, while the GameCube and Xbox versions earned 70.6 percent and 71.5 percent. Combined, all four rankings leave an average of 68.95 percent--just short of Warner Bros.' benchmark.

Unsurprisingly, Warner's concrete benchmark is not sitting well with Bruno Bonnell, CEO and president of Atari. "[Enter the Matrix] sold $250 million worldwide," he told the Reporter, "That's what a big major motion picture makes. And Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70 percent? Are they joking?"

However, Hall is adamant in his belief that WBIE's new system will help ensure quality licensed games--like Electronic Arts' The Lord of the Rings and James Bond-based titles--and prevent misfires such as Ubisoft's Charlie's Angels.

"The game industry has had its time to exploit movie studios all day long and to get away with producing inferior products," said Hall. "But, with Warner Brothers, no more...the bad games are over."

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2004-05-26 07:49pm

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3

Gabe and Tycho hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head once more.

Macross · Post by **Macross** » 2004-05-26 09:42pm

Wait a minute? So they are essentially going to penalize magazine reviews because they make a crappy game?

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2004-05-26 09:56pm

Macross wrote:Wait a minute? So they are essentially going to penalize magazine reviews because they make a crappy game?

No. It's worded oddly, but reading the article clarifies. If a game publisher produces a bad game based off of a Warner Bros. license (such as Enter the Matrix, based off of the Matrix trilogy), then that publisher will have to pay higher royalties to Warner Bros. as a result of the damage they are doing to the license.

Basically, if a company produces a crappy game, that company has to pay more money. If they produce a good game, then it's all good. It's an incentive for designers to do a better job in creating a game, since there is now more on the line. Everybody wins. Except the producers of crappy Warner Bros-licenced games...

Temjin · Post by **Temjin** » 2004-05-26 10:34pm

This sounds good to me. Too often have we gotten crappy games based on good movies.

Vohu Manah · Post by **Vohu Manah** » 2004-05-26 11:28pm

Sounds good to me also. Too many crappy games end up on the market these days. I don't buy them obviously, but I wish they wouldn't take up the space on store shelves if it could be helped.

Macross · Post by **Macross** » 2004-05-26 11:33pm

Mad wrote:
Macross wrote:Wait a minute? So they are essentially going to penalize magazine reviews because they make a crappy game?
No. It's worded oddly, but reading the article clarifies. If a game publisher produces a bad game based off of a Warner Bros. license (such as Enter the Matrix, based off of the Matrix trilogy), then that publisher will have to pay higher royalties to Warner Bros. as a result of the damage they are doing to the license.

Basically, if a company produces a crappy game, that company has to pay more money. If they produce a good game, then it's all good. It's an incentive for designers to do a better job in creating a game, since there is now more on the line. Everybody wins. Except the producers of crappy Warner Bros-licenced games...

Thanks for clearing that up.

Sounds like a good idea.

Bugsby · Post by **Bugsby** » 2004-05-26 11:58pm

This is terrible! In the end, this will result in better games! I have come to rely on a system of hundreds of mediocre games with a few good ones on top. If I had a reason to play every game, I would quickly run out of time and money. I, for one, will not stand for this travesty. Bring shitty games back!

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2004-05-27 01:10am

Thirdfain wrote:http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3

Gabe and Tycho hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head once more.

I'm curious as to why the pedophile is wearing a Chick shirt.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2004-05-27 01:57am

Hah, this is like the reverse of when Activision threw a fit over Paramount's bungling of the Star Trek franchise.

Phil Skayhan · Post by **Phil Skayhan** » 2004-05-27 02:50am

Perhaps the gaming industry should do the same. Imagine the royalty rate Origin would have wound up getting from the film maker of Wing Commander.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2004-05-27 06:14am

Phil Skayhan wrote:Perhaps the gaming industry should do the same. Imagine the royalty rate Origin would have wound up getting from the film maker of Wing Commander.

Or nintendo from Super Mario brothers or Activision (or Midway?) from Mortal Kombat: Anihalation.

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2004-05-27 05:05pm

And another potential effect comes to mind. If this gets developers nervous to make movie-lisenced games then gosh gee frappin willickers, Batman, devs might have to try creating their own intellectual property for once instead of rehashing someone else's. Starflight, X-COM, Master of Orion, Alien Legacy, Total Annihilation, Starcraft...come on, these are all great games in one respect or a nother, and rather conspicuously none of them are movie lisences.

Observe the hordes of mediocre-to-poor Star Wars games, Van Helsing, another shooter with the name plastered onto it, whee. Here's a good challenge, actually, start naming movie lisence games that had original ideas and worthwhile gameplay?

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2004-05-27 05:26pm

I'm curious as to why the pedophile is wearing a Chick shirt.

Because people that read Chick tracts are closet child rapists, duh!

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2004-05-27 05:58pm

It could be some moneymaking scheme. Developers make a game, they pay off a bunch of people to give the game a really bad score, and watch as the royalties flow in, regardless of how good the games are.

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2004-05-27 06:31pm

And if it is, all the better. Software developers will be even /more/ frightened of touching the movie industry, and the gaming industry profits from that in /quality/.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-05-27 06:42pm

Now if only MGM/UA would do this against EA for their Bond titles then EA might just try and beat Rare for once.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2004-05-27 09:37pm

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi wrote:It could be some moneymaking scheme. Developers make a game, they pay off a bunch of people to give the game a really bad score, and watch as the royalties flow in, regardless of how good the games are.

That makes no sense. Developers would be HURT by the bad reviews, as their royalty money would head back to WB. It wouldn't make sense for WB to sabatoge the developers responsible for the good games, since if the developers don't get paid well, they're not going to make new games.

The potential abuse comes from developers bribing reviewers to artificially jack up reviews, no matter how bad the game is, thus fucking over WB and gamers. Of course, the defense against this is that anyone accepting such bribes will be fucked in the eyes of the consumers who bought shitty games after reading a glowing review.

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2004-05-27 10:29pm

Besides, it's not like most reviewers have to be bribed to write good reviews of shitty games. They do it well enough on their own.

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2004-05-28 11:55am

The policy has a fatal flaw in that reviews are subjective, and are based on one persons policy (do they play the full game before writing, as they should), and on the magazines scoring system.

Different reviewers have different scorins systems. Some mags I've seen give out 80%+ to any game they find to be "good". My prefered system is where 50% is taken as "average", 70% as "good", and anything over 80% is brilliant. Over 90% is almost never given out.

It won't fly.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2004-05-28 12:25pm

Unsurprisingly, Warner's concrete benchmark is not sitting well with Bruno Bonnell, CEO and president of Atari. "[Enter the Matrix] sold $250 million worldwide," he told the Reporter, "That's what a big major motion picture makes. And Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70 percent? Are they joking?"

Makes sense to me. The sales from the game were massively due to brand name publicity, and let's cut the crap, the game was a majorly bugged Piece of Shit and the millions of fans who bought it got completely ripped off.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2004-05-28 12:29pm

Sharp-kun wrote:The policy has a fatal flaw in that reviews are subjective, and are based on one persons policy (do they play the full game before writing, as they should), and on the magazines scoring system.

Different reviewers have different scorins systems. Some mags I've seen give out 80%+ to any game they find to be "good". My prefered system is where 50% is taken as "average", 70% as "good", and anything over 80% is brilliant. Over 90% is almost never given out.

It won't fly.

Lots of major reviewers however like to put a 80% for awful-100% for excellent scale.

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2004-05-28 01:03pm

Game Makers: Give our crappy games a good review or you're gonna pay

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2004-05-28 02:45pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Now if only MGM/UA would do this against EA for their Bond titles then EA might just try and beat Rare for once.

I've heard the last one wasn't bad at all.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2004-05-28 04:30pm

Everything or Nothing is pretty fun, you get a lot of gadgets and different gameplay styles reasonably cool co-op multiplayer as well.

Hopefully Goldeneye: Rogue Agent will be fun. (It apparently rates you on how much of a bastard you are)

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Warner Bros. to peg license royalties to game reviews

Warner Bros. to peg license royalties to game reviews

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