The Movie Tie-in Game Done Right

Screenshot courtesy Brandon Smith (Mordie the Felifox)

In the world of video games, there are few products more universally maligned than the movie tie-in title. Games tied to Hollywood blockbusters are typified as being shallow and rushed, with little value as stand-alone products. Sadly, in many cases this hate is well warranted: often movie tie-ins, or games designed as product placement in general, are build on slimmer budgets and much more stringent guidelines than standalone releases face. Games of these types are not typically seen as art or entertainment with their own merit, but rather as advertisement platforms for the product they are tied to, and therefore are often deemed expendable.

Keep that word expendable in mind: it will be important later on.

There are exceptions, of course. Goldeneye, the legendary FPS for the N64, is often cited as the best example available for a movie tie-in handled well. Unfortunately, Goldeneye is successful specifically because it fails to follow the typical movie tie-in path; being released several years after the eponymous movie meant the game had plenty of development time for concept, presentation, and gameplay. On top of that, the game's lack of drive as a marketing tool opened the developers up to being able to incorporate elements of the James Bond universe as they saw fit rather than being constrained by the film itself, allowing them much more freedom to express what they wanted in the game rather than what any marketing department wished for. Likewise, many of the other games that are usually used as examples of positive movie tie-ins -- Alien Versus Predator, many of the Lego games, or even titles like Telltale's Back to the Future adventure games -- serve more as the exceptions that prove the rule than as truly great tie-ins: they are developed outside the typical effective marketing times for their respective franchises, and with much more developer freedom than the typical tie-in receives because of that.

With so much going against them, can a movie tie-in really be done right?

Yes, yes it can, and for proof of that fact you need look no further than The Expendabros on Steam.

At first glance The Expendabros looks as though it has very little going for it. For one thing, the game is completely free: that's right, free. For another, rather than being a scene for scene retelling of the movie, The Expendabros, which is intended as an advertisement for The Expendables 3, chooses to embrace its game nature and do its own thing, referencing characters and concepts from the film rather than trying to represent the movie's contents in a more dedicated manner. Lastly, the game is done quite clearly on the cheap: rather than being a brand-new game The Expendabros is instead presented as more of a modified version of Free Lives and Devolver Digital's creative shooter Broforce, with a handful of sprites and cutscenes being the only things that distinguish the product as its own thing.

All of these elements sound like negatives at first, but in truth, it is in these elements that the game finds its greatest strengths as a marketing tool, and as a game.

Let's start by discussing the price tag. Perhaps one of the greatest atrocities many licensed games commit is not their rushed production times or general lack of creativity in design, but rather in how much they expect players to pay. If a product is, in essence, intended for promotion of another product the company expects to make the real money off of, then it stands to reason to offer the promotional product at a discounted rate. Despite this, licensed games are often on an even keel price-wise with AAA console releases, making the flaws they often exhibit -- which many would overlook more easily in a more modestly-priced product -- that much more of an issue.

This pricing issue is not a problem for Expendabros. By being free, the game offers even the most lackadaisical viewer a hard to ignore opportunity to experience a small part of the Expendables franchise. This makes it an ideal marketing tool for the movies, and even for Free Lives' game Broforce, which Expendabros is based on. By offering the tie-in for free, players have little reason to be disappointed or turned off by the product's content based on financial input, and are therefore more likely to view its fun elements in a positive way, reflecting on the franchise as a whole.

Now we'll move on to the game's deviation from the movie's core. Often times licensed games rely on following a movie's storyline as closely as possible in order to appeal to the movie's target audience as much as they can. This is meant to serve to reinforce both the impetus to watch the movie if you've played the game and the drive to convince moviegoers to delve into the game if they like the movie, since they are typically two different ways to experience the same overall story.

Unfortunately, doing this doesn't really work for games, primarily due to the difference in narrative devices needed to properly carry a game story as opposed to a film. Games based on film or TV franchises too often stick players on a set path with little room to deviate from it; rather than embracing the idea that the story is being told as a game, instead it wants you to watch a CGI rendered version of the movie with occasional inputs into actions that have little impact on the actual events at play.

Expendabros manages to avoid these pitfalls by placing its emphasis less on trying to duplicate the film and more on trying to emulate the attitudes of the source material. By emphasizing the idea of being a game about the Expendables rather than a direct tie-in to the movie, the game frees itself to have fun with its contents in a way most licensed games don't or aren't allowed to.

Part of the reason this works is due to the game's existence as more of a mod or total conversion than a fully original title on its own.

I know, I know; I hear people complaining now that if the game doesn't do its own thing then it lacks artistic merit and value. Here is where the core concepts behind a licensed game will differ from the goals of the typical game, however, and that is that the goal with a licensed game is not for the game to stand out on its own at all, but to serve as effective promotional material for the franchise it is based on. What this means is that, when it comes to licensed games, by focusing on using an appropriate system that is already in place, developers can more effectively advertise the product they are supporting.

Notice I said appropriate system.

What makes Expendabros stand out from many other licensed titles is that the genre the game embraces fits its license perfectly. The Expendables franchise is intended to be the distillation of every cheesy action movie ever, so by choosing Broforce's explosion-filled bullet-hell gameplay to represent its game-world presence Lion's Gate chose amazingly well. By choosing a genre that represents the game equivalent of what The Expendables represent in film, the game has a much higher chance of not only appealing to gamers on a purely game-based level, but also targeting the portion of the gaming market that is most likely to be interested in the movie itself. This is a key element many licensed games miss, and why we have a tendency to see generic adventure and platform titles released for most franchises: these are often the simplest concepts to work into the narrative of the film's story, but will often times not truly fit with the type of game the target audience for the film would enjoy.

So, in The Expendabros we have a game that A) is marketed at a price point that will appeal to gamers and non-gamers without setting any kind of expectations regarding content or quality, making it an effective marketing tool for the film franchise, B) lets itself deviate from the film's core story, allowing both the game and the film to operate as separate entities with their own elements while still sharing many elements, and C) embraces a genre that works to represent the same core ideals and philosophies as the film does, helping the game to appeal to the same market as the film targets.

All together, these elements combine to make The Expendabros an ideal example of a movie tie-in game done right, even before we get to the single most important element of all: the game is FUN. The game finds merit even without its film tie-in elements through simply being a blast to play and offering players a good amount of options to build on their experience when doing so, and through this further improves its ability to advertise the film franchise it is based on. A good game, no matter how little connection it might actually have with its franchsie source material, will always serve as a better draw for audiences than a game that stays true to its material but fails to be an enjoyable experience. Look at products like the Lego games for a great example of this: often, the Lego games will deviate wildly on story elements form their source material, and the worlds are always far different from those represented in film, yet the games still serve to draw players due to their accessibility and enjoyability. In turn, players then associate that enjoyable experience with the franchise as a whole.

In the long run, isn't that what any promotional material aims to do, is emphasize the enjoyment one can draw from the product being advertised?

What movie tie-in games have you played in the past? What have you thought they did right, or wrong, and do you think they served their purpose as promotional materials for the franchise they were tied to? Let us know.