Warner Bros. to peg license royalties to game reviews

honru

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/05/26/news_6099292.html

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 game rankings, 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."

What do you people think? Is this a bad thing?

flogen

I think its a good thing, forget about the ETM argument, while good sales are good for businessmen, they arent necissarily good for players. ETM sold well, but was poor. Now game makers will be forced to put effort into games, rather than just relax on a brandname and coast along.
The companies can now chose to make at lower costs for good games or higher costs for crap game. If they dont see a problem with making a shíte game once its a money spinner, they should stop making games right now.

Flogen

Cake Fiend

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?"

Fucking SCUMBAG. It's because of money-grabbing **** like this that the games scene is flooded with crap. Just because a load of morons who haven't a clue about games bought a game that was nothing but a cash-in, Warner should be pleased?? Thank Christ Warner are showing a bit of integrity here, even if it is in their own interest. I hardly play any modern games these days, it's so hard to seperate the signal from the noise of so many movie tie-ins, sports cash-generators, soulless graphical tour-de-forces, etc.

This bastard has enraged me. I HATE people who put profit before quality of product. Is Britney Spears a talented artist because millions of stupid children buy her records? Should the producers of '2 Fast 2 Furious' be lauded because so many tasteless knacker boy-racers bought tickets? Bollocks. Bruno Bonnell should be ashamed of sullying the name of a once-respected company in the name of greed. I hope this sets a trend, the real gamers have been yearning for it every since the PlayStation darkened our doors.

BlitzKrieg

i can see where warner bros are coming at and it will do wonders for the movie tie ins...

but in all fairness movie tie ins have generally been improving (generally now, NOT ALL OF THEM) and in fairness when you take in ET is considered the worse game ever yet GOLDENEYE was one of the best there has been substantial jumps, ok so ETM wasnt the best, but at least it tried to be a game with substance rather then the crap we got during the 32 bit era (independance day *shudder*) and thats the general trend for movie tie ins at the moment, they are taking the game spin offs seriously regardless of this royalty fee or not. But that doesnt mean i dont agree


so its a good move...but I'd perfer to see someone kicking EA in the balls for all the games that wont be affected by this and have commited much worse crimes (Medal of Honour rising sun to name one, the evil fifa series etc) and I cant think of anyway of stopping them...so it is'nt gonna cut down on the crap games as much as you think/hope.

We are gonna get better movie tie ins, BUT they will take longer to make (no complaint here) Meanwhile EA churns out more and more at the same speed, with less competition from film brands (due to still in development) these games sell better =EA getting mo money and making mo crap...

Boro

Am i the only one who actually enjoyed ETM? I finished it twice and went back to play some pieces of it multiple times. Unlocked all the secret stuff in it too (the hacking section).

smiaras

This post has been deleted.

BlitzKrieg

quick check...





WHICH REVIEWS?



i mean you can go by tabloid reviews and never have to worry, or if the company want to be complete pricks they can go by the reviews of very aggressive picky online review sites or something similar.


Or is it the average of all the reviews?

smiaras

This post has been deleted.

evad_lhorg

So let me get this straight.... If ,by these rules, I was to release a game and a magazine reviewed it and gave it less than 70% percent theyd have to pay me money cause i made a crap game????????

DiscoStu

all this under the assumption of journalistic integrity.

games companies will simply peg the games off to the official mags with yet another wad of cash where they will be assured top marks.

/me remember how fantastic enter the matrix was as proclaimed by opsm

evad_lhorg

well to be honest I kinda like ETM but thats me. Nintendo official magazine dont do that anymore. they used to just give all the games over 90%(although a lot of the n64 games did actually deserve it. Now they actually mention playstations and that they are clearly selling more but that doesnt mean its better. and they have no problem slaggin off a game.

tman

Originally posted by DiscoStu
/me remember how fantastic enter the matrix was as proclaimed by opsm

and CVG:D

eurogamer are pretty much the only people whose opinion i trust now.

sceptre

Originally posted by evad_lhorg
So let me get this straight.... If ,by these rules, I was to release a game and a magazine reviewed it and gave it less than 70% percent theyd have to pay me money cause i made a crap game????????

No.

If you licensed a Warner Brothers property (in other words made a game based on a movie) and released a game that got less than their chosen mark in reviews you'd have to pay Warners some wonga because you're damaging the value of the brand (ie the franchise) that you've licensed.

evad_lhorg

oh ok so if sega makes matrix online and its a load of bollocks then they have to pay royalties

tHE vAGGABOND

The way games royalties work (same kind of model for music, books as well as for games) is that you (the developer) get x amount per copy, for the sake of keeping it simple, lets say our game sells for £30 in the shops, and we (the developers) get a royalty rate of £5 per copy the publisher is getting £7-10 per copy right now. The rest of the price will be the shops percentage and tax and government taking their slice of the action.

What happens is that after you sell x amount of copies, your rate goes up, and the publishers rate goes down, as the publisher has paid off all its expenses (QA, marketing etc etc), economies of scale.

For big games, there will be several stepping stones, so for a game like Enter the Matrix, or half Life after you have sold 3 million copies (again, figures used just for example) your royalty rate per copy will have jumped slowly over time, and you would now have gone from £5 up to £20 per copy (so copy 3 million and 1 onwards in this example) - as the publishers would have gotten their pound of flesh already and would be getting much less per copy than they would have been getting at first..

What Jason Hall is saying is that if you make a crap game, your royalty rate should stay at the first - low - figure...

There are several websites out there like www.gamerankings.com and metacritic.com that gather game reviews from loads and loads of different places and average the scores. its not like that PC Zone give me a bad score and I’m in trouble - but if 300 mags and websites around the world all pretty much give me a bad score - then I really am rightly f0000ked (and rightly so IMHO)