Adaptation

Another month, another Round Table topic. This time, it’s on games based on the intellectual property of Hollywood movies, the very bane of my existence. They contribute to what I believe is the continuing destructive public impression that games, rather than being an art form in their own right, are nothing more than toys, to be lumped in with all the lunch boxes and action figures. Hence, it’s very hard for me to get excited about games that are based on movie IP… or any other kind of non-original IP for that matter. [1]

It is therefore interesting that my first-ever commercial project was CSI: Hard Evidence, [2] and even more interesting that it was a project I actually enjoyed working on. Beforehand, I hadn’t ever watched a single episode of CSI, and given the choice of projects at Telltale Games in 2006, I would have much rather worked more on Sam & Max instead. That said, as a newly-minted programming intern entering the industry for the first time, I was grateful to work on just about anything, so I sucked it up and jumped into my new role with enthusiasm.

The one thing that surprised me most about this otherwise underwhelming licenced game is that it really was made with love. Many members of the CSI team were genuinely fans of the show, to the point that they even convinced me to watch it a couple of times. Plus, even though there were a lot of development limitations due to the licence and our budget — we even had product placement, ugh! — it truly felt like the team was trying to make the best possible game in spite of those limitations. And when those limitations bothered us, we’d find much unintentional humour in them and produce many inside jokes… which, as we all know, is one of the most effective ways of uniting a group of people.

Another thing I enjoyed about making this game was that it was pretty much made for middle-aged women. This would be a negative for most people in the industry, and obviously, my own tastes differ from those of your average forty-year-old soccer mom, but I’ve always been all about broadening the market, so it’s not just a stupid adolescent boys’ club. One complaint reviewers consistently make about the CSI games is that they’re too easy, but you know what? Some people don’t have the time and energy needed to master a complex user interface or solve difficult logic puzzles; they just want to star in an episode of their favourite TV show. These kinds of games deserve to exist, and I’m glad I helped make that happen, in my own small way.

Of course, the game itself was flawed in my eyes, and I definitely found it more fun to make than to play. If I had it my way, there’s a lot I would have done differently. I would have pushed for stylized graphics that were helped rather than hindered by low-poly models, instead of having scary-looking animatronic robots for characters. I would have played around more with making the narrative interactive while still remaining essentially non-punitive. Most importantly, if I’d had the choice, I likely wouldn’t have made a licenced game to begin with. But I’ll also admit there are indeed some perks to licencing IP from well-known properties, in that they can potentially bring certain groups of people into gaming who likely wouldn’t have been interested otherwise.

I just wish that this tendency towards popular licences was the exception in the industry, rather than the norm. I don’t want to get rid of movie and television IP altogether; I just don’t want a slew of shovelware games of the sort crowding the shelves because our industry is so hit-driven. I want licenced games to be an entry point that introduces people to a body of original work, much in the same way as, say, a Star Wars novel might encourage a person to read original science fiction. [3]

Of course, as it happens, I’m working on an original IP game right now at my day job. Maybe that means I’ll get to contribute once again to making the world of video games a better place.