Avatar: The Game Puts the Hurt on Ubisoft

[theultimateend]

marketing > substance

they have what is called a susceptability (sp?) chart that rates how much you respond to persuasion, peer pressure and/or influence, it can absolve you of responsibility to the extent of providing evidence in court. the fact that they need a scale to do this shows that it is not universal.
even in a controlled experiment where you got a psychologist who knew exactly how to sell something to someone, they can't sell it to everyone because people are different. marketing is VITAL to a movies success, but to say that marketing is more important to a games success then content is frankly ridiclous.
and point in question?
how much difference do you suppose the avatar game marketing squad was to the movie one?
yet one succeeded and one failed, maybe because one was spectacular and one was dismal.

it makes me sick to my Indie music loving stomach. it's the same mentality that dislikes bands because they get popular. and all it really is is elitism and pretentiousness

Individual people are different but as a whole people act in very predictable manners. There are people who dictate with very high accuracy the future activities of regions. It was even the basis for a very popular Science Fiction series known as Foundation.

>I< don't dislike things because they are popular, just want to make that clear. I'm just pointing out that the best way to make something big is to get as many people in at the ground floor.

A good example was Ragnarok Online Private Servers. No amount of quality surpassed a high pop count. Higher populations bring in higher populations, if you have 30 friends to fake it in the beginning you'll snowball.

Blizzard experiences this with WoW. Don't get me wrong, I think WoW is fantastic, but the largest reason no other MMO will get as big as WoW is now is because they aren't as big as WoW is. I doubt that made sense and I probably goofed my wording but I hope you get my point.

People think something is valid if enough people like it. The difference between a cult and a religion, a good game and a blockbuster game, a legal drug and an illegal drug.

Population trumps quality and marketing is extremely successful. Almost everyone that was in College with me taking Psychology was taking it with business courses to move into that field. Very few were actually as interested in brains as I was (and am).

But yeah. I agree not EVERYONE can be molded like a piece of clay, but I'm hard pressed to believe the majority aren't (considering the massive popularity of faiths and various other large scale marketing driven tools).

PS. I plan to go see the movie . Also I still think Ubisoft perpetrated a far larger crime with Enchanted Arms. Just want to reiterate that.

 

[brodie21]

if you are going to base something off of a movie, bring something to the party, add something. you have a whole new world to do whatever the fuck you want with it, so if you have james cameron's ok, go nuts!

 

[brodie21]

I never saw the film because I have a saying that "nothing that ever makes a over billion dollars can be good", but from what I've heard, its practically in cannon with halo, and since there have already been a million halo sequels, they should have made a crossover, instantly ensuing quadrillion dollar profit.

You are so mislead. You really don't believe that, because a movie makes a lot of money, it has to be bad? This didn't make a lot of money... it made an INSANE amount of money and no half baked movie ever goes that high. It's not an original story line but it's a fantastic concept that is well executed. It's a movie worth watching and comparing it to halo is like comaparing a puddle to a lake. By any chance did you play halo?

Your ignorance will limit your experiences and doesn't make for a good judge of character, unless you were sarcastic then my friend i bow in apology.

yeah, if a movie makes that much money, isnt there more than a little chance that it will be TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME!!!

 

[brodie21]

I never saw the film because I have a saying that "nothing that ever makes a over billion dollars can be good", but from what I've heard, its practically in cannon with halo, and since there have already been a million halo sequels, they should have made a crossover, instantly ensuing quadrillion dollar profit.

did you think that it made over a billion dollars because its good? with the halo things, that was several games stemming from one very good game. at least see the movie before you start spouting off that it sucks.

 

[ma55ter_fett]

Burn in hell Ubisoft, I still haven't forgiven you for Farcry 2.

 

[Eatbrainz]

The film might as as well have been about Night Elves doing a play version of Dances With Wolves

 

[hermes]

Actually, I think you are reading it wrong. It is not that the game sucked, its that it didn't sell.

That is mostly marketing's fault. We all know games that were awful and still sold like popcorn; and games that were brilliant, yet sold poorly. Don't fool yourself, quality and sales are not as related as we would wish them to be.

 

[Chewster]

They should have known the sales would be lower then most other games, as gamers are usually skeptical of movie tie-in games since they are almost always terrible. There have only been two exceptions that I can think of (GoldenEye and Escape From Butcher Bay) and both came out well after the films.

It seems as though is it almost impossible to sync the two media properly, due to the differet types of production schedules involved.

 

[ExplosionProofTaco]

Avatar might be the greatest thing to hit movie screens in years,

If by 'might be' you mean 'is not' Then I wholeheartedly agree.

 

[Captain Incapable]

How about they stop games company's bringing out low quality movie based games?

I second that. I've always been disappointed with every movie based game I've played.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

If you want people to buy your game, try making it not suck.

I confess to being actually surprised by this. Since when has "not sucking" been a prerequisite for a game to sell? Especially one with a big license name attached to it? You just KNOW every wannabe casual gamer who wouldn't know how to research a game before buying even if bad games came rigged to explode when opened will rush out and buy it anyway. These games are supposed to sell themselves solely by their title. I wonder what went wrong here?

 

[ethan22122]

I played this on 360 and it was pretty good.

 

[Snotnarok]

I'm pretty sure we can all say why a game based movie rated bad, the same reason every other one besides the lucky small minority have been shit as well.

There's been maybe 1 good movie based game...Riddick, I can't think of another.

 

[MailOrderClone]

It is generally assumed that a movie tie-in game will be bad. The burden was on Ubi-Soft to prove otherwise, and they have not done so to a sufficient degree.

 

[snow]

I really enjoyed the movie, so I obviously wasn't going to ruin the memory of it by playing some half baked action game. One of the amazing parts of the movie were how well the navi were animated, one look at the back of the game looks like somebody first attempt in a 10 year old 3d modelling program.

Yeah I agree with you there... I honestly thought I had clicked on a WoW advertisement by accident when I looked the game up. I usually don't care about graphics, but when you take what's supposed to be the most graphically enhanced movie of all time and turn it into something like that... You know they made an oops some where...

They need to start planning ahead a LOT more when it comes to creating movie games, because I have yet to see a movie game that hasn't tanked...

All I can say though.. Is I am so happy that I live in a world where the idea of making a RTS from the Friends TV show, was never thought of...

 

[Hirushia]

Movie videogames thrive on desperate mothers giving their 12 year old something that they believe the little brats will enjoy. They are just regurgitated crap to make some quick cash, and are a disgrace to the gaming industry. It deserves to not make money.

 

[vorlors]

Its there own dam misstake for thinking that plp would not tell it was a s**ty movie game crossover

 

[Ithikial]

Publishers need to wake up that games that tie into recent movie releases fail 99% of the time. Short dev times and a lack of creativity because you have to stay close to the source material.

If you really want to make some money from a movie, wait a few years and let the devs make a proper game with some creative freedom which they can dig their teeth into.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

I don't really think you could make a good "Avatar" game anyway...