The best thing that you can ever hope for a licensed game, is that it isn’t tied to another product of the same IP. For instance when a game is based on a movie and has to ship at the exact same friggin’ moment that the movie hits theaters.
When Red Mile Entertainment’s Sin City releases in 2009, it will have had no such restrictions, but will be a wholly independent production of Frank Miller’s graphic novel series. That’s right, the comics, not the movie.
For one reason or another, Red Mile opted to buy the rights to the books, and not the movie. The rights to make a game out of the books probably cost them substantially less than the film rights considering they would have to compete with big bad publishers like EA and Activision. And as you may guess from their relatively unknown name, Red Mile probably couldn’t stand toe to toe with one of those two in a bidding war.
The beautiful part about it though is that the name recognition is the same, so in all probability they’ll sell just as many games as they would have with the movie license. In fact it’s better because now they don’t have to call it Frank Miller’s: Sin City: The Movie: The Game.
The process of making the game itself though, will likely be a lot more difficult. As individual tales–the stories that comprise Sin City–are far too short to be made into individual games. And the subjects of each book vary so wildly that you’d need to make six different engines if you wanted to put all the chapters into the game. Pretty complex. I’m wondering how they’ll be able to pull it off, or rather if they’ll be able to pull it off.
Who am I kidding though, let’s be honest; if they slap Sin City on the cover, devise a beautiful art style that resembles the book, and market it properly, they will sell millions of these things.
[via gamepro]
