This is my submission for December's Bitmob Writing Challenge. My topic was "Why do games based on movies suck so bad?"

We all know Hollywood can’t be trusted with making a good movie adaptation of a game... but why does it still suck when it’s a game based on a movie?

As often as people like to compare games and film, the truth is there are more differences than similarities. It isn’t easy to transfer material from one medium to the other.

The largest difference is interactivity: It’s what defines games -- both traditional and digital -- and differentiates them from other media. A video game is still a game before it’s a story. Movies, by contrast, are all about the narrative. Everything from the cinematography to the score revolves around telling the story.

In order for developers to successfully turn movies into games, they need to make the “game” portion of the equation the priority. The different standards the mediums are held to makes this difficult.

A two-hour running time for a film is respectable. A two-hour completion time for a licensed retail release would be considered a travesty. Crafting a game within the confines of the movie’s story, and having it ready to ship in time for the film’s premiere are other hurdles developers have to deal with.

Starbreeze’s The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is considered one of the best games based on a movie series. Butcher Bay was in fact a prequel to The Chronicles of Riddick, and not a direct tie-in. This not only afforded Starbeeze more time to develop, but also gave them some flexibility with what they could do in the game.

The Chronicles of Riddick wasn’t exactly a huge franchise, which also had something to do with it. Ian Stevens, a producer at publisher Vivendi during development of Butcher Bay, told 1up:

"Part of the attraction was that it certainly was not a huge film, and one of the things that you sort of deal with when you work with a lot of licensed properties is that the bigger the franchise is, the less flexibility you have. So certainly some of the appeal was that this wasn't a tentpole for Universal, or at least it wasn't yet, and so it felt like there would have been a lot of room for us to interpret and kind of build our own fiction...“

Starbreeze was able to tamper with both the story and with the game's design with this kind of freedom. Flexibility, however, doesn’t always have to come from a smaller franchise.

Several of the most successful Star Wars games are the ones that aren’t directly based on the events of the movies, such as Knights of the Old Republic and the Jedi Knight series. The Star Wars saga is large enough for plenty of games and other media to fill in gaps in the storyline.

If developers have enough flexibility to create a good game first, then having to shoehorn the film’s set pieces and plot points won’t be an issue.

All this might be asking for too much. Why should publishers give studios more time and freedom to work on licensed games, when they can capitalize on the marketing and have games released in time for movie premiers?

Well, because titles like Captain America: Super Soldier and Thor: God of Thunder failed to top any charts. Publishers put little thought into their release dates. They were released alongside their film counterparts, despite the competition from larger titles like L.A. Noire and NCAA Football 2012. Thor and Captain America are already comic book adaptations, so the games could have been based off their respective comics as opposed to the movies. Instead, we got two more licensed titles that enforced the bad tie-in game stereotype.

So why do games based on movies suck so bad? It doesn’t matter. They don’t have to. If publishers treated licenses games with as much respect as Hollywood producers did with the source material, then publishers, production studios, and maybe even consumers could benefit.