The Cut Scene - Video Game Blog by Variety

THQ nabs Marvel's Super Hero Squad. More Marvel games to come?

In tomorrow's Daily Variety: THQ has nabbed a long-term deal to make games based on Marvel's upcoming animated series aimed at little kids: "Super Hero Squad."

Makes pretty obvious sense for THQ, which has had a lot of success with kids games based on the Nickelodeon and Pixar licenses.

What's notable here is that THQ is banking on a license before it's a success. Well, sort of. Certainly the Marvel heroes are well known. But in their incarnations as brightly colored little guys with big heads, they're new. The "Super Hero Squad" series won't hit TV until 2009 and Marvel doesn't even have a network signed up to air the show yet (though it surely won't have much trouble finding one).

I spoke to THQ CEO Brian Farrell and Marvel's head of videogames Simon Phillips for the story and they both commented that they hope this is the start of a longer-term relationship between the two.

It's especially important since THQ's lucrative deal with Pixar is likely coming to an end. There's "Wall*E" this year, "Up" next year, then in 2010 Disney Interactive is adapting "Toy Story 3," then THQ has "Newt" in 2011 and the deal is up. A lot of people in the industry will be shocked if Disney Interactive doesn't start making all the Pixar-based game after that.

Here are a few other interesting comments from Farrell:

You just made a deal for DreamWorks Animation's 2010 film "Master Mind" and now this. Are you on a new licensing spree?

We're all about building big entertainment brands in the videogame space and we think this Marvel deal is more of what we have done very well. If you look at the Dreamworks deal, I think the reason we won that is execution. They’ve seen that we outperformed "Shrek 3," which is a great videogame property, with "Ratatouille," which isn't obviously one. It's about our ability to understand that younger demo space and execute well on the game, marketing and at retail.

But you recently said on an earnings call that both "Ratatouille" and your Nickelodeon games last year didn't sell as well as you had hoped. What's the reason for that?

If you look at game quality in the kids space, we lead that. Last year, "Ratatouille" was a great film, but didn’t translate well into any consumer products. We've done over 4 million units of "Ratatouille," which a lot of people blown away by for a property that doesn’t translate.

We have a great relationship with NIckelodeon. We’d love to see a new hit property from them.

Your deal for "Master Mind" is just a single movie. But given that DreamWorks Animation's long-term deal with Activision is ending, are you hoping to be their new partner for a while to come?

The "Master Mind" license does include sequel rights, or if becomes series. We don’t like one-off deals. We like long term deals... and to the extent that there's a sequel or a series, it can be long term. For us it’s about building a relationship.

Star Trek Online continues to live long, but will it prosper?

It was over four years ago, when I was a young reporter just starting at Variety, that I broke one of my first big videogame stories: Perpetual Entertainment had secured a license from Viacom to create a "Star Trek"-based MMO. I confidently asserted -- based on what Perpetual told me, of course -- that the game would be coming in "early 2007."

Not so much, as we now know. Not only did 2007 come and go, but Perpetual appears to have gone out of business following rumors that it would be acquired by a media company.

It wasn't clear what would happen to "Star Trek Online" -- whether so much work had been done on the game that somebody would inevitably buy it and make it happen, or whether the main reason Perpetual went under is that the project was going tragically wrong and was better left to die.

Now, via Wired's Game/Life, it appears that "Star Trek Online" ain't going away. The game's homepage has a new graphic: a simple federation logo with the words "coming soon" underneath. Game/Life speculated that "City of Heroes" maker Cryptic may have taken on "STO," which would be a very good sign for the project's future. But right now, we don't know.

On the one hand, it might be good timing to make "Star Trek Online" happen. At the time I wrote my story, the folks at Perpetual had to argue that the game would be relevant even with the franchise running out of steam. But in May of '09, Paramount will be trying to revive it with the new movie directed by JJ Abrams. That would obviously be a great time to launch "Star Trek Online."

On the other hand, as "World of Warcraft" continues to kick ass and take names, it's a very tough time to launch a new MMO. Especially a licensed one. Just as Warner Bros. about "The Matrix Online" or Microsoft about "Marvel Universe Online."

(PS Sorry for the awful headline, but I'm a major "Star Trek" nerd. I can't help myself. And as a major "Star Trek" nerd, I have to say that if this game ever sees the light of day, it will probably be the first MMO I ever play.)

Production companies making "Dexter" and Niven's "Free Fall"

Today brings some slightly bizarre videogame announcements that don't involve publishers or developers -- you know, those minor details you have to bring into a game at last minute.

First comes Showtime's deal with Marck Ecko Entertainment -- the clothing company that was also involved in making Atari's game "Getting Up -- to do a "Dexter" videogame. I'm told the plan is for a small team at Ecko to oversee production of the game and hire a developer. It's not yet clear if Ecko will fund the game itself and then take it to a publisher to distribute, or bring on a publisher early to fund the game from the get-go. Either way, it's an unusual arrangement. Though, granted, it's a very unusual property to turn into a game. I would imagine publishers weren't knocking down Showtime's door to adapt a  drama about a serial killer who murders serial killers.

It's obviously becoming a slightly more common arrangement, though, as Kotaku tells us that famed s/f writer Larry Niven is working with "transmedia" (today's new buzzword) production company Alchemic Productions to create a new game property called "Free Fall." Its sounds like Alchemic is further along in development, since unlike "Dexter," they have gameplay details. But still, it sounds like they're going to need some outside development help to make it happen and they're definitely going to need a publisher to help put it out.

Developing a property with an independent producer is something we're used to seeing in movies and TV, of course. Now we'll find out if it works in videogames.

Lost Via Domus: Good video, not so good game

My review of "Lost: Via Domus" is up now, and I'd say I'm in agreement with the other reviews out there: it's not very good. Fundamentally, there's just not much good gameplay. Here's the introduction to my take:

Watching the tense faces of actors carefully carrying dynamite made for several minutes of very exciting television in season one of ``Lost.'' Watching the back of an animated character carrying dynamite as you make him walk through the jungle in slow motion? Not so much. That's the fundamental problem of ``Lost: Via Domus,'' Ubisoft's new adaptation of the ABC series that hews so closely to its source material it never gives players anything remotely interesting to do. The only people bored enough to play through this tedious and poorly conceived videogame would have to be stranded on a remote island.

Of course, I recommend reading the full review for all the details, good and bad. But here are a few items that I couldn't fit in there:

-The gun has a re-loading mechanism and you can buy extra clips from Sawyer. That's actually pretty funny, since it holds 15 bullets and I only fired it five times to finish the entire game. And two of those shots were at the same guy.

-If you haven't taken any standardized tests recently, brush up, because there are a bunch of "IQ" tests from the Hanso foundation you have to take on computers. Most are standard logic ("god is to dog as 394 is to..."), though the final one is a trick question that almost drove me insane before I realized how obvious the answer is.

-Beyond the necessary questions you have to ask Locke or Sayid or Kate or whomever to get information, there are a lot of general questions you can ask them. Sometime it's interesting, but a lot of times they have nothing to say. Which makes you wonder why the developers even bothered writing and recording dialogue. It hardly seems worth it for gems like this... Elliott (the player): "I was attacked." Hurley: "You've got problems."

-Sawyer doesn't seem like a very good businessman when there are water bottles you can  trade him worth $5 sitting on the ground about two feet away from him.

-Most of the characters from the show are voiced by sound-alikes, some of whom (Jack, Kate, Sayid the Others) sound good, but some of whom are way off. Locke sounds like one of the Country Bears and Charlie sounds like one of the kids from "Mary Poppins."

-Those who like the gameplay more than I did -- or can at least stand it -- will find a decent story worthy of at least an average "Lost" episode. And there's a really fascinating twist at the end that will make you think twice about what happened in "Via Domus" and even some of what you've seen on the show.

Also of note: There's a story in the most recent weekly Variety about the poor record of serialized dramas turned into videogames (see: "The Sopranos," "24") and how Ubisoft is aiming to change that with "Lost" (and, next year, "Heroes") both creatively and business-wise.

And if you're looking for a blast from the past, here's the story I wrote when Ubisoft first did its licensing deal with ABC almost two years ago.

What Lost: Via Domus "borrows" from Bioshock

I literally just finished writing my review of Ubisoft's "Lost: Via Domus" and will be linking to it, plus providing lots more thoughts and details, when it goes online later today or tomorrow morning.

But one thing I have to get off my chest right away: Remember that hacking mini-game from "Bioshock?" (see left) Some people found it fun, some thought it was tedious, but it was a substantial and somewhat controversial part of the game.

"Lost: Via Domus" rips it off almost entirely. The only difference is that there's no timer and different pieces alter the voltage of the electricity flow in different ways, which is important to the solution. But the basic experience is remarkably similar, right down to some identical sound effects. Coming so soon after "Bioshock," it's downright bizarre.

Of course, the big difference is that in "Bioshock," the hacking mini-game is a break from the awesome, exciting action. In "Lost: Via Domus," it's pretty much the most exciting thing players do in the entire game. But the review's not posted and I'm getting ahead of myself...

"Lost" video game trailer debuts with season 2

Ubisoft not coincidentally picked the day after the day after the "Lost" season premiere to debut... the new, likely final trailer for its upcoming video game "Lost: Via Domus." And I'm not gonna lie folks. It looks really good. From the setting to the characters to the eerie music to the mystery, it really feels like you're watching "Lost."

Variety game reviewer and PC World blogger Matt Peckham says he's worried because the game is not an official extension of TV show canon. But I say thank goodness. Making a game that can only be enjoyed by those who have religiously followed the TV show doesn't seem like a great idea. And I highly doubt the TV show writers want to be tied down by whatever decisions the folks at Ubisoft Montreal make in service of the best possible game.

All that being said, there's still plenty of reason to worry. The game looks good. But that doesn't mean it's going to play well. And as someone who has tracked TV-based games religiously for the past few years, I can say that "Lost" is entering a landscape littered with disasters. Anyone play "The Sopranos: Road to Respect"? Or "CSI: Hard Evidence?" Or "24: The Game?" Or the recent "Battlestar Galactica" and "The Office" casual games? They were all mediocre to terrible. The only good video game based on a TV show in recent memory is "The Simpsons Game," which had the advantage of not having to actually be about anything in the show at all. It just had to be funny.

If "Lost: Via Domus" is even relatively good, Ubisoft will have pulled off a minor miracle: the first quality video game based on an ongoing dramatic TV show. Or am I forgetting one?