The Nature of Movie Tie-in Games Has Changed, and for the Better
Studios are increasingly turning to existing platforms to market their cinematic universes.
Movie tie-in video games have never had a great reputation. They’re usually rushed, and often quite terrible. Take 2023’s Skull Island: Rise of Kong, which reportedly only had a year’s development time, as a prime example. In the 2000s, Kong’s recent outing would still have been bad, but it wouldn’t have been remarkable. Action games based on popular films were a dime-a-dozen. But despite genuinely great releases, such as 2004’s Spider-Man 2, now being worshiped with almost divine reverence, these linked games aren’t arriving like they used to.
It’s not that interest has dried up – the video game market remains a gargantuan, lucrative prospect. Instead, many studios are taking a new approach: why invest in the expensive from-scratch development of an entirely new game when you could harness existing platforms (and their expansive player counts)?
Games such as Minecraft and Roblox draw millions of players daily. Provided you don’t mind tailoring a vision to their simplistic visual styles, they offer a relatively affordable pathway through which to engage a potentially enormous audience – a tempting proposition that many studios are beginning to capitalize on.
Ahead of the release of 2024’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Minecraft unveiled an official Godzilla DLC. It allows players to explore the history of the iconic kaiju and take part in four games based on his cinematic outings. This was followed by the Universal Studios Experience DLC, which opens the gates to a digital incarnation of the theme park’s famous rides and locations. The package even features some classic rides no longer present in the real-world parks.
Roblox isn’t short of interest either. Killer doll Chucky recently slashed the line between the cinema and gaming, appearing in the Griefville: Survive the Nightmare experience. A Jaws Roblox game is also on the way, promising an asymmetric experience in which one player controls the infamous great white shark.
It isn’t just about player counts, though. Savvy studios are forging practical partnerships, approaching games based both on their player demographics and their alignment to the films in question. Asymmetric multiplayer horror game Dead By Daylight is awash with villains from the silver screen. Hellraiser’s pinhead, Scream’s Ghostface, Halloween’s Michael Myers – even Alien’s Xenomorph makes an appearance.
The 2024 blockbuster release of Dune: Part Two in cinemas was accompanied by themed DLC for Microsoft Flight Simulator. Purchasing players could clamber inside one of the movie’s eight-winged ornithopter vehicles to take part in a series of missions. The London and New York premieres for the movie even featured life-size ornithopter gaming simulators alongside the red carpet, with cast and guests invited to try their hand at the experience.
The rise of such collaborations isn’t to suggest that standalone game tie-ins are likely to disappear altogether. Frank Herbert’s desert world already has a strategy game adaptation courtesy of last year’s Dune: Spice Wars. Plus, the upcoming Dune: Awakening promises to deliver a grand survival experience in the years ahead.
Creating a memorable and enduring game based on a cinematic world remains a worthy goal. But studios have grown to better understand the gaming landscape, whether that’s through targeting resources toward specific genres or opting to meet their audience in the spaces they’re already in. Smaller experiences built within existing games aren’t likely to capture the imagination for decades to come. But, crucially, they offer a far less risky method to sustain interest in, and awareness of, characters or a world.