Disney videogames shouldn’t just be Star Wars and Marvel…
A couple of days ago, Disney just dropped this amazing retelling of Lilo & Stitch with really little to no fanfare. Granted, I’m not saying this needs huge promotion, but it’s a cool thing people should check out. I hope they do this with many of their beloved animated classics. But it’s also a bit of a tease that there isn’t just a Lilo & Stitch game like this. There are several Lilo & Stich games, even a couple of pretty good ones for the Gameboy Advance, but how about something made today in the style of 8/16-bit, but with modern design in mind? After all, the best pixel art indie games of today just look like the games of 25+ years ago, they do things now that simply were not possible on that technology back then.
Disney is putting out a lot of games in the next few years, but it’s only limited to a couple of franchises. Namely Star Wars and Marvel with like one Indiana Jones game sometime in the near future. They are clearly happy to re-release older games that were based on beloved animated classic movies and TV shows, but nothing new unless it’s a mobile game or added to an already existing one. And that’s a shame.
I’m not saying we go back to the time of releasing direct movie tie-ins, especially ones that have to come out roughly around the same time a movie does. Despite them often being compared to each other, movies and games are extremely different beasts and part of the reason licensed games as we knew them 15 years ago don’t really exist anymore is that both consumers and companies finally realized that. Quick cash-ins still come around every now again but there’s a reason you haven’t seen half a dozen video games based on Frozen (there are a few mobile games and one 3DS game with Olaf) even though it’s the most popular kids franchise there is.
But what if there was a really good game based on Frozen? Not one directly tied to the movies, but a further adventure starring Anna and Elsa and their friends? It doesn’t have to be some homage to old 2D sidescrollers (though that could be great)m just something that tells a fun new story and has good gameplay and is true to the spirit of the film, be it from a big developer or someone smaller. And Frozen is just one example, even if Disney didn’t want to lean heavily on their legacy of classic animated movies and shows you’ve got stuff like Raya and the Last Dragon, Luca, The Owl House, Amphibia, Ducktales (the new one) just to name a few things in recent years that would be great material for a really good console game and again it could be a big project from a big developer but getting to see someone smaller with a really good idea and a passion for the movie or series would be great too.
Disney has openly stated they are willing to hear pitches, so I hope that wasn’t just meaningless platitudes. Rarely I am one to be in favor of exploiting IP more than a company usually would, but really Disney has such a vast library of both modern of classic movies and shows they don’t really do all that much with and it’s kind of insane. Granted, it’s probably hard to manage all that stuff but they also probably have a large number of people whose job it is to literally do that. I don’t necessarily want to be drowning in new Disney games (for one thing that would make keeping up with this project extremely difficult), but I’m hoping that someday soon we’ll occasionally see a game, be it big or small that has nothing to do with superheroes or space wizards (unless you want to make a Muppets game where they are superheroes or space wizards I’d be all over that).
That’s going to be all for today, I should have another post later in the week so see ya real soon!
