Tigon won’t ‘treat licensed games like consumer products’

Ian Stevens, head of game production at Tigon Studios, knows the trepidation that washes over you whenever a new film-to-videogame title hits the shelves. You’re hot for the movie, but have been burned by terrible adaptations too many times to pay for it blindly. Tigon’s Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay twisted that expectation by being non-traditional. It built upon the foundation of Riddick mythology, providing awesome context for the film Pitch Black, and perhaps more importantly, had compelling enough gameplay to ensare those who didn’t give a lick for the flick. 

Tigon’s upcoming episodic addition to the Butcher Bay (which includes Butcher Bay), Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena, will build on the strong foundation that Tigon has created.  

It’s no accident though. At Tigon, Stevens watches over Diesel properties, ensuring that games with his studio’s stamps won’t blow like most movie titles. “I’ve been making games about 14 years now. And I’ve worked on an awful lot of so-called licensed products. My complaint has always been that collaboration between ‘creatives’ on both sides really doesn’t exist,” he told me during a phone conference yesterday after I asked where Tigon would stand in two years.

“People tend to treat licensed games like consumer products. So the same people at a studio that are telling Kellogg’s that they can stick a character on a cereal box, are the ones going to an Activision or an EA saying ‘okay, you can make a game based on this movie.’ And that’s kind of the extent to which those discussions happen and take place,” he said.

“And the token involvement of actors and their roles in those projects are typically just to have them come in and do some VO. The exciting thing to me about Tigon, and coming to this company, was to try to ‘one-up’ that model and that tradition and start to get people whom are typically working on only side of that fence to actually play together. To have film makers and game developers forge a much more meaningful relationship that ultimately means a better game.”

“In two years I see Tigon doing more and more to break that ground and to make that cross-development across not just films and games, but other mediums as well; [giving] an idea, franchise or set of characters a sort of bleeding edge. Hopefull,y we’re gonna lead the way in terms of how that’s done and how we get those people together, and how we respect those mediums and make sure that everbody has the tools, access and the expertise that they need to make amazing content where they’re doing it.”