What's Up With Wall-E?

Yesterday during my daily visits to gaming websites and blogs, I came across this little piece of news. Apparently the video game "Wall-E" based on the hugely successful movie, is not nearly as successful. After one month of release, the video game has only sold 114,000 copies. That's not a good number. For comparison purposes, Guitar Hero Aerosmith which has been out just as long, has sold about 500,000 copies. And if you remember from one of my earlier blogs, GH Aerosmith is not very good. So the question is "What's Up With Wall-E?"Well, it's not the character. Wall-E is awesome. The movie is fantastic. It is one of Pixar's best. It's right up there with Finding Nemo and the Incredibles. Wall-E was very successful in the theaters making over $200 million since it's release. And it can't be the marketing. Wall-E is backed by Disney, which is just the biggest marketing juggernaut in the history of corporate America.

No, the issue with Wall-E is a lot more fundamental. It's a video game based on a movie, and these games just aren't very good. You can look back at prior video games based on movies and see they also weren't very successful. Last year we had a lot of video games based on successful movies and all of them failed. Games such as Transformers, Spiderman 3, and Pirates of the Caribbean all were gigantic failures.

There are a few reasons for this. The first is because the game developers are basically handcuffed when it comes to the content of the game. The movie studios have very strict guidelines when it comes to licensing their content. The video game has to stay very true to the movie. Take Wall-E as an example. The first 20-30 minutes of the movie, Wall-E is stuck on a completely deserted Earth collecting trash and trying to clean up the planet. Now in the movie it's very entertaining due to Wall-E's reactions to everything. Now try playing a video game where you just move around an empty wasteland picking up trash. Sound even remotely interesting?

The second main reason for the issue, is the game is too closely related to the movie. You just spent $8 dollars to go see the movie which you just enjoyed. Do you really feel like shelling out another $50 to play through the entire movie scene by scene? I mean you just saw the freaking thing, you know what's going to happen next. There's no suspense and no reason to play the game. Without having ever played the game, I'm betting Wall-E falls in love and finds his way into space. I know, because I've seen the movie.

The final reason why video games based on movies aren't very good is because the game play is not very good. The games aren't very innovative and they are very glitchy. There's nothing worse than moving Wall-E around Earth and he accidentally gets stuck on a pile of garbage he can't get out of, because the developers didn't beta test the game thoughougly. Now, it's not their fault. The game developers don't have a lot of time to create the game. They are given their instructions from the movie studio maybe 6 months before the game has to be released. And in that 6 months, they have to create the game and then test out all of the glitches before the game is released the same time the movie is. Remember, the game has to be released at the same time as the movie. I mean there would be no market for the game if it was released 6 months after the movie.

And I feel bad for Wall-E. He's a great guy and deserves to be treated better than this. I would have no problem playing a completely original Wall-E adventure. But that would take too long and too much money to create and publish. So unfortunately Wall-E is stuck in a very mediocre game that is being marketed to idiots who don't know any better. But now you are not one of those idiots. You are a more informed gamer, just like the 30 Year Old Gamer.

Until next time,

- The 30 Year Old Gamer