You may have noticed, despite ardent efforts to the contrary, that Michael Bay's Transformers 2 has been a gigantic hit. The movie raked in over $200m in its first five days in the US, and has just become the most successful movie ever in the burgeoning Chinese market.
At the same time, however, it has attracted reviews of such relentless vitriol they could melt the wing nuts from Optimus Prime's bulky chassis. Rotten Tomatoes lists the movie's overall score at just 20%. Has there ever been such a disparity between a film's financial success and its critical reception? Sadly the answer is almost certainly yes. In the current UK box office top ten, only two of the pictures has a Metacritic rating of over 70% - most are much lower.
But things are very different over in videogame land. If you look at the UK top twenty, only two of the titles have a Metacritic rating of less that 75%, and ironically, both of those are movie tie-ins: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Transformers 2, and the rating for the latter is significantly higher than for its cinematic inspiration.
Why is this?
Well, most obviously, it could be argued that games have to be better than movies because consumers demand more from something that costs around four times the price of a quick trip to the multiplex. But I don't think that's a definitive answer, because there's rather a large gap between understanding customer requirements and having the ability to meet them.
No, I think the difference lies partly in the contrasting structures and creative climates of the two industries. Although there are notable exceptions, the videogame sector is essentially a meritocracy; in terms of development, the people at the top are there, not because they're the most beautiful, the most assertive or the most charismatic, but because they're the best at what they do. Look at industry legends like Shigeru Miyamoto, Dave Jones and John Carmack – they're not garrulous fireballs of charismatic energy, but they're successful, they're rich and they have legions of fans.
Even the great self-publicists of the industry – Peter Molyneux. Mark Rein, David Jaffe – these guys are listened to and respected because they have delivered, and continue to deliver – remarkable products. With videogames, the right people have the power – and they generally use it wisely. On a wider scale, the best studios in the world – Blizzard, Rockstar North, Ubisoft Montreal, Infinity Ward - all have passionate creative veterans at the helm; and these people want to make great, intelligent, innovative games. They don't always manage it, but, heck, that's at least what they're aiming for.
In contrast the major Hollywood studios are often governed by businessmen with little or no film making experience, and only a cursory interest in releasing critically revered material. It's all about hitting a mainstream audience with whatever nonsense that's currently in demand. The problem is, contemporary Hollywood is going through something of a crisis of confidence – recent big star vehicles like Year One, Land of the Lost and State of Play have flopped catastrophically; reliable actors aren't opening movies anymore. It's like William Goldman said, nobody knows anything. And right now, no-one knows anything like never before.
This isn't really about incompetence though, it's more about the vagaries of the medium. The standard Hollywood three-act structure is the 3D engine of movies, but it is much less reliable as a basis for an effective product. There is a science to basic game design, there are elements such as jump distance, bullet velocity and collision detection, which are quantifiable and can be rigorously tested and refined. But an effective screenplay is centered around such ungraspable commodities as sympathetic characters, compelling dialogue and dramatic tension. Both movies and games contain art and science, but the latter can get much further toward perfection on sheer technical competency alone.
There's something else: community. The best videogame studios in the world maintain very close relationships with their fans. They don't just get you to sign up to a spurious mailing list then spam you with adverts and trailers until you're genuinely afraid to boot up your email client. They hire affable community managers, create forums and engage in a running dialogue with their most passionate devotees. On many occasions, this interplay has led to the creation of far better games; it's standard practice now to run public beta tests on new titles, or at least to release demos onto services like Xbox Live Arcade – the ensuing feedback is generally analysed and incorporated into the design process. And then you've got products like Counter Strike and Day of Defeat that were created by Valve fanatics, who were then seamlessly integrated into the development system. Game design is also democratic.
But there is no equivalent system in the mainstream movie industry – films aren't beta tested. They may be shown off to focus groups when it's too late to do much more than a couple of re-shoots, but you rarely get a director actively facilitating a dialogue with consumers from the outset. It's no coincidence that the filmmakers who have forged the closest links with their fan base – the likes of JJ Abrams, Zack Snyder and Peter Jackson – are the one's who have grown up as videogame fans.
But really, beyond the differing business infrastructures is a reoccurring and more important possibility – could it be that people are just naturally more demanding when it comes to games? The financial element is important, but it's not defining – look at the top performing games on Xbox Live or PSN or App Store and they're invariably the ones that do well critically. The biggest XBLA titles last year weren't big franchise spin-offs – they were Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars 2, Braid and A Kingdom for Keflings, each one of them a critical success.
It is maybe something to do with interactivity, the fact that games engage us in different – and some would argue more numerous – ways. Videogames are, after all, games - they demand participation. As well as audio-visual stimulation there is hand-eye co-ordination, dexterity, logic, learning, analysis… As enjoyable as a Michael Bay movie may be for two hours on a Friday night, there is one thing it will never do; it will never challenge you.
