George R.R. Martin recently announced on his blog that he had now optioned the video game rights of his beloved A Song of Ice and Fire series to independent french game developer Cyanide Studios.
Cyanide has actively been trying to aqquire the Interactive Entertainment rights for Martins septalogy for the last five years. Their video game releases so far contain 10 non-franchise sports games (5 for cycling, 1 for rugby and 2 for horse racing), one franchise sports game (partially Olympic "Winter Challenge (2006), a DS comic adaptation (Runaway) and a recently released iPhone game application called iSurf.
Their crowning full-feature PC games was 2007’s “Loki” and 2009 free-to-play MMOG “Dungeon Party.”
In the Spoiler Tag below, I’ve listed the average Metascore of Cyanide’s games.
Cycling Manager 4: 76% based on 2 reviews.
Pro Cycling Manager 2006: 34% based on 1 review.
Pro Cycling Manager 2007: 50% based in 4 reviews.
Pro Cycling Manager 2008: 48% based on 4 reviews.
Pro Cycling Manager 2008 [PSP]: 45% based on 1 review.
Horse Racing Manager 1: N/A (No critic/user reviews.)
Horse Racing Manager 2: N/A (No critic/user reviews.)
Winter Challenge: N/A (No critic/user reviews.)
Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle [DS]: 64%, based on 9 reviews.)
Dungeon Party: 70%, Based on 1 review.
Loki: 61%, based on 21 reviews.
If you can’t be arsed to read the spoiler tag, the average Metascore for the above games is 56% points. Two of the games have not even been renewed.
Cyanide is also currently producing tabletop adaption game Blood Bowl.
Cyanide has put forth deals for an RTS and RPG game, to be developed in paralell by its main studio in France and its newly opened franchise studio in Montreal. Cyanide’s press statement can be read in its entirety here.
Now that the info session is over, I can vent my personal opinion. Ahead be strong, adult language, children.
This shows an absolutely abysmal sense of judgement from Martin’s side.
I paid money for Loki. It was an abysmal, horrifyingly poorly designed, bug-riddled piece of shit.
I am dreading Cyanide’s release of these videogames. I would rather - much rather - give it to TaleWorlds, another independent video game company, than Cyanide. I’d give it to Uwe Boll before I’d give it to Cyanide. Cyanide wasn’t in my mental category of bad studios to develop the game, because it’s so fucking obscure I hadn’t even fucking heard of it.
Congratulations, Mr. Martin. You just doomed the best original IP of the last twenty years to the least competent developer you could possibly hope to find. Cheers.
I’m sure they just offered Martin a large pile of money and he doesn’t care about any video game ports. That’s how these things work.
On the other hand the board game is awesome. I’d like a shorter Diplomacy with more complicated decisions and a touch of randomness in events that all players have to plan for and deal with.
I like Song of Ice and Fire, but I don’t think I ever stopped reading at any point and said to myself “man, this would make an awesome video game”.
That said, between making video games, board games, rpgs, comic books, TV series, miniatures and designer perfume brands based on the Song of Ice and Fire series, I wish Martin would take a break and actually finish the Song of Ice and Fire series.
At least he’s published two books since the board game and CCG and one since the RPG. I know he plays RPG’s but I doubt that the strange stuff that’s been happening since A Storm of Swords has anything to do with those minor licensees.
I’d put money on celebrity author syndrome myself. The bloat that’s becoming evident is one of the major symptoms.
I could see an interesting port to Paradox Studio’s Crusader Kings.
ETA: Frankly any rumor of a Paradox development of this franchise would probably give me an enormous erection. However I suspect that is very unlikely, as I don’t think they’re a terribly wealthy studio, niche players that they are - license fees are likely a barrier.
Let’s all hope this turns out to be as groundbreaking and revolutionary as the Wheel of Time game we all remember playing for hours and hours and hours, right? Right? Me, I don’t think I even made it all the way through the tutorial level.
I don’t see the problem. I love LOTR and I never played any of the games (and I love games). They are entirely different things.
However, where I am from fantasy (with the exception of magical realism) was considered kids literature. I always told my friends to read LOTR and they answered “Elfs… grow up!”… Imagine my vindication when they saw the first movie.
So if the game turns to be a turd, nothing will be sustracted from the books but if it’s great - I hope -, more people will get in touch with the books.
