Disney CEO Bob Iger's Empire of Tech
fortune.com
fortune.com
Why has Disney struggled financially with games, even with the "CTO" Bob Iger? I ask because it's the only product Disney makes that is software in the strict sense, and I wonder why they can't make it work.
Disney Infinity helped get its interactive unit out of the red. That makes a lot of sense. For a game that apes Skylanders in many ways, it leverages Disney's character and brand portfolio in a way that can't be copied.
Its other successes are naked clones. Tsum Tsum and Frozen Free Fall are canonical tired as far as genres go. They too use Disney properties, but in the most straightforward and obvious ways possible.
I liked Where's My Water. It developed an original character too. I think it was financially viable for Disney, but I can't find conclusive evidence that it was.
It's definitely possible to develop a financially viable original title by handing big capital to great talent. The best parts of Infinity Ward left to found Respawn (Titanfall), and independent Bungie is not doing too bad with Destiny.
The real question is, why don't tentpole video game developers want to work with Disney? Why didn't Disney scoop up publishing contracts for Titanfall or Destiny? Why can't it find the J.J. Abrams of video gaming and put 'em in charge of Star Wars the video game?
The answer has to be more complicated than, "The games are violent." Like Star Wars isn't violent.
My feeling is, it's not about being technologically savvy. Bob Iger, I'm sure, understands that what Pixar does requires a lot of software.
I think they just don't play games, and don't yet get what makes them entertaining. I will share a little anecdote with you: A Disney executive, interviewing at a large, passionately successful video game company, scoffed at the quip that he didn't play the game. He argued that people who didn't play the game had something to contribute to the development of its business. Suffice it to say, he was wrong, and they didn't hire him.
Sure they play Skylanders and Candy Crush and get how to clone them. But they just don't play Modern Warfare, League of Legends or Starcraft. So they should stop expecting to make games that have as much mindshare as these huge titles.
It's going to cost them a lot of money before they realize that their tastes are basically the same as young children and low tech people when it comes to games. It's why big game developers will partner with Activision and Microsoft, and why Disney will not get the respect it could easily earn.
Games are stories, regardless of how you look at them. They're either stories you're told or stories you tell. League of Legends is a story you tell so it's the originality of the game that makes it. Starcraft is a story you're told, and truth be told in the intervening years between the original and its modern iteration the gameplay is stale and generic it's been cloned a dozen times, but the modern iterations are still fun an playable.
So I think you're right. They just don't play games.
You see a change in Disney's movies when John Lasseter takes over. He took over prior to Meet the Robinsons release, and at his behest they scrapped over 60% of the movie. It was the first thing Disney had put out in a long time that was actually a good story, and it did it by shirking conventions. He scrapped what would become Bolt entirely. From then on everything just got better.
Why? Because Lasseter loves movies, he loves stories.
Square Enix manages to use Disney characters, but they're doing it in a massively unconventional way. So the characters themselves aren't an issue, it's the way they're used in games.
Disney puts out movie tie ins and the only game that was decently received was Epic Mickey and instead of solving its flaws and building on it they tanked it with #2 by falling into sequel mania.
Honestly Disney needs to find out what story it wants to tell and tell it through a game. They've got enough franchises under their belt that they could find a story that people want to hear - they've been doing it all the time with movies lately.
Disney isn't going to be original in game play. It's too big, it's too slow. The only way it can be successful is to tell a good story, and it just doesn't try to put even it's B-material into its games.
Starcraft 2 continued a great story. People don't play through a dozen near identical levels for nothing. They do it because it unlocks more story. It worked for Brood War. It worked for Mass Effect.
Fallout 1 and 2 are still the best games in the entire franchise because of how tight their story was. To highlight the power of a good story, TES fans still frequently call Morrowind the best game in the series. Most of the talk over Skyrim is good graphics and gameplay mechanics - lots of which were inherited from mods from Morrowind.