Lord of the Rings needs to be ‘one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world,’ Embracer interim COO Matthew Karch said in a recent speech to investors that also dealt with restructuring the company itself.
I’d disagree, it doesn’t need to be a gaming franchise at all. It didn’t need to be films either, as much as I enjoyed them, not everything has to be franchised out and milked for all it’s worth.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could admire works of art and appreciate them for what they are instead of having vultures circle above looking to extract the very marrow of what makes it special.
I also recall an author (can’t remember the name) saying that Tolkien in fantasy was like mt Fuji in pictures of Japan. So iconic that it’s either in everything, or not having it be part of the picture seems intentional.
My point is that there could be effort made to develop new IP, new stories - and that if the effort was to be made to put a great game behind those stories, then even better!
LOTR just takes the air out of other fantasy IP, and there is always the risk that they just phone in the game dev bc they think being LOTR will be enough to sell it.
I believe that quote is from Terry Pratchett.
Yea! Thank you
Pretty sure this is why the Tolkien estate has historically been so tight fisted with the property. We all knew this would happen.
No, it doesn’t, I say.
A really good RTS like Battle for Middle Earth seems like such an obvious thing to make… Yet it has been 17 years…
We own Lord of the Rings, and we know we need to be exploiting Lord of the Rings in a very significant fashion and turning that into one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world.
(emphasis added)
The word choice here says it all. I have doubts they will make anything other than cash grabs with the LOTR IP.
Lord of the Rings is a story which everyone knows and has been done many times across movies and games.
Other stories set in Middle Earth though has huge potential as it’s a great fantasy world to play in.It’s similar to Star Wars in that we don’t need more stories about the Skywalker family, it’s a huge universe to explore other stories.
