Quoted from 27dnast:Believe it or not, anyone that touches licenses are bound to restrictions and protective actions/requests by the rights holder. That's how it works. Every circumstance is different... I doubt you would have heard the same response right after Zombie Y unleashed the awesomeness that is Ghostbusters.
I have no idea, I don't know anything about Ghostbusters development, but I do know I'd be way more interested in seeing Zombie Yeti do original illustrations, rather than drawing a bunch of movie actor faces. I know he said he had to redraw a lot of things for Iron Maiden because they kept asking for changes. Maybe that's for the best in the end, I dunno, since we didn't get to see the early stuff.
Frankly the Iron Maiden art doesn't really do it for me, because the parade of Eddie's from the comic books doesn't really capture the feeling of the original album art for me. Not ZY's fault, but that's what a licensing is like, you gotta work in their framework. He was drawing someone else's character, using their rules. Cool game, not hating, just saying the potential to be even greater was there. So it goes.
I'll say this though: Stern seems to be getter smarter, and picking licenses that will allow new art, and not the mess that was Game of Thrones. I know that was one was frustrating licensing hell for them, heard it first hand.
Those particular versions they do, yes. It's a license. Just like you can make an Alice In Wonderland game, but you can't make it look just like the Disney film.
Quoted from Rarehero:Something like Dialed In, Full Throttle or Oktoberfest...people will say “I’ll wait to play it to see if I like it enough to spend that much.”
I'm just gonna be blunt, those these suck to me. It's not that they're not pre-chewed nostalgia, it's that they're straight up not good themes. Mom Jeans Cell Phone Guy, Boring Motorcycle Racing, and Beer Polka Party aren't gonna sell games in and of themselves.
Taste is always subjective, no way everyone agrees with me about all the themes. But I do think those are all uphill battles to sell. Do a great package and any theme can work, White Water being an excellent example, but that hit on all cylinders. Takes a lot of good work to do that. The music alone in that game is genius.
Oktoberfest looks fun. The art is whatever, you can get past it for a good game if you don't care for it. It's something to talk about on a forum, not any kind of end of the world for the game. But I think they need to nail the sound package for instance, they need to hit all the marks for the whole game to win over the big crowd of buyers.