The Future of 007 in Gaming

"When is the next James Bond game being released?" my mother asked this evening during dinner. In seven months, it'll have been three years since 007 Legends launched, the last installment in the James Bond video game franchise. It was a question that I have been asking myself for two years, since Activision lost the Bond license after having acquired it from EA seven years prior. It's also a question that I remain unconvinced will ever be answered.

Let's wind the clocks back three decades; in 1983, Parker Brothers released the first official video game based on the James Bond series, launched on 8-bit platforms such as the Atari 2600, Sega SG-1000 and even the Commodore 64 home computer. It was a simple side-scrolling video game that put players in control of Bond's versatile personal vehicle to take out enemies and dodge obstacles. It inspired the development and launch of ten subsequent titles in the coming decade from Mindscape, Domark, Interplay and THQ.

Fast forward four years from THQ's 16-bit Sega exclusive title and we arrive at the year 1997, a strong, remembered and favored year in the gaming community. In 1997, Nintendo published GoldenEye 007, a modernized first person shooter exclusive to their platform, the Nintendo 64. GoldenEye, having been developed based on the 1995 film of the same name, was developed by Rare, a subsidiary of Nintendo at the time, and was credited as having revolutionized the genre with their work on the game. Despite an initially unsuccessful demonstration at E3 that same year, GoldenEye was met with commercial and critical success, having won numerous awards, was the third best selling game on the Nintendo 64 and remains one of the highest rated games of all time. You would be hard pressed to find someone in the gaming community who hasn't played GoldenEye. Not only was the game an undeniable success, but it set the standard for future developments of the same genre and still remains as an inspiration for many.

In 1999, Electronic Arts acquired the license to develop the next installment in the franchise and spearheaded their future with Tomorrow Never Dies, based on the film of the same name. They followed this pattern with The World Is Not Enough before branching out with original scripts and stories starting with 007 Racing, a PlayStation exclusive in 2000. It was met with mixed reviews, with its highest score being an 8/10 from GameZone, but its lowest score was a 2/10 from EDGE, with both scores being at complete opposite ends of the spectrum. 007 Racing was the first strictly in-car experience in the franchise since The Spy Who Loved Me in 1990. Despite the mixed and often poor reviews, the game was popular within the James Bond fan community and even garnered a petition for a sequel. A sequel was rumored to be in development by IGN fifteen years ago, shortly after the release of 007 Racing in 2000, but not a single update was made toward the rumor and all if any progress made would have been scrapped when Electronic Arts lost the license to Activision in 2006.

Now, if I may pause time for a brief moment, while Electronic Arts did not exactly replicate the commercial and critical success of Nintendo's GoldenEye, their subsequent releases were met with mostly positive reviews from numerous sources and were all mostly well received within the fan community, except for GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, which was intended to be a spin-off of the franchise, and was the first game since 007 Racing to receive mixed reviews. GoldenEye: Rogue Agent resurrected dead Bond villains and threw them into a half-arsed, crossover plot based on someone's dream to play a villain in the Bond universe.

Electronic Arts released one of the most well-received James Bond games ever made in 2003, Everything or Nothing. A primary factor in its success was the original script and voice acting and facial likeness of popular Hollywood actors; Pierce Brosnan reprised his role as 007, Willem Dafoe was cast as the primary villain as well as Heidi Klum, Shannon Elizabeth and pop singer, Mya as Bond girls. Subsequently, the final game from Electronic Arts, From Russia With Love, followed in a similar fashion; while the game was primarily based after the 1963 film, the characters in the game were all modeled after their film actors, with the inclusion of Maria Menounos as a new villain and Natasha Bedingfield as a new Bond girl.

Now, back in 2005, with Daniel Craig officially announced as the new 007, Electronic Arts scrapped an in-development, original title based on Pierce Brosnan and quickly created the adaptation of From Russia with Love while they still had the go-ahead to use the likeness of previous Bond actors before Daniel Craig officially signed the contract. In parallel, they had also started working on a tie-in game for the 2006 film release of Casino Royale.

Even before the cameras started rolling, EA had access to virtually everything - shooting script, location information, production and costume designs - which enabled development a few months ahead of Daniel Craig shooting his first scenes as Bond. Concept artwork for Casino Royale and even 3D models were completed before the From Russia With Love adaptation hit shelves. Unlike Activision's eventual title 'Quantum of Solace' in 2008, that included missions based on Casino Royale, EA had planned to set the game in similar gameplay fashions like their blockbuster title, Everything or Nothing.

With an expectation to release the game on the current video game platforms then (Xbox 360 and PS3,) the same day the movie hit theatres, it was leaked that in January of 2006, nine months before Casino Royale's theatre debut, the video game tie-in was cancelled. News of the game's existence then became widely known once the tea was spilled and a few months later in May that year, a bombshell was dropped on the Bond gamers, that Activision was taking over the license, even though EA extended theirs until 2010. It was a prime example of money talking when it was detailed that Activision paid $50 million for the rights. Seven years later, Activision still did no better than EA had.

In seven years, Activision had 'technically' released five titles, with one being a reimagining of a previous title and another being a port of that same reimagining. With the start of their owning the license, Activision released Quantum of Solace in 2008, which was to serve as a tie-in to Casino Royale's sequel film with some scenes in-game based on Daniel Craig's debut. A nice slap in the face toward EA, I think. Nothing like adding injury to insult. It was met with mixed reviews, having been criticized for feeling like a cheap, Call of Duty clone in both single player and online multiplayer.

Subsequently, Activision released a reimagining of GoldenEye 007 exclusive to the Nintendo Wii, later ported to the Xbox 360 and PS3, that saw Daniel Craig take the role of Bond in a 'modernized' version of the 1997 classic, with a handful of changes. It was well received but rightfully criticized for not being a modern port, but instead a reimagining that managed to exclude what made GoldenEye a success thirteen years prior.

Within the fan community, Activision already had two strikes against them. I remember reading quite a bit of backlash on the MI6.co.uk community forums as well on CommanderBond.net that criticized Activision for snatching the license away from EA and doing a much worse job. The plot thickened with the release of Blood Stone, which was my personal favorite since EA's Nightfire, but while it was met with mixed to positive reviews from critics, the fan community was just as well. While most people disliked Quantum of Solace as well as GoldenEye Reloaded, the community was split in two over Blood Stone, with some, myself included praising the game for actually feeling more like a James Bond game and not like an espionage based Call of Duty, the release of Blood Stone was a leading factor in the closure of its development studio, Bizarre Creations, well known for the Project Gotham Racing series.

Blood Stone was the first game since Everything or Nothing to feature an original story that also featured a new character, played by famous singer Joss Stone, who also performed the theme song for the title. It featured third person gameplay as well as driving sequences in the Aston Martin DBS and the DB5, but featured more than a handful of plot holes, discrepancies and an open-ended cliffhanger that called for a sequel.

Activision's final installment before having lost the license to the Bond games was 007 Legends and that was, in a manner of speaking, the straw that broke the camel's back. 007 Legends was innovative, at best, but effortless at worst. With Skyfall on the horizon to be released, 007 Legends came off as nothing more than a final cash grab before inevitability kicked in. 007 Legends featured five missions from five different Bond films (all with Daniel Craig's likeness) including Goldfinger, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Moonraker, License to Kill, Die Another Day and released as subsequent downloadable content after the film's launch, Skyfall.

007 Legends was a bonafide failure and even questioned to be a joke, with its poorly made and insulting final box art. IGN accused the game of drowning out the Bond series' iconic moments by shoehorning them into a cheap and poorly made Call of Duty clone, further adding that the gameplay was boring and repetitive and that production had only made a half-hearted attempt to bind the chosen recreation of films together, and that the lack of overarching story offered little incentive to keep playing. Game Informer was similarly critical of the game, describing it as "a mess of a title that’s uninspired at best and nearly broken at worst", and while the review applauded the concept of remaking films in video game form, it also attacked the gameplay mechanics as overly-simplistic with the player following on-screen prompts to perform certain actions, which was broken up by "truly awful" stealth gameplay. The Globe and Mail went so far as to question those choice of missions in the game, concluding that the game "feels like a low-budget knockoff of Call of Duty."

With Activision having lost the rights to developing future Bond games, it truly begs the question, "What will happen to the future of 007 in gaming?" The problem was, every subsequent game after GoldenEye in '97 tried to replicate the success without truly properly analyzing what made it so successful. From a gaming standpoint as well as a substantial James Bond fan, I personally feel that while EA couldn't achieve the same commercial success that Rare and Nintendo did with GoldenEye, their attempts at creating a solid James Bond experience were to be admired. There was only one true Bond game EA created that I personally didn't like, and that was GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. It was a cheap spin-off, had dull and unimaginative gameplay, but still managed to be fun at times. EA had a blockbuster hit with Everything or Nothing that truly felt like the ultimate Bond experience and the two predecessors, Agent Under Fire and Nightfire weren't that far off.

The issue I have with Activision is that since their fame for Call of Duty had established itself, the company became a one trick pony. They'd developed a formula that managed to generate them significant revenue yearly and manage to successfully milk that formula drier and drier. I couldn't care less, really. What I do care about is trying to implement that formula where it did not belong and that was the James Bond franchise. In lieu of that, the final legacy of the Bond games thus far has been a horribly negative one. With the rather unrightful loss EA was forced to take and the failure of Activision, it's understandable why no developer might want to touch the license at this point. There are some incredibly large shoes to fill since GoldenEye in 1997 and crafting a James Bond experience that is entertaining enough to appeal to a wide, varied audience without evolving into a generic, Hollywood style shooter and leaving the concept of 007 behind is indeed a challenge. Success is subjective but revenue is not; developers and publishers want to succeed, but would they rather appeal a specific fan base or appeal a broad gaming community? That is the true question and at this moment, I do not believe it is possible to do both without rewriting history like Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics are doing with Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider franchise, for example. With the new generation of Bond films heading into a more action based territory, what with Skyfall and SPECTRE, for example, I'm confident it'll get significantly easier in the future. But it does beg the question of whether or not there is a demand for more James Bond games, where you're restricted by 007's history, character, theme and lore, or is there simply a demand for action-adventure titles in general?

The truly unfortunate and tragic truth is that in lieu of this, we may never see a modernized port of GoldenEye 007 on current generation consoles like we did with Perfect Dark last generation. Despite the previous development of such, there were numerous legal issues surrounding it and the overall project may have been scrapped or indefinitely delayed. In addition, with Activision's Blood Stone having intended for a sequel, we will most likely never see one now that they've lost the license. It's rather depressing, given that Blood Stone truly had potential there and we're left with nothing but our own imagination.

To answer my mother's question at dinner, when she asked about the future of James Bond in gaming, I simply replied, "I don't know. I'm not sure I ever will." That, in itself, is truly depressing.