Movie-only game publisher 'Brash' debuts

Monday, June 04, 2007 -

According to trade papers, a new game publisher called Brash Entertainment has announced nearly half a billion in venture funding. Brash exists solely to adapt feature films and television properties into games, some of which don't make any sense at all.

It's already working on a dozen movie-based titles, including one based on Lionsgate's "Saw" franchise and another, sources confirmed, based on "300." First games will come out this holiday season. While Brash is remaining tight-lipped about its initial release slate, one title will almost certainly be tied to "Saw 3."

A torture porn game? Well, okay...I guess explotation knows no limits.

Variety writes that Warner Brothers is said to be the game companies distributor, which sounds a little odd. Not sure I would have went the route of using a movie studio as my distributor, but at least you won't have to worry about them pinching pennies when it comes marketing time and money. Given how long some films take to produce and the wait time between the end of post and opening in theaters, I can see the possibility of parallel development going on here for a simultaneous release.

I still have my concerns though, this is not a typical art-house game development company that spawned from somebody's garage. It has a board of directors and practically needs a bank of its own to store all that funding in. There's no way in hell a normal game company would need that much money, hell, you can still get away with a decent seller with a team of 15-20 people, 1-2.5 years of development time, and a couple million in funding.

You've got to think that Brash intends to take the Walmart approach to game development, putting dozens of teams together, trying to break and ship these things as fast as they do box office bombs. And that's probably a very apt relation, because these guys don't see to care about quality or purpose, they just want to capitalize on films to make money.

That places this company in direct conflict with the other companies they will be partnering with, the ones actually doing the development work.

Because so many of its operations are outsourced, Brash has a lean staff of about 50 people, many of whom are game producers with previous experience working on licensed titles.

This is a fantastic opportunity for small game companies to get sweet licensing deals they couldn't get within smelling distance of on their own, and a chance to establish themselves within the industry as a quality development house. Beyond that, the funding wouldn't be touch and go, meaning less stress and better resources.

Maybe it'll work out, maybe not. We'll just have to wait and see.

Topics: Games, Television, Film, Brash Entertainment

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