Hollywood movie studios have yet to pay their talent according to how many "thumbs up" Ebert and Roper give their films. But Warner Brothers has begun charging video game publishers that license its brands a fee that fluctuates according to what reviewers think of their games. The result, insists Jason Hall, senior vp of Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, will be better games.

Reaction to the Warner Bros. strategy were part of the buzz at the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo, the industry's premiere gathering, by publishers and developers, held in Los Angeles.

"The game industry has had its time to exploit movie studios all day long and to get away with producing inferior products," says Hall. "But, with Warner Brothers, no more. Those days are over. And we mean it. This isn't just lip service. Honestly, the bad games are over."

The problem, according to Hall, is if game publishers license Warner Brothers intellectual properties and then build low-quality games, which not only degrades the intellectual property involved but contributes to the bad reputation among gamers of titles made from movies.

Hall's strategy now is to turn to game review Web sites -- such as GameRankings.com, Metacritic.com, and GameStats.com -- that aggregate scores given to games by critics at game sites and magazines. Games based on Warner Bros. licenses must achieve at least a 70% rating, or incur an increase in royalty rates.

"An escalating royalty rate kicks in to help compensate us for the brand damage that's taking place," says Hall. "The further away from 70% it gets, the more expensive the royalty rate becomes. So, frankly, if the publisher delivers on what they promised -- to produce a great game -- it's not even an issue."

But it is an issue for some game publishers, including Atari, whose slate of recent titles includes a game based on Warner Bros.' "The Matrix Reloaded" called "Enter The Matrix." (The shooter title scored 66.8% on GameRakings.com for the PC version and 66.9% for the PlayStation 2 version.)

"We sold four million copies. That's $250 million worldwide," declares Bruno Bonnell, Atari's chairman and CEO. "That's what a big major motion picture makes. And Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70%? Are they joking?"

But Hall would only comment that "sales don't equal quality."

Michael Lafferty, senior editor at GameZone.com, adds that "Enter The Matrix" had huge sales, but "mostly because of the strength of the movie. Even though critics panned it, gamers bought it anyway because they loved the movie."

Nevertheless, Atari's Bonnell says he is firm on his position: "I will never, ever sign this sort of agreement, which effectively insults our business."

Bonnell maintains that Atari does its very best to make great games that are faithful to the movie property. "Are we proud of everything we do? In most cases, yes," he says. "Do we fail sometimes? Sometimes. Do we feel we have to pay because we fail and because the ratings reflect that? No, absolutely not."

While other publishers agree with Hall's goal to make better games, none indicate an interest in following his lead.

"We understand what Jason is saying and we have the same concerns, but I don't think that's the way Disney would want to go about it," says Graham Hopper, senior vp and general manager of Buena Vista Games, which builds video games based on the brands of the Walt Disney Studios. Hopper explains that reviewers don't always know how to critique games designed for very young players. And so, ratings aren't a good barometer of game quality, although sales are, Hopper contends. "Sales are the consumer voting for what they think of a game. If we disappoint the consumer, that person won't come back again to buy the Disney brand."

"I think Jason's idea is an interesting one," Hopper adds. "And maybe he's doing this just to get people to pay attention to the issue of quality. But, I assure you, few developers go in with the intention of producing a bad product."

Not intentionally, perhaps, but Jason Hall says that publishers do cut corners if they think they can get away with it.

"I come from the games industry and I know this to be true. I call it production triage," he explains. (Prior to joining WBIE, Hall founded Monolith Prods. and worked at Edmark Corp. and Broderbund Software.) "If a game is running late, an analysis takes place. Someone at the publisher says, 'We know that, based on the strength of the license, we will sell X number of units. So we're going to clear our marker regardless. Why should we spend an extra $400,000 to fix this problem?' And then the game goes out, it hits the sales goal, but the quality suffers. They would never have done that if it was an original product because then they wouldn't have the license to lean on. They'd have to make a good product."

As a result, Hall says, original products typically rate much higher in the rankings than do licensed products because publishers put more time and effort into making them great.

At Eidos Interactive, senior producer Mike Wallis says he's not surprised by Warner Bros.' policy because "properties are the lifeblood of the Hollywood studios and, when a software company makes a half-assed version of their motion picture title, it hurts the studio."

Wallis believes that if he were to sign a license agreement with Warner Bros., it would force him to take an extra look at the product to make certain that all the bugs are removed and that the game isn't released prematurely.

"I've been in the industry a long time, and I know that when a game comes out and it's buggy, that alone will prompt reviewers to lower their score by 10% or 20%. If publishers were to look at the games with more of an eagle eye during the QC process, if they took a few more weeks and ironed out the bugs, if they were then able to put out a higher-quality product, everyone would benefit."

But, at Magic Hat Software, a Westwood, MA.-based developer, marketing vp Laura Nixon suggests that the subjectivity of game reviews may not be the best barometer of a game's quality.

"Reviews can be affected by a game's marketing budget, by the effectiveness of the public relations people, by the genre of game the reviewers like and don't like," she said. "Why doesn't Warner Bros. just sit down and play their own games? I would think that's the best way to tell whether they are good or not."

GameZone's Lafferty, a reviewer himself, has qualms about using aggregate scores to judge a game's quality. He sees developers shying away from risk-taking, preferring instead to make games similar to those ranked high in the past. In fact, at the E3 show recently, it was evident to him that publishers are already leaning toward sequels rather than being innovative.

"What will the incentive be for developers to step outside the envelope if they're being judged on review scores?" he asked. "If they try something new and it's critically panned, they'll revert back to what's worked in the past."

While Jason Hall says he hasn't discussed his strategy with any other movie studios, he hopes they will take steps in their own way to insure the quality of their brands. If so, he expects not only better games to result, but less interference from the studios in the game production process and additional opportunities for unproven developers to license movie properties.

"If a game maker agrees to produce a quality game contractually, that's all we need to know," he says. "It alleviates the pressure and the desire on the part of the studio to jump in and make sure things are going well. I mean, why should we when we know that things are going well? It's in the contract."

Paul "The Game Master" Hyman was the editor-in-chief of CMP Media's GamePower. He's covered the games industry for over a dozen years. His columns for The Reporter run exclusively on the Web site.