When Peter Jackson released his Lord of the Rings trilogy in the 2000s, the pictures were a cultural phenomenon. They were so popular that various games were made about them, cementing the franchise’s status as one of the greatest ever. Now, Amazon owns the rights to J. R. R. Tolkien’s source material and looks set to develop an even greater franchise than what came before.
Alongside the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power this year, there are numerous planned games for a variety of devices. This new offering could follow in the footsteps of other major successes like Game of Thrones and cast a vast net across the entertainment industry to catch viewers.
Modern Franchise
Model Uses Various Platforms
In the cutthroat world of the modern television model in which numerous streaming platforms are battling for viewers’ attention, simply offering a great series is no longer sufficient. Production companies have to commission related content across other forms of media to market the shows to more people, and the best way to do this is through games.
The mobile gaming market has been a revelation for franchises, and this is something that didn’t exist when Jackson’s pictures hit screens. If it had been around in a more meaningful manner, the offerings may have attracted even more attention. Recent films like Jurassic World have made good use of the mobile games market, with titles like Jurassic World Alive and Jurassic World: The Game both available for Android. The model clearly worked, as the movie from Colin Trevorrow cleaned up at the box office and raked in more than $1.6 billion.
Another sector that was only just starting to take off during the 2000s was the online casino market. This has also been a lucrative place for franchises to market their offerings. Game of Thrones is the best-known example of a television series that expanded into slots, with the Microgaming game ranking among the most played ones at real money casinos like LeoVegas. Players can get £100 and 50 free spins when they sign up at the site, which has been referred to as the king of online and mobile casinos. The LeoVegas mobile app is available for Android, which means that the GoT franchise has an even wider presence.
Gollum Game is the
Next Offering
It won’t be surprising to see more mobile and casino games based on Lord of the Rings coming out soon alongside the Amazon series. After all, the new offering is supposed to be Amazon’s answer to Game of Thrones, so the company will want to replicate that franchise model wherever possible. It will also be hoping to better it, though, and this could come in the form of producing titles that never existed for Game of Thrones. For instance, fans of the HBO
series were crying out for a sprawling open-world epic set in Westeros, but it never came to fruition.
There have already been various console games set in Middle Earth, and these have highlighted the endless scope for large-scale games set in Tolkien’s extensive fantasy world. The next one in the pipeline is The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, a new action-adventure game being developed by Daedalic Entertainment. It focuses on the legendary character in a prequel story set before the events of Tolkien’s novels.
That leaves plenty of scope for what could happen in the game, and it is likely to attract a high number of players who want to learn more about the character and why he became so obsessed with the ring. The game will be available across a wide range of devices, including Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
If developers are working on a Gollum game, that means there is endless potential for other titles in the Lord of the Rings universe for studios to focus on. Different characters like Aragorn and Boromir could be explored, or there could be more of a focus on new characters from the upcoming Amazon series.
There’s not long to wait now for the new Rings of Power series, and expectations are high for this big-budget series. It is wise to expect the modern franchise model to enlarge this series and market to a vast number of viewers.
2022-08-26 15:11:01