As a James Bond fan, I will always raise my martini to the stewardship that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson brought to the world of 007. While their selective nature has prevented things like spinoffs from taking flight, I hadn’t realized how much of an effect that approach had on the world of Bond video games. So the fact that we have neither a new film or video game to speak for on the 2025 movie schedule is something that becomes a lot more understandable.
Barbara Broccoli Wanted Goldeneye 64’s Sequel To Go Gunless
During an appearance for the Grit podcast, former CEO of Activision-Blizzard Bobby Kotick made a pretty huge claim that I think we can all get behind. Citing Goldeneye 64 as “what actually sold the N64,” he talked about a project that was supposed to succeed Rare and Nintendo’s watershed tie-in video game. But as he began to lay out in his story, Kotick's frustrations sounded both familiar and understandable:
We made a sequel, and it was a challenging thing to make, because Barbara Broccoli did not really want anything that was violence. And she didn’t really want guns in the games. … We struggled with being able to actually get something done, that would be great. But I thought that making a Goldeneye sequel was a great idea.
Let’s all take a moment to breathe, and not shout at the top of our lungs about how a James Bond video game kind of needs gun play to be a somewhat accurate depiction of the character. I mean this is as odd as Nintendo’s Goldeneye 64 request to have all the enemies you “killed” during the game shown recovering in a hospital.
Also, now that this restriction has come to light, the existence of 007 Racing kind of makes even more sense. Though the partnership with Activision as the license holder for the franchise’s video game output seems a bit weird when keeping this in mind - especially with where gaming was going as Daniel Craig’s James Bond movies were in theaters.
Activision was nurturing Commander Bond’s digital adventures around the same time the Call of Duty series was gaining popularity. One would think this would be the perfect handshake between skillset and licensing. But even with that stock in trade, Bobby Kotick still understood Barbara Broccoli’s viewpoint, as seen in these continued comments on the matter:
What I’ll tell you is that she and her brother are great custodians for the IP, and I understood where she was coming from. She’s like, ‘You have kids that are gonna play it. So I don’t want guns. Can you do something other than guns?’, and I was like, ‘No, because the expectation is gonna be the original Goldeneye. That’s what we have to do.’
I presume that this “failed sequel” was eventually pivoted into one of Mr. Craig’s limited video game outings, Goldeneye Reloaded. Which, frankly, is only outweighed in weirdness by 007 Legends - as both games tried to remake previous non-Craig pictures with the man himself in the lead. But things are about to get weirder, so please save your voices. .
Even Further Restrictions On James Bond Video Games Made Things Rather Difficult
Before Activision had its moment in the digital sun, EA Games had the license for James Bond video games - which led to some brilliant efforts, like the ever collectible game Everything or Nothing. So having that company’s former Chief Creative Officer Bing Gordon on hand for this conversation gave us all even more context behind these particular woes.
Gordon and Bobby Kotick both compared notes at this point in the conversation. Which, as you’ll read below, included these notes from meetings between both developers and the EON Productions brass:
- Bing Gordon: "At EA, what we heard was no fragging, you can’t shoot anybody in the back, and there always had to be a big water scene at the beginning of the game. It was like, ‘Ok, well we can put up the water scene, but you can’t do an open world shooter where you can’t shoot somebody from all 360-degrees.’"
- Bobby Kotick: "No, it started with, ‘No shooting.’ … I went to the meeting, I was like, ‘[It’s] not gonna work.’"
So much for my dream game in which a James Bond battle royale allows everyone to play as legendary heroes, villains and various characters. The fact that IO Interactive’s upcoming game Project 007 has been radio silent for some time all of a sudden makes a lot of sense too, as these notes may have been limiting the gameplay while Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson were still in charge.
While there have been more combat-limited titles, like the mobile game Cypher 007, we've seen a gaming drought the likes of which has never experienced. For Bing Gordon, that's even more understandable, as like it or not, his citation of fans knowing guns in Goldeneye like gear heads know the cars in their favorite racing games is 100% correct.
I could see this as another reason why EON Productions has ceded creative control over James Bond to Amazon-MGM Studios. Between trying to get James Bond 26 off the ground and a developing video game set to tell a new origin story for 007, the pressures of maintaining the brand must have become quite intense.
So while I’ll without question miss EON Productions’ command of the James Bond narrative, I’m also excited that producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman may have some more fun with video game projects, while acting as the 00-gatekeepers. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see, as Bond 26 and Project 007 have no clear production or release dates in mind.
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