Update 12/06/2022: Christopher Chancey, co-founder of Indie Asylum, contacted PC Gamer. Chancey said (opens in new tab), "There is absolutely no NFT in this game, and I can confirm that it was a deal breaker for us [at Indie Asylum] to work on a game where there is NFT." 'We're very excited about this,' Chancey said. [Bdfrent's shareholders have asked for our expertise because they are not from the gaming industry. We advised them to oppose the NFT and they have since withdrawn this completely."

Original article follows.

A Canadian developer has won exclusive rights to produce a video game based on the works and likeness of Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin, a filmmaker and actor, wrote, directed, and starred in dozens of films, and his character "Tramp" remains one of the world's most recognized icons of comedy. Chaplin is now revered by the film industry that once looked down on his work, and old clips and entire movies are now available on YouTube, giving Chaplin a modern audience.

The news comes via a CBS report on B Df'Rent Games of Quebec, which, along with Chaplin expert Yves Durand, successfully pitched the idea to Chaplin's estate. The conditions desired by the bereaved family were: "No violence. No sexism. No racism. Authentic storytelling."

Sounds like they thought they were being forced to make this movie in the mid-1990s, but let's just say it's okay.

"One of the fascinating things about Chaplin," says Robert Young, co-founder of B Df'Rent Games, "is that when you show Chaplin's films to young people, 10 to 15 years old, you still see people laughing today. 'What he did, how he expressed himself, how he moved. That lends itself very well to the game."

Hmm. The question remains as to how exactly that will translate into a video game, but at least those involved don't seem to be doing much more than laying the groundwork. Young believes that any project is a "social impact" video game, and is developing it with Indie Asylum, a Montreal "game cooperative."

"We've been working on it for five years, discussing it as a family. And it was much more about aligning our values with the Chaplin family than negotiating royalties," Young said. He later noted that although there is a perception that Chaplin films are only popular with older people, "over 200 million people a year watch Chaplin films on YouTube, and they are between the ages of 15 and 35."

"Nobody has ever played a video game with this intellectual property," says Christopher Chancey, co-founder of Indie Asylum. [There is an MS-DOS Charlie Chaplin game released by US Gold in 1988. It was a strange little thing, and a precursor to things like Lionhead's The Movies. You would play a "scene" as a well-dressed, well-dressed Chaplin in a playing card costume, and then edit it into a movie that the audience could approve or disapprove of. It was still a rarity at the time, but even today it is a valuable piece of work.

Anyway. Chauncey believes that the pandemic created a desire for unconventional games: "For a while, life was so stressful that it was rather depressing to keep playing video games with dark or mature themes." He adds that a potential Chaplin game could center on the divide between the poor and the rich.

Well, this is indeed strange, but strangely enough, that old DOS game shows that it is far from an impossible task. The hard part is capturing the essence of the man's moves (he is, after all, one of the greatest physical comedians of all time) and making the game actually funny, whatever you end up doing.

Unfortunately, I also bring bad news. While preparing this article, I looked into Indie Asylum and B Df'Rent. The former gives the impression of being a collection of small development studios. But in the case of B Df'Rent, the metacode on their official website (opens in new tab) has this killer sentence:

"B Df'Rent Games is a software publisher of little card adventure games for mobile devices. In the future, the company plans to release an NFT series based on the game's IP."

So... Yup. Not that I had high hopes, but I suspect the intent is more to involve such an iconic portrait in blockchain shenanigans than to actually make a great game based on his work. Perhaps what the Chaplin family should be worried about is violence.