Uh, what? (Gaming)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, April 06, 2016, 22:29 (2941 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I don't think you have to be big to innovative or boundary pushing.

I suppose it's possible, but nearly all games that offer huge leaps are among the most expensive games in their respective genres at the time.

Games based heavily around narrative (Heavy, Rain, life is Strange etc) may be the exception, because writing a better story doesn't cost more money. But creating more sophisticated interaction definitely does.

This is generally a false claim. The bigger the game with the more money involved, the more likely it is to be less innovative and to stick to the formula that the company knows will make money. This is why Madden is the same + 1 feature every year. And CoD, and Tony Hawk, and Guitar Hero, etc etc etc.

Companies would rather ensure that they're going to get their money back.

It's why most MMORPGs in the last 10 years have been WoW clones in one way or another - WoW made money and the investment to make an MMO is huge. Stick with the winning formula, say the suits.

Now, you and I know that's *not* a winning formula, but the people who pull the strings in these matters - the purse strings - are not gamers. They don't understand, at all, what makes game X good and game Y bad. They're business people. When I worked at Activision our CEO was the former CEO of Maytag. She didn't know squat about gaming and she didn't care. She knew how to make shareholders happy, and that's all she did. "Oh, Ninja Gaiden is coming out for Xbox? Don't we have a ninja game? Awesome, push up Tenchu: Return from Darkness to release on the same day." Terrible stupid dumb awful decision making. But the shareholders ate it up. Competitor has ninja game? We have ninja game too! Stock wins! Of course, the quarterly report would show "surprising" losses and "disappointing" sales of the ninja game in question, but that report was months later and the new christmas lineup was announced just beforehand in order to temper a decline in market value.

But I digress.

The more money a company invests in their game, the more they want to guarantee success and ROI. The biggest budget games are almost never groundbreaking, or they're "groundbreaking" for AAA titles but are actually mimicking successful indie game mechanics of another game. This is a LOT like the film industry. Your tentpole films are almost all remakes or spin offs or sequels with straightforward plots and known IPs. Even massive films like Avatar they knew would be decent because (a) Cameron's history and (b) Pocahontas did pretty well and it's pretty much the same story.