Are game that bomb a blessing in disguise for franchise?

[Specter Von Baren]

Others have already pointed out how the theory doesn't work since a bomb can more often just kill off a series rather than force a shift but I would say that a major bomb can force a positive shift in general.

One can look at E.T. and how that game forced the industry to make huge changes, with Nintendo's entire philosophy seeming to have been shaped around avoiding the crash that E.T. helped happen.

So I think in that sense, a game bombing can be a signal to the industry that change and innovation needs to happen.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

You really shouldn't lump professional reviewers and youtubers into the same boat. Its like news papers and tabloids all being combined under the heading of media.

Anyway, what games should be getting no higher then 70? The farcry series? Assassins Creed? COD? Battlefield?

BotW did change things up pretty decently, but before then the gameplay for Zelda was very similar, even the items in the games tended to be pretty similar, with the new stuff not being as useful as the old stuff.

What do you mean proprietary media formats? And what are they not an excuse for?

Ass Creed, Battlefield, CoD, Far Cry, Madden, etc. pretty much any long running Activision/EA/Ubisoft franchise gets churned out like they’re coming off of an assembly line where every so often there’s perhaps a minor design update. Other studios are more often the ones who try and push the tech/art/design bar in some way, and it shows in the extended development time (see most Sony 1st parties, indie, FROMSOFT, Rockstar although they’re milking every teet in sight with GTA in the meantime).

I feel kinda sorry for developers working under the big publishers as their work is forced into this kind of cash grind pattern and it ends up becoming a victim of itself thanks to big pub schedules they need to keep.

Nintendo uses unconventional storage formats on their consoles which are more expensive to make (giving them an excuse to charge more), less user-friendly and solely to their benefit. Maybe it’s changed a bit as they’ve apparently adopted more digital distribution though.

 

[BrawlMan]

Maybe it’s changed a bit as they’ve apparently adopted more digital distribution though.

Change for the worse.

Nintendo Switch Online price finally revealed and fans are furious - Dexerto

Furious fans have taken to social media after Nintendo announced the price of their new Nintendo Switch Online expansion pack.

www.dexerto.com

​

 

[Worgen]

Ass Creed, Battlefield, CoD, Far Cry, Madden, etc. pretty much any long running Activision/EA/Ubisoft franchise gets churned out like they’re coming off of an assembly line where every so often there’s perhaps a minor design update. Other studios are more often the ones who try and push the tech/art/design bar in some way, and it shows in the extended development time (see most Sony 1st parties, indie, FROMSOFT, Rockstar although they’re milking every teet in sight with GTA in the meantime).

I feel kinda sorry for developers working under the big publishers as their work is forced into this kind of cash grind pattern and it ends up becoming a victim of itself thanks to big pub schedules they need to keep.

Nintendo uses unconventional storage formats on their consoles which are more expensive to make (giving them an excuse to charge more), less user-friendly and solely to their benefit. Maybe it’s changed a bit as they’ve apparently adopted more digital distribution though.

That is still a bad way to do it. You don't want to explicitly rate games based on other games. Pretty much every single game is just a variation of pong anyway.

Why, they probably have the most stable employment of anyone in the games industry. It might not be the most artistically fulfilling but they probably don't have to worry much about the studio being down sized after a product ships and before the next one comes in.

A good reason to use a more proprietary format is to make piracy harder.

 

[BrawlMan]

Why, they probably have the most stable employment of anyone in the games industry. It

A company that's more than willing to support and protect sexual harassers, rapists, or racism I would not exactly call stable in the work environment. Especially if said company or company support heavy crunch time and work there employees to death or insanity.

 

[Worgen]

A company that's more than willing to support and protect sexual harassers, rapists, or racism I would not exactly call stable in the work environment. Especially if said company or company support heavy crunch time and work there employees to death or insanity.

Not talking about that, that is a different kinda thing all together. But its not uncommon for devs to have to can a lot of staff between projects since they aren't sure when the next job will happen and having a ton of programmers and artists on payroll doing nothing can really drain the coffers. A big IP with yearly entries won't have that same staffing downsizing, at least to the same degree since they will need to be always ready for the next entry.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I'm not going to go look up any figures, but I'd bet a dollar to a bent dime that a bad sequel has killed more franchises than have been saved by one. For instance: Nobody's lining up to make a new Thief game after the travesty that was Thi4f.

It can go either way. If an IP is established/popular enough, a bad entry can be taken as a lesson in what NOT to do; they right the ship, and the next iteration improves, versus a new/middling franchise that missteps and gets chalked up as a loss not worth recouping with another attempt at it.

My example is The Darkness. The first game was stellar across the board, a new IP sleeper hit that was largely overshadowed by concurrent releases of more popular franchises at the time. The sequel, combined with a new developer, tried to do too much "like everyone else," and was completely tonally dissonant from its predecessor (I'll never be able to wrap my head around the cel shading,) and I'm pretty sure the [potential for a ] franchise is dead as a result, which is a shame.

 

[BrawlMan]

Not talking about that, that is a different kinda thing all together.

Not really. That's still a problem and does not make a work environment stable, if it's there. Even if I take the racism and sexual harassment out of the equation, they're still the heavy crunch. That causes stress that any changes delays a game further and puts more pressure on minds that have been brought to the breaking point. There's a reason why each and every Assassin's Creed has been lackluster or shot with a whole bunch of bugs and programming issues. Everyone's literally programming on an assembly line with some of the worst coding imaginable. They take all these "if" n' "and" statements for programming and don't hook them together in advance ways and have shoddy programming. That's why these games are so crappy at the start or the major updates later. But costly rushed out and not giving the time or care that much. Or only given in the care to the most extraneous or shallow things like DLCs and bad micro transactions.

Ubisoft survey finds 20% of employees ‘don’t feel fully respected or safe’ | VGC

While 25% have witnessed or experienced workplace misconduct over the past two years…

www.videogameschronicle.com

 

[BrawlMan]

The sequel, combined with a new developer, tried to do too much "like everyone else," and was completely tonally dissonant from its predecessor (I'll never be able to wrap my head around the cel shading,) and I'm pretty sure the [potential for a ] franchise is dead as a result, which is a shame.

Because the games are based off of a comic book. The cel-shading was done to make it match the comic book aesthetic. This is nothing new in a trend that had been going on since the early to mid 2000s. When cel-shading really took off in the late 90s and early 2000s with early 3D gaming. I personally don't agree with it myself, but the cel-shading actually look pretty good all things considered.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Because the games are based off of a comic book. The cel-shading was done to make it match the comic book aesthetic. This is nothing new in a trend that had been going on since the early to mid 2000s. When cel-shading really took off in the late 90s and early 2000s with early 3D gaming. I personally don't agree with it myself, but the cel-shading actually look pretty good all things considered.

Yes, they're based off of the comic, but the first game wasn't cel shaded, and didn't need to be. It was damn-near perfect; the aesthetic change for the sequel was unnecessary and took away from the established dark tone of the previous game. I also know cel shading had garnered some popularity at the time (Borderlands,) so I can't help but feel it was an attempt from the new developer to try and capitalize on a craze, and shot themselves in the foot and the potential franchise in the head..

 

[Worgen]

Not really. That's still a problem and does not make a work environment stable, if it's there. Even if I take the racism and sexual harassment out of the equation, they're still the heavy crunch. That causes stress that any changes delays a game further and puts more pressure on minds that have been brought to the breaking point. There's a reason why each and every Assassin's Creed has been lackluster or shot with a whole bunch of bugs and programming issues. Everyone's literally programming on an assembly line with some of the worst coding imaginable. They take all these "if" n' "and" statements for programming and don't hook them together in advance ways and have shoddy programming. That's why these games are so crappy at the start or the major updates later. But costly rushed out and not giving the time or care that much. Or only given in the care to the most extraneous or shallow things like DLCs and bad micro transactions.

Ubisoft survey finds 20% of employees ‘don’t feel fully respected or safe’ | VGC

While 25% have witnessed or experienced workplace misconduct over the past two years…

www.videogameschronicle.com

Yes yes yes, I know some studios have issues like that, but this isn't about that. This is just saying that workers at studios with reliable yearly releases have more job security then most others in the industry.

 

[BrawlMan]

I also know cel shading had garnered some popularity at the time (Borderlands,) so I can't help but feel it was an attempt from the new developer to try and capitalize on a craze, and shot themselves in the foot and the potential franchise in the head..

For the record, borderlands is not true cel-shading.

Cel Shading - TV Tropes

Cel Shading is a style of computer rendering that replaces the shading gradient of conventional rendering with flat colors and shadows (as seen at right). In layman's terms, it imitates the look of hand-drawn artwork and animation. The style was …

tvtropes.org

Borderlands used black outlines and textures with penciled-in lines to give the game a stylized Comic Book-esque look, but the lighting and shading was done realistically. Borderlands 2, however, used a combination real-time filter and specially crafted textures to give the in-game world and characters the Comic Book-esque look, but had the lighting and shading exempted from the filter- this allows the characters to look comic book-esque, but keep lighting and shadows realistic, at the cost of high GPU load [1]. Gamers have found that turning off the filter (by tweaking the .ini file) reduced the comic book-esque effect to almost nonexistent, but it does make the game run smoother on lower end GPU hardware.

 

[BrawlMan]

This is just saying that workers at studios with reliable yearly releases have more job security then most others in the industry.

Yes, depending on your sex, race, or how high you are up on the totem pole.

 

[Worgen]

Yes, depending on your sex, race, or how high you are up on the totem pole.

>.> Then welcome to every job.

 

[BrawlMan]

>.> Then welcome to every job.

Don't forget that Blizzard and Activision are known to complain about how video games are too expensive to make, yet are more than happy to boast their profits and fire over 500,000 employees at the same time. And the only reason why they fired them is just to make a couple extra bucks. And a majority of these developers followed their directions to the ladder, and still got fired for petty or pathetic reasons. Remember that.

 

[Worgen]

Don't forget that Blizzard and Activision are known to complain about how video games are too expensive to make, yet are more than happy to boast their profits and fire over 500,000 employees at the same time. And the only reason why they fired them is just to make a couple extra bucks. And a majority of these developers followed their directions to the ladder, and still got fired for petty or pathetic reasons. Remember that.

Hence why I said mostly and probably. No job is totally safe and the games job market is more volatile then most.

 

[BrawlMan]

Hence why I said mostly and probably. No job is totally safe and the games job market is more volatile then most.

That's the exact problem. And I wouldn't say most, more like half. No more than that. Especially if we are talking about the AAA industry. I've seen more job security done right with AA, medium budget studios, and Indie Studios at this point.

 

[Worgen]

That's the exact problem. And I wouldn't say most, more like half. No more than that. Especially if we are talking about the AAA industry. I've seen more job security done right with AA, medium budget studios, and Indie Studios at this point.

A aaa studio is much more likely to give job security since they will usually have a new project to move to after they finish on one. AA studios are a wild crapshoot since it might take awhile to find a new project or get to the point where they really need expensive workers.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Yes, they're based off of the comic, but the first game wasn't cel shaded, and didn't need to be. It was damn-near perfect; the aesthetic change for the sequel was unnecessary and took away from the established dark tone of the previous game. I also know cel shading had garnered some popularity at the time (Borderlands,) so I can't help but feel it was an attempt from the new developer to try and capitalize on a craze, and shot themselves in the foot and the potential franchise in the head..

I wish some would have tried to make a horror game or movie like the WW1 hell from the first game. There's so much potential for a great horror game based on The Great War that can translate the real horribleness of that conflict to people.

 

[Gyrobot]

More game franchises are long overdue for bombs and proper critiquing. Looking at most of Activision, EA, and Ubisoft franchises in particular. Their monetizing and derivatively bland formulas that serve only to pad game length, let alone still being dished out in yearly/bi-yearly installments have gotten free passes for too long.

>Expecting services to ever fail.

They expect mediocrity and that's all that matters. It's like McDonalds and fast food, you don't eat because you love food, you eat because it's convenient and safe.