Cliffy B: Horror Genre Doesn't Fit the $60 Disc Market

[Timothy Chang]

Cliffy B: Horror Genre Doesn't Fit the $60 Disc Market

The former design director for Epic Games calls horror games "the ultimate Campaign Rental".

Horror can be an inconsistent genre for gamers: what is brown-pants material for one player might end up being a yawn-fest for another. After all, some of us have years of experience facing off against monsters, ghosts, demons, and beasts of all shapes and sizes. Game designer Cliff Bleszinski also thinks that horror is a hard market to address, and he states in a recent blog post that the genre may not be well suited for the physical marketplace.

On his personal Tumblr, he speaks out on EA's latest horror sci-fi title Dead Space 3, and adds the comment as an afterthought to his analysis of the game. "In the $60 disc based market horror doesn't fly - it's the ultimate 'Campaign Rental' that's played for 2 days and traded in and I'm sure EA knows this. When we're fully digital we'll see more true horror games coming back," citing Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Slenderman as examples.

"Horror is HARD, and suspense is even HARDER," he says. "It requires a true director's hand. A nudge this way and a moment plays as comedic, a nudge too far the other way and it's not scary at all. To compound it all, making a scary moment is kind of like trying to tickle yourself. You think it's scary, but you're never sure until you test it on someone who has NEVER SEEN THE MOMENT."

The post comes soon after original Dead Space writer Antony Johnston commented on action sequences being a "necessary evil in order to broaden the fan base" [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122046-Dead-Space-Writer-Sees-Action-As-Necessary-Evil], and that the shift in focus was an inevitable tack for the series. Cliffy B recognizes in his post that Dead Space has undergone a change in tone, and he says that players can choose to either shun the new direction or accept it. "I choose the latter," he says, "as at the end of the day it's FUN."


Source: Tumblr [http://dudehugespeaks.tumblr.com/post/42939895428/in-space-no-one-made-me-scream]

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[Vault101]

well thats just fucking stupid...

a good game is a good game regardless of its genre...if the length/content is fair then its worth $60

 

[StriderShinryu]

I'd say he's probably right. To make an actual horror experience akin to the seminal titles in the genre, you have to add so much extra stuff to them both in terms of extra modes but also extra gameplay styles that they end up not being horror experiences any more.

 

[Legion]

well thats just fucking stupid...

a good game is a good game regardless of its genre...if the length/content is fair then its worth $60

That isn't what he said at all.

He said that horror games are difficult to make, so when a company wants to make a $60 game and make a decent profit as well as impress a lot of people, it's often too challenging for developers to justify spending all the money on making it.

Seeing as most horror games are the kind of thing a lot of people play through once, and are done with it, due to the fact that once you know when or where something scary will happen, it won't be scary any more.

Developers don't want a game to be played once and then sold on or returned, they want you to keep playing it for a while and get all the DLC etc. This is much more difficult to do when the games such a difficult genre to make in the first place, and the kind of game that doesn't have a lot of replayability.

He is speaking from the perspective of the developers, not the players.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

...I'm not sure why people hate Cliffy B so much. Yeah, he can be a bit of a ponce, but what he's saying has some truth to it. Horror can't realy survive in the current AAA market. Wether it's the dev teams or the publishers enforcing it, whenever a AAA horror game is being made, they ruin the horror via massive setpices, oggly boogly monsters, powerful guns, etc. because they don't think it'll sell well without it. Resident Evil, FEAR, Silent Hill, Dead Space, etc. This has been going on since, what, Resi 4? Good as that game was, it wasn't really horror. It was action-horror. At least until the current publisher mindset passes, we can't really have a true horror game on the AAA market.

 

[VanQ]

Wow, he made an observation many people made long ago and he makes news for it just because he has a tacky nickname? There's a good reason that several indie developer are making some excellent horror games at the moment and it's taken the AAA industry this long to realise it?

And about the whole "fun" thing, you're saying it like it's a good thing that a game is less horrifying because it's more fun when they're supposed to be on the opposite ends of the emotion spectrum. A good horror game shouldn't be fun. It should be horrifying and it should make you not want to press on and check what's in the closet.

I'd much prefer my horror titles continue to come from teams that have a damn clue about what a horror experience should be. Hey Visceral, Dead Space is great but stop marketing it as a horror game, it just makes people raise an eyebrow when they actually play the game.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Wow, he made an observation many people made long ago and he makes news for it just because he has a tacky nickname? There's a good reason that several indie developer are making some excellent horror games at the moment and it's taken the AAA industry this long to realise it?

And about the whole "fun" thing, you're saying it like it's a good thing that a game is less horrifying because it's more fun when they're supposed to be on the opposite ends of the emotion spectrum. A good horror game shouldn't be fun. It should be horrifying and it should make you not want to press on and check what's in the closet.

I'd much prefer my horror titles continue to come from teams that have a damn clue about what a horror experience should be. Hey Visceral, Dead Space is great but stop marketing it as a horror game, it just makes people raise an eyebrow when they actually play the game.

I kind of interpreted Cliff's Dead Space comment more along the lines of there being a choice between calling Dead Space 3 a failed survival horror game or a fun game that is definitely not a survival horror game. I haven't even finished the original Dead Space yet (and haven't bought the sequels), so I can't really say which side of that line I'd fall on.

 

[FoolKiller]

Hmm... the guy responsible for my ultimate view of a campaign rental is saying the same about another genre. And things like this are why multiplayer gets stuck on everything. I played Gears for the equivalent of a weekend of gaming. After that, I was bored of cover, shoot, cover, shoot, cover, shoot.

He does have some good points. Good horror is hard to make.

 

[ASnogarD]

Its easier , and appeals to a more broader market to make a generic shooter rather than a specialized horror game.

You make it horror and it appeals to the smaller horror fanbase, and as Amnesia and Slender showed a true horror game really shines when you as the player cannot simply kill your enemies... which immediately takes out the majority of the gamer market place.
Dead Space 1 had a decent middle ground, you had weapons but Isaac wasnt really well suited to combat... you couldnt really bob and weave, it was more deliberate paced and relied on you being more efficient in tearing your target apart rather than twitch reflex skills... you couldnt simply charge in and blow everything away.

Dead Space 2 upped the action ante and made the game less scary as a result, I had a few jumps but didnt feel the same tension DS 1 had... it was more predictable, move forward have a set piece battle, collect loot move on.
It did manage to keep the deliberate pace and nature of the shooting the same as Dead Space 1, just there was a lot more of it and less tension building moments.

Dead Space 3 is not only more action but the deliberate pacing is greatly reduced... yes dismemberment is still efficient but your weapons are not so good at it anymore, the pick the target apart with well placed plasma cutter shots is gone you need to shoot a lot more to get a limb to fly off.
When the small aliens with 3 tentacles that shoot at you can take multiple line gun shots across all 3 tentacles and still live... it reduces the slow but deliberate pace of the game.
You cant pick a walker apart anymore with a few aimed shots with the plasma cutter anymore... its easier just to spam shots into the chest, and at the speed the monsters run at you in 3 you dont have time to pick off choice limbs to reduce your enemies ability to close in on you, or shoot (depending on the monster type).
Its hard to explain. In DS 2 you could use 3 shots to drop a walker fast, 1 leg ... swivel plasma cutter horizontally and shoot both arms off 1 shot each ... in DS 3 you need 3 shots to drop the legs alone, a Line Gun cant cut the legs off with a single shot let alone cut off the legs of a line of mobs.
The weapons are no longer precision tools that reward accurate placements, its more about spamming a lot of shots in the general area of the part you want to remove ... usually legs then upper body (YES even with damage up circuits installed, the plasma cutter cant seem to take off parts with a single shot anymore...even early game on NORMAL).

Dead Space 3 so far (4 hours in my game) is still a good game, I love the build weapon mechanic and the setting is great... I do miss the more deliberate pacing of the shooting mechanics, and miss my old plasma cutter (still have one equipped but rarely use it as it just takes too many shots to dismember a target, I use a Carbine with a underslung Line Gun for most of the targets ).

 

[Dryk]

I think it's less the $60 market and more the "We must spend millions and it must make back more millions" market that causes this

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

Horror is a far more personal experience than action or fantasy. The art-by-committee conveyer belt of AAA gaming is great for spectacle & mass-content, but to make something frightening requires the people making the game to be directly involved in the decision making.
Not a particularly new observation, but nice to see a mainstream dev making the point publicly

 

[Baresark]

Here comes Cliffy B, trying to stay relevant by jumping in the back of someone else's wagon. Oh wait, he just put that on his tumblr.... here comes the escapist trying to make Cliffy B relevant... Ok, sorry, I'll end this probably already long drawn out joke.

OT: First, I hardly think Cliffy B understands what he is talking about in this case. He is saying this because the games lack a MP mode he finds worth while. He also fails to understand (or at least remember) what game development was like when you didn't have $50 Million to make a game with. That is why they don't do horror or survival horror games anymore. They cannot appeal to everyone, so developers CANNOT spend $50 Million on them. It's basic math. If you make a game that appeals to only about 5% (made up number) of the total gaming audience, then at best you should look at spending 5% of the $50 Million. That is a good starting point anyway. The failures of big budget games like Warfighter makes me happy solely for reason. Companies have to be run on the basis of fiscal responsibility (like governments should). It's ludicrously stupid to do it any other way and that is where Triple A has started to fail. Now with the writer of Dead Space 3 coming forward and talking about the necessity of action for their game which cost them ridiculous amounts of money to make, it looks like people in the industry are starting to understand this concept, even if big publishers are not. Leave it to Cliffy B and miss the point. Sure it's cheaper for companies to release a game digitally (on the PC anyway, not so much for PSN or XBL), but you are still going to need a sick advertising budget to get your action game out there. Disc doesn't mean anything in this case.

 

[weirdee]

Wow, he made an observation many people made long ago and he makes news for it just because he has a tacky nickname? There's a good reason that several indie developer are making some excellent horror games at the moment and it's taken the AAA industry this long to realise it?

And about the whole "fun" thing, you're saying it like it's a good thing that a game is less horrifying because it's more fun when they're supposed to be on the opposite ends of the emotion spectrum. A good horror game shouldn't be fun. It should be horrifying and it should make you not want to press on and check what's in the closet.

I'd much prefer my horror titles continue to come from teams that have a damn clue about what a horror experience should be. Hey Visceral, Dead Space is great but stop marketing it as a horror game, it just makes people raise an eyebrow when they actually play the game.

a developer of a thing that is "popular" making any sort of logical conclusion is supposedly news in of itself