Syndicate Was a "Lost Battle From the Get-Go"

[Dogstile]

Its fucking SIMPLE.

You make a it an RTS.

It shows a global screen like XCOM.

You command your troops like FROZEN SYNAPSE.

You control your domain like CIVILIZATION

How hard is that to do? I made this up in 30 SECONDS.

How hard is it to program? To get the mechanics working together? To get an overarching storyline? To balance resources? To scale difficulty? To program decent Civ level AI on the map and on the field?

Tell you what, here's an example. Creative Assembly have been trying this for years and it only really started working in TW: Napoleon. Even then the battle AI is still crap, money is still either ridiculously hard to come by or comes by so much that you never feel challenged and the on map AI is stupid.

^^^^^

See that, that is every game programmers reaction. This includes me and more than likely every person i've ever studied with. What really happened is that the studio that made this is more than likely accustomed to making shooters so they decided they'd stick with what they are good at.

 

[ASan83]

You don't say. In other news, water is wet.

 

[GonzoGamer]

It didn't look too bad. If it had splitscreen I might have checked it out.
But it seems that EA thinks we all sit alone in our basements.

 

[Tamrin]

A 'Risk'? A RISK? You took a RISK on a paint by the numbers cookie cutter shooter? That's why we hated it, idiot, not because it was different - because it was generic.

The way he is defending the failure of this game is like saying they were in a "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation from the start and I think that's a crappy copout.

I remember on escapist podcast the question of whether or a not you prefer a developer being innovative or just playing it safe. Syndicate wasn't a terrible game, but it was a terrible letdown because they thought they were being innovative turning Syndicate into a shooter. The problem is you can turn something into anything but that isn't going to make your IP innovative, it's what you do after deciding what to turn your IP into that decides whether your being innovative or not.

I don?t think you can say Syndicate wasn?t an innovative game because it was turned into a shooter, you can say it wasn?t innovative because as a shooter it didn?t do anything new or crazy. In some aspects of the game they actually did less than generic.

 

[-Dragmire-]

According to CEO, Mikael Nermark, the negative press was guaranteed the second the game took up the Syndicate name.

"We knew from the get-go that there was going to be a small but very vocal [group] of gamers and journalists that was going to hate us whatever route we took," he told Edge. "If we didn't do an exact copy of the game, they'd hate us. If we did do an exact copy, they'd say we didn't innovate. They were never ours to win; it was a lost battle from the get-go."

I... I just don't get it. If the response was guaranteed to get a negative response based on the name... WHY did they choose to name it that!? I'm pretty sure the corporate run future setting isn't tied to the Syndicate name with barbed wire or money, there was no need or incentive to tie their shooter with that name. Quite the opposite in fact.

 

[Dryk]

You decided you wanted to give fans the finger and try to tap a bigger market. It didn't work. How about admitting you fucked up?

"If we didn't do an exact copy of the game, they'd hate us. If we did do an exact copy, they'd say we didn't innovate."

False dichotomy. Look at Human Revolution, the new X-COM, Fallout. It can be done you just didn't want to try.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

A 'Risk'? A RISK? You took a RISK on a paint by the numbers cookie cutter shooter? That's why we hated it, idiot, not because it was different - because it was generic.

lol'd at this too. just....ugh, don't wanna say "fucking idiots", but it would fit all too well. Making a generic cookie cutter shooter doesn't mean you took any "risks", the only risk you took was following the leader of cookie cutters and gamers are finally getting tired of it.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

To be fair, we *are* talking about Starbreeze. A dev known for its passable visuals and passable gameplay.

EXCEPT FOR ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY, BUT BUTCHER BAY HAD VIN FUCKING DIESEL IN IT. I DON'T GIVE A F*crow caw*CK.

Yeah, I honestly wasn't surprised to see it tank. EA chose the wrong dev for the wrong project, handled with the wrong director with the wrong ideas.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

There is a middle ground between remaking the exact same thing over and over and just slapping a recognizable name onto something completely different. People like what they like and a little consistency is not too much to ask for.

 

[oldtaku]

"We knew from the get-go that there was going to be a small but very vocal [group] of gamers and journalists that was going to hate us whatever route we took," he told Edge. "If we didn't do an exact copy of the game, they'd hate us.

Eh, it wasn't just 'a small but very vocal group of people' who noticed that all the psi techniques were just badly disguised guns.

Guess what - I wasn't one of those old Syndicate fans, and I still thought you completely blew a great premise on a competent but generic FPS.

As other people have said here, Deus Ex: HR completely nullifies any such excuses you might have. There were not enough people who played the old Syndicate to sabotage your game. Self inflicted.

 

[Rednog]

As a person who knew nothing about the original Syndicate and had 0 expectations going in I was obscenely disappointed. The game just wasn't fun. The co-op was clunky and was basically hold down the hack button to keep your teammates perpetually healed and win. Seriously we're in 2012 and you still have enemies that essentially spawn out of no where and damn near infinitely.

 

[ultrachicken]

Syndicate had clunky, gimmicky gampeplay and a terrible story. If they had fixed that, then the game would have sold well regardless of the brand.

 

[Zhukov]

Yeah, real big risk rebooting a classic as yet-another-bloody-FPS.

I didn't like the original and I still think the reboot sucked.

They made a meh game and got a meh response. This is the way things should be.

 

[Tradjus]

I really have to ask why the hell they bothered. Seriously, he says it -right there-, "The actual fans of the series ( He dismisses them as a tiny minority, of course ) were going to hate us because we didn't make it the same as the original game."
Ok then, why did you tie it too the original game at all then? No one besides the fans of the series was really going to be interested in buying this game, it looked like another in the line of a thousand cookie cutter FPS games that have been spewed onto the gaming public from the get-go, so who was going to care, if not the people who actually recognized the name?
The people doing the second new version of XCOM are getting most things way right, I'm still a little ambivalent about it, but mentioning them next to this catastrophe was doing them a disservice in my opinion, even if XCOM Enemy Unknown turns out to be awful, at least they will have -tried- to make it resemble the original in some way.

 

[Metalrocks]

thats why ?A sucks at it. not only they killed a company who made these great games. no they still have to drag the name in to the dirt by making a poor shooter.
why they did it? its so obvious, because it has syndicate written on it, a game that was a huge success back then by a company they closed down. so they think they dint take a risk and makes tones of money.

stupid retarded ?A...

 

[Jandau]

Both true and bullshit.

True, it was a lost battle from the start. Everyone told you so. Gamers told you they weren't going to buy it. They elaborated on their reasons, and the explanations weren't simply "Don't touch Syndicate". You didn't listen, you didn't care, you failed.

However, it's not due to a "vocal minority" that turned the world against you or whatever. It's because your game is a fairly derivative FPS in a market oversaturated with FPS games. I find it hillarious that EA describes Syndicate as "taking a risk" - what exactly is "risky" in it? There aren't really any major deviations from the bog-standard FPS formula (the hacking bits, I suppose, but they are marginalized), the plot is uninteresting, etc. The game wasn't risky - it was safe. So safe nobody felt particularly inclined to buy it.

This is what happens when you try to make everything have a "broad appeal" - you leave yourself without a target audience. Syndicate fans didn't care for the game since it's not what they want, FPS gamers didn't care about it because there are plenty of other better or at least better marketed games for them to play. You literally had nobody to sell the game to.

But sure, blame the "vocal minority" for your own fuckups. At least it's not pirates this time...

 

[evilneko]

150,000 copies worldwide. Wow. That's not much.

Generously assuming 60$ for every single copy, that's 9 mil.

I wonder how much it cost to make?

"I'm not going to tell you exactly what Syndicate cost to make - I can't due to NDAs - but it was substantially less than what the big in-house publishing studios would have spent, definitely."

Oh. Well then.

 

[Triforceformer]

Or you could have made a game that was actually in the series's GENRE and built off of the first game. Taken the basic idea and branched it off with new mechanics and such. There's always that option.

 

[Meight08]

A 'Risk'? A RISK? You took a RISK on a paint by the numbers cookie cutter shooter? That's why we hated it, idiot, not because it was different - because it was generic.

I remember when games were different, fun and unique!

I remember noone buying them

 

[Irridium]

Or you could actually have tried making a SYNDICATE game.

Or NOT putting Syndicate's name on this game.

Come on Starbreeze. You made a good game based on a movie (Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay) for crying out loud. And The Darkness, while it did have its faults, was still pretty good.

You can do better than this. I know you can. You've shown you can.