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

[VoidWanderer]

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.

Shouldn't it be more like Borderlands? If they wanted to make it an FPS, it has to be co-op.

Single player FPS would never work in Syndicate.

RTS, wouldn't quite work. While the traditional RTS formula still works, with the world of Syndicate, you would need to make it RTS-lite. Even then, it is a stretch.

Borderlands style, or hell, more like Deus Ex:HR with more of a Syndicate vibe would've worked great.

RTS? Not so much.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

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.

Yeah Butcher Bay was awesome :\

 

[The Genius]

Morale of the story?

What was considered okay tens of years ago, isn't/can't be passable now-a-days.

What gives you that impression?

Fanboys.

AKA the Jagged Alliance remake flop.

I liked JA2 back in the day. Don't really get alot of time these days so haven't picked up the remake. I did read that it was quite poor however. I wouldn't use one example to nix the whole idea.

The whole idea?

...

You can't help the deranged.

Needless to say, the whole idea here is still, as it always has been...

Fanboys kill IP's regardless of what new iteration they become.

You have a valid point. I'm of the opinion that taking the name of an old title ala Syndicate or XCom and putting them on an fps is one of the worst things you could do. Fallout 3 did really well but that doesn't make it the formula for success.

Industry says things like turn based and isometric view are dead but when was the last time a 'AAA' title like that was made? I think a redone XCom in the old style would do very well. I admit I could be wrong but surely FPS is getting old for today's gamers.

 

[NortherWolf]

FLASHBACK:

'It's called Syndicate?'

Fuck that noise. We need the original shit game to be made! It's shit cuz it isn't what we used to have!

'It's called Jagged Alliance?'

Fuck that noise. We need the original shit game to be made... better but differently!

Judging by the numbers... it's more useful to not touch older IP's at all. The cry baby gaming nation can't deal with it, FYI.

X-Com revamp is gunna bust too. I'm sure the PC flamers will have some sort of excuse for that too.

If it makes it easier for you all, you can blame me.

Morale of the story?

What was considered okay tens of years ago, isn't/can't be passable now-a-days.

Or, you could , I don't know...Not start another trolling post blaming PC gamers? Is that so very difficult for you Thai?

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

"I'm proud of what the team did and what we made, and I'm especially proud of the co-op; I think that really shows what we wanted to do with the game, and Starbreeze's DNA."

Really? You're proud of a bland, tired, unoriginal FPS when you had such a wonderful IP to draw from? I mean no disrespect to the artists, devs and talented people responsible for creating any game, but you churned out a below average, bargain bin filler. You should have spotted this right away.

You SHOULD have made a game where the player controls 4 cyber agents in the dystopian future, using tactics, levelling them up, having a range of armaments, abilities and strategies available to fight across a multitude of scenarios. Think something along the lines of Marvel Ultimate Alliance, but better. You could include 4 player co-op in lieu of AI agents the player can jump between to issue commands. Perhaps even an L4D2/Rainbow 6 "style" of approach but with RPG elements/inventory and a seamless way for a player to switch which character they control in < 4 player games.

THAT would be unique, interesting, be closer to what the original classic game was and could have been special.

 

[weirdee]

ironically, the actual failure here was that the game did not take any risks to begin with

given the response from ea, one could actually propose that this game was made for the exact purpose of 'proving' that both 'creative works' and 'risk-taking' were both guaranteed failures, and then use this faulty evidence to back up the next ten homogenous shooters the person in charge of this wanted funding for, in order to pad your corporate war chest, but had secretly set up either the game to be bad by sabotaging the studio (hell, the concept alone of fusing a franchise with mediocrity is a textbook recipe for destroying a game), or paying the studio itself to mess up the game, using an ip that they clearly had no interest in reviving to begin with, because they could have easily made the other game they said they could have made (the exact same game, or so much in their words) and it would have made a decent amount of money anyway, even with the criticism, but with the important distinction of not being an utter failure, but still staying with their adopted theory that going with convention would be successful, although apparently in their view it was better to go with the conventions from a DIFFERENT TYPE OF GAME because that would make more sense

or better yet, during the planning/inception of the concept, everybody could have agreed to not make this game to begin with, because this is generally the stage when they figure out that the game would not have been able to justify its own existence, and yet both people with the money and the studio both agreed upon making such a game, despite that it was most likely going to fail from their perspective ANYWAY, because this situation is SO much more plausible than my brain addled story. the way they talk about it now, it should have been glaringly clear earlier, but no, they forged ahead regardless of this knowledge. why would they do this if not for some ulterior motive?

and you would not know if this is a crackpot theory or actually true

my other scenario, which is equally plausible to the preceding ones, is that a monkey with a gun threatened to kill anybody who attempted to leave the office until they finished this game

 

[Vkmies]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution had the right amount of Innovation and copy, wasn't a lost battle. X-Com is getting only love from fans, right amount of Innovation and copy, wasn't a lost battle.
Max Payne 3
Duke Nukem For-uhhhhhhh.... Yeah, maybe not that one.

 

[hino77]

O good one! You took risk`s making a generic fps? Man thats such a funny joke! Wait, your`e serious? Oh...,oh wow..., that`s either really sad, or, you know, PR. Becouse if the guy that said that, actualy believes it, he`s under hipnosis or some other mind control indoctrination thingy, or he`s got seriouse brain damage.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

I love how people always call the haters a "small but vocal minority". Well if they're so small then I wonder why you barely sold 150,000 copies.

 

[Scrustle]

Haha, yeah sure EA took a huge risk with that game. Take an existing IP and turn it in to a generic FPS. Really risky.

 

[dead_but_smiling]

What's with the "our game was bad because there was no other way possible, really" excuse here?

I liked the graphics. I liked the music. Too bad all the other pieces didn't really fit.

It sounds a bit like Prometheus - tons of expectations, quite a lot of hyping up, and then you get something that's definitely brilliant in places and terribly, terribly broken in others.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

that´s what you get when kicking customers in the balls and expect them to smile and say "thanks you"!

 

[PingoBlack]

News at 11, EA making lame apologies for decisions that appeared dumb year in advance.

You could just link Jimquisition to the article for clarity.

 

[BBboy20]

So devs will never learn will they? Oh, let's do extremes this and extreme that instead of fundamentally understand the series we are working on and see who's right and who's wrong in the feedback.

Either that or Starbreeze is truly delusional or the CEO is making face.

Seriously, get back on making the next Riddick and release it on the same day as the 3rd film comes out or something.

 

[Loonyyy]

"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."

So the fault that the game didn't sell belongs to gamers, not all of us, no, not the most of us who didn't buy it, it's just the small, hardcore fans, the ones who actually like Syndicate, who are to blame for the game not selling.

1.) The game didn't appeal to people.

Come on, it was a mediocre shoot-em up in a saturated market that was barely advertised to the hordes of casual consumers required to make a big-hit AAA FPS.

2.) The game didn't appeal to fans.

Saying they'd hate you either way is a cop-out. There are two criticisms that can be levelled:

i) The game's too different. There was no reason to use this IP, and it offends the original fans. (Very bad outcome. You've been caught as a shameless brand-whore)

ii) The game's too much the same. If you left in any problems with the original, or the game, and it's genre, were saturating the market, you'd be criticized for this. But tactical games of this sort are hardly common, so it's not like you're going to be entering a market with no room. Likewise, fans wanted MORE of your game, not a cyberpunk linear shooter.

In fact, they fall into criticism ii) by giving an FPS in a time where the market is saturated with FPS's.


No wonder they couldn't sell the game, they can't even understand why people wouldn't like it. "Haters gonna hate" is a worthless marketing strategy.