Game Success or Failure: Should Developers Stick To What They Know ?

OXCGN discusses if studios fail more often than not if they deviate from their usual game style:

"A change is as good as a holiday, they say. People get tired of doing the same thing over and over so it shouldn't be a surprise that game studios may feel the same way too. In an industry plagued with safe sequels and cliche copycats it should be a good thing when a game studio decides to try something moderately or even completely new. Unfortunately, this isn't always so and what results can be average, or worse, a complete disaster."

For a list of games that have failed and poll to voice your opinion, hit the link:

[Immortal Kaim]

Yeah, unfortunately gaming devs seem to excel in one particular genre or area (usually) and when they stray too far from that, we get some strange outcomes.

[darkmurder]

Hit the nail on the head mate, I'm worried about Massive entertainment, World in conflict was a great RTS but MMo's? I'm nto sure if they'll succeed there.

[gaminoz]

I think it's too much for some studios to do something that they haven't much experience with.

Innovation is one thing, but you can still innovate from where you come from. Valve innovated from Half Life to Half Life 2 and even Left 4 Dead, and Ubisoft innovated from the original PoP to Assassin's Creed and again with the new PoP.

However, I agree, Silicon Knights should have stuck with Eternal Darkness, Free Radical should have stuck with Timesplitters, and Bethesda should stick with RPG.

[Immortal Kaim]

But then again it seems to be the same companies that innovate over and over again. Some just don't seem to have the talent to innovate like Valve and should just stick to making what they are comfortable with. Agree/Disagree?

[XboxOZ360]

Excellent read mate, and personally, I think developers NEED to spread their wings rather than staying to what they know. It does not breed forward movement to stay static.

Yes, there will be failures, as in all things, but one needs to make failures in order to make achievements . .otherwise nothing changes, and it breeds contempt.

[gaminoz]

As much as I like innovation etc., a lot of it has come in the form of Live Arcade games, or games like Portal, or Wii party stuff, or LBP type stuff.

Games like Half Life 2 with the grav gun and how that affects puzzles or Bad Company with the destructibility, or Assassin's Creed with the fluid running over buildings and seamless climbing platforms, all came from within a genre or existing style that the studios knew well.

I'm just not sure that a studio can jump from say RPG (like World In Conflict) to a MMO and be innovative or successful.

There are more failures than successes that I can think of.

[XboxOZ360]

For some it requires mistakes to move forward, otherwise they become stagenent within their own studios, the workers get tired of doing the same old same old and move on, and the studio loses what it did have, and the normal games slip in quality as older staff move to more newer, innovative styles and genre's.

[PimpHandHappy]

the big money studios let a small team work on something different for DD. Let them allow a team of ten or something to go ahead with a idea they want to try. Put it on PSN or XBL

small team with all the kits and backing could make some cool stuff i bet

[Aclay]

"Should game studios stick to what they know? Can you think of more failure or success stories where a studio has tried to head in a new direction?"

Yes, I can think of 2 video game developers right off the top of my head that went in a totally different directions and succeeded: Naughty Dog and Insomniac.

Before this generation, Insomniac had pretty much only made games that were aimed at a younger audience, but with Resistance, they succeeded greatly and I think that they did pretty darn good with their first First Person Shooter series.

And then there's Naughty Dog. Before the PS3, Naughty Dog had made games that weren't so realistic and detailed, but they REALLY delivered with Uncharted. However, I could tell that Naughty Dog was starting to get their feet wet with the hardcore crowd whenever Jak 2 was rated Teen and Jak 3 as well. Uncharted was a big step outside of what Naughty Dog was used to developing and they made an awesome game.

Another developer I can think of that has went in a totally different direction is Sucker Punch because they were highly known for the Sly Cooper series and the game appealed mainly to a younger audience and was cartoony, but with InFamous, they are going in a whole new direction like Insomniac and Naughty Dog with realistic graphics and appealing to the hardcore gamer. InFamous looks pretty good so far. I can't say whether or not the game is a success or not yet because it hasn't been released yet, however, Sucker Punch has a good track record and I think that they'll deliver.

I do think that developers should try to branch out more because if not, we'll be seeing nothing but sequels this entire generation.

[gaminoz]

Some good examples there, especially with Uncharted.

Resistance, though a great success, wasn't that revolutionary a shooter imo. It was fun, though the graphics were not up to what I was playing on 360 at the time. It was a successful jump for sure, but nothing that new or exciting, it just happened to be the only good shooter for the PS3 at the time. It was a successful jump but not a big one: sort of like Criterion's jump to Black imo.

[PirateThom]

Notice how all three of those devs are exclusive to Sony through being owned or by choice and not one of their first games on the PS3 was one of their known franchises?

Resistance
Uncharted
inFamous

All new franchises.

That's why Sony keeps developers, they allow them space.

[gaminoz]

@ PiratThom

Well Microsoft gave Silicon Knights PLENTY of room too, but they came up with Too Human.

This isn't just a "Sony games don't suffer this" thing: Haze was crap.

[XboxOZ360]

That's rubbish. With publishing houses like EA (the new EA, not the old EA), Ubisoft, Activision/Blizzard etc, many smaller dev studios that simply would NOT have a hope in hell of getting a game of the ground that required innovation can now do so.

These larger pub houses now allow them complete anonymity when it comes to their game design and development. What they get is the huge support they simply did not have access to when an independent, as the costs on making games has risen substantially, ruling out many mid-ranged developers for even considering new and innovative ideas.

Sure Sony have dev studios, but many of them are not doing anything really new, and the reactions from reviewers within the industry are mixed at best at times. Some are great, some are okay, some are average, much the same as any other publishing house.

[Xi]

Going from FPS to real time tactics, to rts, to 3rd person adventure then fps again.

[gaminoz]

Might be true, but the game development landscape is different to those old titles' times. Bungie isn't making Halo Wars independently, are they...for a good reason.

I think the article is about modern gaming, which involves much bigger teams and risk-taking.

[XboxOZ360]

For the uninitiated, Bungie first started with Halo as a RTS for the MAC - not the PC or console at the time and not a FPS.

It wasn't until MS acquired them that they were commissioned to turn the RTS into a FPS .. .So they could do a RTS quite easily actually.

[XboxOZ360]

Look at Mirror's Edge . .It's clear that younger gamers just don't "get it" with the game. Many complaining in their reviews or scores that the game doesn't have a decent "combat system" that there aren't many Guns, That it's too short, repetitve and that it's very blank visually.

The graphics on it are nothing short of excellent with the city and skyline often looking almost real especially with water reactions, visuals walls floors etc etc.

The era of the game is set in a world much like the movie The Island, where ppl do not wander around the city, where everything almost has a sterile atmosphere and everything is "controlled" much like a controlled "lab" . . because that is what it is.

Combat when being a runner is NO what the game IS about. If you stop to fight, you die, simple as that, so why give the player huge amounts of "combat combos" when all that is needed is a few disarm movements and quickly move on to do the task. If you stop to deal with one Blue (cop), then the others WILL come and they WILL kill you. No 5-6 shots before you die, 1 or 2 and you're dead. Fight one, and you end up fighting 2-6 and they do not take turns like they do in say Fable II or other combat games, it's all on or nothing.

SO would you really want to hang around if you knew they all were going to pumble you to death . . not me.

The game can't be LONG, as it's about you getting from one side of the world to the other, so it can't be a sandbox game, which is the latest craze and does NOT suit most games anyhow. Sandbox Forza, Sandbox Mirror's Edge, Sandbox, COD4/5 - come on, a game does what it needs to do, yes you do have to follow paths, that's the idea.

See just HOW fast you can do the course

Does your gym instructor let you run around the whole gym just so you can play sandbox and see what the whole gym looks like, or get you focused on getting the job done as fast and as efficent as possible. The latter, not the former, that's for sure.

While gathering images for Mirror's edge and reading many reviews, there's a clear deliniation of gamers, those that are in the last few generations do not like it that much due to above reasons, then there are those giving it 8-9.5's because of those reason, those are older gamers willing to give new styles and games a go, not right them off because of something that might not work first off.

[Acj2323]

i agree, devs should stick to what they know and what they are good at, instead of trying other things that will be uniform and the same old boring things as others,

[T-Baggins]

Yes and No, A company will never know if it can do something better if they don't try, take Insomniac for instance they made Ratchet and Clank and it was great then they made Resistance and it was also great same with Naughty Dog with cash, Jak, and Uncharted and Dave Jaffe from Twisted Metal To God of War.

[Acj2323]

yes its good for people to try, but i don't want a uniform game that we have basically ready seen, i want new and innovating things.

[XboxOZ360]

I am amazed at many gamers these days.

They all spout and go on how developers are NOT trying new ideas, or not taking risks, venturing out with new technical innovative ideas . . Yet soon as they do, and it will not always 'cut the mustard' as they say, simply because new ideas take time to 'work out properly'. They (gamers - certain generations of gamers btw) then condemn that very same developer for dare changing the old tried-and-true method they have become used to (the gamer that is). "what the hell are you doing developer, you moved the buttons and I have to get used to new one Fk"

Jesus-marrie . . .get a grip.

So on one hand we have gamers screaming for new innovative ideas, they are hammering Oh no, not another sequel or run on franchise" etc, then going on about how dare that studio change the style of game or the innovation the studio has tried works, but not 100%, so therefore it is crap . .

Come on ppl, you can NOT have your cake and eat it to. There has to be give and take in all things. In order for things to move forward there HAS to be mistakes, as mistakes lead to improvements. Not every car that runs off the production line was the same car that was built several years beforehand, and is an advancement of it's previous self.

Games are no exception to this.

You want change and new games rather than rehashed sequel after sequel, then give the developers half a chance and actually put some effort into seeing what they are doing and give games half a chance, rather than righting them off after the first hour because the controls are different to what YOU are used to.

If that was the case, we'd still be playing Pong.

[gaminoz]

I really used to think as you do, but with limited financial resources for myself and with most games not making money for the publishers, risk-taking games will diminish. Changing direction might be good for the developers' creative experimentation, but bad for their bottom line. I'm not going to buy Fracture, even though it's Lucas Arts trying something new with environmental deformation. It just doesn't cut it.

I'm going to pay for a game that is good, not just innovative. I still think innovation within a genre or style that the studio is used to is what we are going to see more of these days than outright changes in direction. Games do need to improve to get attention, but we also expect too much change sometimes.

Here's an idea: why don't they work on better story telling!!!

[XboxOZ360]

While I agree in part, we do need to move forward, otherwise we stagnate.

Yes, by all means, work on better storylines. But then you get the gamers who say, "what the hell is all this storyline rubbish . .just give me a combat game or a driving game or a shooter" etc etc.

Game costs for end users, you and I havenot changed in almost 1 and half decades, games 10 - 15 years ago actually cost more in many cases. We didn't have the luxury of exchanging games in retails stores like we do now. We did not have the fierce competition within the gaming stores to get our $$'s . .Sure, the RRP's are still the same as they were basically 10-15 yrs ago, but almost all games never sell at the RRP, unless you're an inactive shopper and simply buys because you're (not aimed at you mate) too lazy to do any shopping around.

We have places like Play Asia, JB Hi-Fi, WallMart, K-Mart etc etc that constantly sell well below the RRP on all new titles. So in fact, we are actually better off now price wise than we were 10 - 15yrs ago. We simply have WAY too much choice.

We have a gluten of games, and all brought about by a few generations that now demand instant gratification and an attention span as large as a natts brain, which isn't that big I might add. A game is bought one day, taken home, played for several hours and taken back to the shop to try the next one, then the next one, then the next one . . . and the stores ALLOW this. So they are to blame as well.

I'm certainly not in a good financial situation, but even so, there's many a game that will simply have to wait, but that doesn't mean developers should wait until I have the money to buy their games, especially if there's another developer willing to take the risk, and knock the previous developer off their lofty perch.

If any of that makes any sense ?

[XboxOZ360]

Anyone that has played Black knows justhow innovative Criterion got with that game. Some declared it a tech demo, as they did with Crysis . .well DAHH hello world, of course it's a tech demo of sorts. It's trying out new ideas.

Did you know that Black had almost 60% destructible environment in a 1st-gen Xbox title, yet when the 360 was launched a few months later, COD 2 could not even show a bullet mark in the ground, break any window, go through a door or wall or had decent physics, on a Next-Gen Platform.

Yet in Black, I could snipper out a window as far off in the distance, not only that, but if I hit the window in the corner, the glass broke according to the physics of that glass, hit it in the centre and it shattered as it would normally. NOT in big flat chunks like in say Left For Dead. Shot a wall and "splinters" came flying off, Shot at the ground and it left holes in the dirt that were there when you came back.
The game was said to be way too short, 8 hrs Well yes, if you played it on easy and ran through it from one end to the other without doing anything. If you've never played it, DLoad it from Xbox Originals and give it a try. You'll swear that you are playing a This-Gen title.

If played right, it gave around 13 hrs of gameplay. A decent amount of gameplay for any game. You could wander around to a certain degree, the environ was interactive, the damage modeling was fierce to say the least, and it DID have a solid storyline. If you bothered to follow it at all, then you'd actually "get" the ending.

SO Criterion cops a flogging for putting out a short game, yet highly innovatine, and they shelve 2 sequels based on the story, and YOU as a gamer miss out on two following titles that would have only grown on what was originally delivered . .So who's to blame, the developer or the end user.

In this case, and many, it's the fussy end user who is only interested in "Instant gratification" not long term results. Which is killing the industry as a whole, and spewing out rubbish item after rubbish item so you get your usual fair of average games.

Mirror's Edge might suffer the same fate, as may well Assassin's Creed . . all because a certain level of gamers now insist that games ALL have a score in excess of 8 - 8.5 to be a valid game. One developer just ditched 2 yrs worth of work on an excellent title, simply because they knew from studies their first game would only (ONLY) average a 8.2 Metacritic score . . That's just INSANE.

[gaminoz]

So instead of building on a promising start with Black they back out of it and make another 'open-world street racer in the USA' game. That's a lack of confidence in what they learned from the first game to me.

They could have said: okay let's look at the criticism and lets look at what we did right, and match the two for a sequel, but they went back to cars. That's not backing yourself, just like burying a game you somehow predict will get a lower score on Metacritic.

I enjoyed Black well enough, but it did need more. I think a sequel could be great: destructibility may have been done well with Bad Company, but the buildings and interiors all looked the same, so there's room for improvement.

[XboxOZ360]

Well actually no, they had storyline and even content built for the second and third iteration, but based on the scoring, and testing of the market and the demographic at the time, they simply could not see the financial benefit of investing another 40-50mil in 2 more games if they were not getting the full return on the first game . .

Sure, it does come down to $$ and cents in the end, it has to, but it also came down to many gamers NOT wanting Criterion to change what they did . make racing games . . And at best, decent ones, but nothing out of the ordinary . . .

The game they made that gets the most discussion even today is Black, and for anyone that has played it, they can see why, but Gamers per-se' are responsible for the series demise, not the developer, who had content ready and were working on number 2.

While they (Criterion) have said they are not interested in going down that path again, I'm only hoping they do decide to venture down it. As a This-Gen Black would knock the socks of COD4 and OD5, or any other FPS currently on any This-Gen platform.

[gaminoz]

Anyone else have some games that were crap or great made by a studio that tried something different to their successful norm?

[leeeeed]

1 is the groups of people who piss and moan about an IP that holds it's course and doesn't differ too far from the original concept.

2 is the group of people that piss and moan when an IP moves too far away from it's original concept

And generally, these groups have the same people in them. I agree that if a dev finds a sweet spot they should make the most of it, but seriously, some people just enjoy whinging for the heck of it...

[XboxOZ360]

Well we won't talk about SParks Two adventures down forgetable lane will we. There are developers who should not stray from what they know best, but there are some, that with the right input from publishers and who TAKE direction, will and can make a difference.

[gaminoz]

Well I guess Sony's Team Soho went from the Getaway (which they seem to have dropped) to Eye Toy and Singstar....lol. Is that a success?

[XboxOZ360]

Team Bondi (Aust dev studio) have (had) picked up Getaway, and it's now become La Noir which was originally multiplatform, then Sony Exclusive, and now touted as Multiplatform once again. Being such a small known game, it couldn't afford to just be a Sony (any platform) exclusive if they hope to get any money back on it globally.

They do say that Getaway is still a "possibility" of coming . .but then so is Duke nukem . .and we all know how long that has "been in the works" . .