If you’ve read my Uncharted 3 review, you’ll notice I did not like it as
much as the second, and that was mainly due to the element of surprise being
taken away from me. Naughty Dog relied heavily on surprises in action to keep
the player engaged, but when you expect them, are they really that surprising?
Naughty Dog kept the same formula and the game was less of a success than the
previous, which featured much more innovation, but that formula is not true for
some companies. In fact, the top selling series at the time all have little
changed in them from their first game. Why is it that these games can improve
the graphics slightly and release virtually the same game with huge sales
numbers, while innovative, fun titles still have small profits and even smaller
budgets?
The first question to ask is: Is having a de facto upgrade for each new
iteration in a game necessarily a bad thing? That depends entirely on what you
look for in a game, and, indeed, in all forms of media. For example, I love
Dragonforce. I think their speed metal (dragon metal? DnD metal? Who can keep
up with the labels anymore) is some of the most enjoyable music I've listened
to in the past five years. Across three albums, Dragonforce has played two
songs, maybe three depending on who you're asking--the fast, hard metal song
with crazy riffs and the slow ballad song.
If Dragonforce comes out with a new
album tomorrow featuring these same songs in slightly different forms, will I
buy it? Yes, I will, because I enjoy those two songs. That's enough for me.
This is reason enough for the success of franchises like Madden, FIFA, and Call
of Duty. Each of these series has changed a bare minimal of their formula in
the past five or so years, and have enjoyed record sales numbers with every
release. Why is this? Fans are okay with having something familiar and not
having a fixed thing broken with trying too hard. So if you're EA and you've
got to release FIFA 13, will you take the risk of adding in first person camera
mode, integrating Kinect controls to track your body in the living room? Or add
an out-of-game element to Madden including living your life as a football
player, drumming up good press, selling yourself, and going through trading
yourself to different teams, all while having to deal with the consequences of
your actions? No, of course not. Those features would take more time and money
than the potential return is worth. For the most part, a Call of Duty fan wants
the last Call of Duty with slightly better graphics, new guns, different maps,
and maybe one new feature to keep the combat fresh, and there is absolutely
nothing wrong with that.
Now, if you've finally had your fill of the same meal you've eaten for the
last few years, and you'd like to try something new, what is available to you?
If you're looking at major titles in 2012 and upcoming games shown in
conferences like E3, it's new iterations of established series, which can be
daunting to get in to. All of the sudden, if I start in Assassin's Creed III, I
have no idea the sun is apparently trying to kill everyone and that aliens
exist, I just know it's the American Revolution, I'm some guy named Desmond in
the present, and there's this machine called the Animus to link the two
settings.
That can oftentimes make a gamer shy away from getting into a new
series. I know I wanted to play Mass Effect 3, but did not want to sink the 80+
hours into the previous two just to play the third. Trying to turn to new IP,
mainstream releases are nearly useless, as most aren't covered by press because
they don't have the money. So let's say you've decided to try an indie title, such
as Journey, perhaps. You become immersed in the game, found a partner, trudged
and surfed through the desert, sneaked past enemies, and climbed a snowy
mountain to the end of the game. Now would 1080p graphics, highly detailed
buildings, and realistic textures improve this experience? Perhaps not, but then
what would?
In my mind, there are two improvement paradigms in gaming technology, growing
vertically and growing horizontally. When a company grows their game
vertically, they improve what the game already has, raising its level so to
speak; and when a company grows horizontally, they add new features to the
game, or acquire new skills. Most AAA titles—Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty,
Madden, Uncharted, etc.—grow
vertically, whereas indie titles tend to scale horizontally, shotgunning features
to see what sticks. Catherine is a good example of new IP trying something totally different.
So if vertical growth means more of the same, but better,
either by upping the graphics, getting better guns, more maps and so on, what
would horizontal growth entail? The answer lies with one of the oldest
companies in gaming—Nintendo.
When the Wii was first announced, Nintendo said it was all about the games.
They did not make the graphics that much better and hardly improved their
online multiplayer, choosing to instead change how the player interacted with
the game. By incorporating technologies that gamers had not used before,
Nintendo successfully used technology to scale their business horizontally.
They included accelerometers, motion sensing, and a peripheral connector on the
controller to change how you play, offering different styles of play for
different games. This move was a bold one, but necessary given the paltry
success of the Gamecube, and was ultimately a wise decision. The Wii has made
Nintendo the most money of any console they've ever produced, has left their
competitors fighting for second place this generation, and has successfully put
Nintendo in more homes than ever.
Now Nintendo looks to do the same with Wii U,
incorporating even more ways to play, but also catching up graphically to the
offerings from Sony and Microsoft. In doing this, they ensure more
multiplatform games to be ported to their console, while retaining the
uniqueness we've come to expect. The same horizontal growth has been shown by
Microsoft with Kinect and Sony with Move, though with dramatically less results,
arguably due to their comparability to the offerings of Nintendo.
So why is this just isolated to hardware? Why are we on our fifth Assassin's
Creed title for home consoles with very little new about it, while being
inundated with the same shooter rehashed over and over again with different
titles? It really comes down to money and sales figures. When you gross
billions by changing guns, adding a new storyline, and changing the multiplayer
maps, it's hard to justify spending money on innovation. Even when a well known
company tries something new and is successful with it, like Valve with Portal,
its gross sales still can't approach that of Call of Duty.
Until gamers can vote for innovation with their dollars instead of ingesting
what amounts to fast food games, they will continue to get what they've always
gotten and be mildly happy with it. This cycle perpetuates itself and allows
game companies to make easy decisions, using technology advances as a crutch to
justify withering innovation.