Jamie Cannon

Susanna told me something the other day that made me think quite a lot of things about video games and the media and my brain created a lovely tangent that inspired something to blog about. The subject of our conversation, though not this blog, was the offensive webcomic drawn of Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond. The comic itself seems to be removed from all known hosts (surprise) but what I read about it (and Ubisoft’s reaction to, for some reason, the Something Awful forums) can be read here.

Pretty sure the reaction to this is kind of self-explanatory. It’s a horrible thing to do, of course, and I could probably blog/rant about it all day, so for now let me stick to what I really wanted to write about. I told Susanna that I haven’t been following Assassin’s Creed (or really a lot of games) over the holidays because of lack of consoles in my house (T_T), being broke, and playing World of Warcraft. So she told me that it was “kind of disappointing” which I was surprised and sad to hear, since I’d wanted to play it.

So anyway, while my brain stewed over this webcomic, I looked up the game on Wiki to see what had been the horrible flaw that would make someone so upset as to publicize their angry web art in such a way. This is what I found, summarized:

• The average (Metacritic) review for the game is 83/100
• EGM is the only listed review that was below 70% though there are a couple other mentioned that are around the 70% mark.
• Several reviews were for very high or perfect scores – X-Play, Game Informer, GameSpot, for example.
• Complaints listed seem to be about lack of fast-paced action, stupid AI, and repetitive combat (one-button combat)

I was pretty surprised after I read this. There was no “The game broke all the 360s that came out” or “The game was only 3 hours long” or “The game only had a small number of levels” or anything that usually killed a game. I guess what I was expecting to see was that the game failed miserably, but Ubisoft is quoted as selling more than 2.5 million copies, which is higher than they expected. To put this number in perspective, I started (further) digging on Wiki, looking at things like “Best Selling Video Game Franchise” and then, “List of best-selling video games.” As far as games go, this is no Halo 3 (over 8 million copies) but as far as OTHER 360 games go, it’s well within regular margin (the same estimate as Bioshock, Oblivion, and more than Dead Rising, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4). (I’m not making a similar PS3 comparison due to lack of data and the fact that the console has only sold 13.something million games so far, which is like a fraction compared to the 360.) To put Assassin’s Creed sales in the same perspective as other games – this is the same number of Guitar Hero 2 (PS2), Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 4 (PS2) and quite a hoard of other games. So the sales aren’t really a failure, in fact the sales are better than expected. I figured by this stage that Susanna was talking about what she heard by word 0f mouth and rather than fill this blog with a huge section on further research into that I think I will get on with what I wanted to say.

This game had a huge buildup. At least a year ago while I was still at Full Sail, people were talking about it excitedly. I remember seeing new videos released at E3 and huge discussions about them on G4. People were constantly talking about this game for one reason or another – the graphics look great, the gameplay is open, there’s a somewhat-almost-famous girl (Kristen Bell) starring in it, the story is historical… Everyone had something they liked about it. The hype was immense and the pressure put on the game to be incredible was palpable.

This is not unlike what happens to movies. Blockbusters are often given near-ridiculous amounts of media attention to try and entice people to come see the film. Let’s relate this to the current “mega hype” movie Cloverfield. (The upcoming info sourced from this article.) The movie was first given a strange teaser preview before Transformers, which was anticipated to be another huge blockbuster movie, guaranteeing lots of viewers to said teaser. For months it floated around the internet as “Untitled J.J.Abrams Project” and plenty of other names, which gave it a level of mystery unlike most hyped movies. And here we are at its debut weekend with all the pressure – and it’s broken the record for movie releases on this weekend, and has made (so far) over $44 million. This is phenomenal and I’m sure there are many parties happening in California because of it Of course, there are MANY equally-hyped movies that just do absolutely horribly and people try very hard to forget it ever happened and wish they could erase it from their resume. A lot of these movies are especially close to home for gamers (BloodRayne, anyone?) but the list would be immense if ever fully recorded… Batman & Robin springs to mind, but I remember quite a lot of wasted brain cells on trailers for movies like Catwoman, Premonition, and SO many “Christmas Movies” it’s not even worth mentioning. Movies fail all the time. I have heard (though now I’m not sure where…) that it was something like a 1/4 success rate and studios quite often expect the other 3 movies to fail. But they have to make them anyway in case they do well and just to make any money at all.

Major game publishers are probably in about the same position, but game developers (the poor saps writing the dialog, programming the AI, and bug testing the crap out of it) would be hard-pressed for such a situation. If they anticipated 3/4 of their products to fail it would be near impossible to even get funding for development, or media coverage, etc. Add in the fact that it takes most developers over two years now to create a “hit” game (state of the art graphics, gameplay, etc – note, this may still fail miserably) that would mean that in 8 years of your life you only managed moderate success one time. But an actor, a director, a screenplay writer could create how many products in 8 years? The 1/4 ratio would be easy then. Sure it would suck if your brainchild flopped, but barring EXTREME disaster it wouldn’t kill your resume forever. A development cycle that short for a video game would allow us some room for error, but of course it would also flood the market with crappy games – just like every time I go to the movies I stare at the other things that are playing and imagine all kinds of physical pain I would rather endure than watch said film.

Video games can’t succeed without the media, at least not yet. Psychonauts received immense critical praise but sold fewer than 100,000 copies causing a class-action lawsuit of Majesco shareholders against the company in retaliation. Common explanations for this sales flop usually involve bad marketing and a high ($50) price tag. Well, plenty of games are $50 (though now $60 is the high end price for 360/PS3) and they sell enough to keep the shareholders happy and the CEO from resigning, so I’m inclined to say the media is key. Without the media, no one will care about your game in the quantities required to keep you employed. Sad, but seemingly true.

But what can be done about it? Without the media, there’s only word of mouth, usually over the internet these days. While that helped put Psychonauts on the map (that, and Steam) it didn’t get the CEO his job back or the shareholders their money. It’s only one of many elements required for good game sales. The thing about Assassin’s Creed is that it had the hype and the media pressure, so it sold copies, and it sold them regardless of content. A lot of people complain now about the game not being what they expected. This isn’t any different from being upset at how a movie turned out compared to the previews, but here you’ve just shelled out $50+ and several hours (6+ usually) on a game to finish it, and you’re unhappy. A bad movie is usually less than $10 and less than 2.5 hours. The movie industry can get away with people being unhappy because you haven’t lost enough to be really upset about a movie being bad. It usually won’t bar you from going again. But when a studio only puts out a few games a year if they’re lucky, frequently just one every 1-2 years, your audience is unforgiving and has a good memory. Personally, my most recent total upset was SNK vs Capcom Card Fighter for the DS, which had a game-killing glitch that prevented you from finishing the game or even collecting all the cards. Sure, Capcom isn’t really to blame, but I guarantee everyone who bought SNK vs Capcom would be hesitant over buying another title from the same studio.

It’s almost as though the studios are expected to fail at a 3/4 ratio instead of the games. In school I was constantly told that the turnover rate of employees is frequently 2 years, just like the development cycle length, go figure. I was frequently told that you have to be careful working at a startup company because everything is riding on that first game, for them. All kinds of words of wisdom that have led me to believe that no one really expects studios to be around that long. They expect you to merge with others, get bought out by giant enterprises who will take and manipulate your IP, (Goodbye Sigil, hello Sony Online – Vanguard also upset me a lot last year)… pretty much go through hell and back on the way to finding enough money to either switch industries or retire.

I could go on, and someday I probably will. The harsh critical nature of the average gamer is something else that fascinates me – if X person tells me a game is good, I probably won’t believe them because I’m smarter than they are, but if they bitch about a game enough I’ll believe that it’s bad and not spend money – and it’s very relevant to this topic. But I think for now I’ve gotten my point across. Without the media, games have little to no chance, and it’s massively more important than the game content itself as far as successful initial sales, just like a movie at the box office. But the consequence of failure is harsh compared to Hollywood.