There’s something wrong with the modern gaming landscape. Something just isn’t right. I don’t mean the hacking and the piracy and the arguments over the pre-owned market and online passes, either. There’s something bigger going on that people don’t really seem to notice.
Let me go back to the beginnings of this current bout of paranoia. The US sales figures for Child of Eden and Shadows of the Damned were reported late last week. Both seem to have hugely under-performed. We hear stories like this all the time. Creative, imaginative games that are a bit different fail to inspire the market while iterative yearly sports franchises and incremental FPS developments storm the sales charts.
[drop]Hey, don’t misunderstand me. I like FIFA, Madden and Call of Duty as much as anyone so please don’t think this is an attack on them. They deserve to make their sales. But something about these two cases, specifically, bothers me and I think I’m only just starting to realise what it is.Child of Eden is as much a sequel to Rez as we’re ever going to get. In all but name it is an evolution of that much loved psychedelic rails shooter. Rez is a game with a hugely vocal band of supporters who have been noisily clamouring for a sequel since shortly after it was released. They got their sequel and nobody bought it.
Shadows of the Damned isn’t a perfect game. There is a certain clumsiness in the controls and it is somewhat overstated in its general approach. But there seems to be an ever-present background noise from people moaning about games getting too serious and losing the fun. Everything from Grand Theft Auto to the Resident Evil series has been accused of forgetting the kitsch sense of style that made them massively enjoyable. Shadows of the Damned has that feel in spades. And it’s got a pistol called Boner. What more do you want?
So, why? Why did these two games, which should surely have been popular, stumble to an uninspiring sales record?
Summer is an odd time of year in the modern video game release schedule. Publishers still want their games to come out just before Christmas so they pull in the maximum gift spend possible. We now seem to have a second release spike in late February and March, doubtless to get titles that slip their intended pre-Christmas release date out before the end of the financial year. Even June, the end of another quarter, was fairly brisk for game releases this year. But July and August are very quiet. Was the apparent failure of two very decent games simply a matter of timing? Is the summer still really that quiet for video game sales?
Similarly, marketing budgets seem to be spent on safe titles. There seems no doubt that publishers have worked out that pumping advertising millions into games that are sequels in huge franchises yields a large enough boost in sales and public perception that it’s worth more money than betting on slightly less well-known titles. I haven’t seen much advertising for either Shadows of the Damned or Child of Eden amongst the pre-order banners for Modern Warfare 3 and the billboards for Battlefield 3.
[drop2]Perhaps it’s something slightly less simple though. Perhaps the problem isn’t with executives or marketing managers. Perhaps the problem is with us, the consumer. I mentioned earlier that both games seemed to fit in with an idea that I heard a lot of demand for. Either the sequel to a popular game of yesteryear or a return to the off-the-wall wackiness that we remember from the previous generation. Perhaps the problem is that the people asking for those games to be made simply don’t buy them.Perhaps the noise being made is just a very vocal minority which gives the impression of being a driving market force but is really powerless when measured against the people who only buy the year’s Call of Duty, FIFA or Madden game. They’re even more powerless when measured against the people who only buy gift cards for Facebook credits or iTunes downloads. The people who used to fund the development and marketing of our games are now funding the development of games for someone else entirely. There must be a reason for that.
I blame the internet. We’re a separate little ecosystem online and we forget far too easily, that we’re only a small proportion of what ends up filling the profit columns on the publisher’s spreadsheets. We think we’re vastly more important than we truly are. We’re the core, after all. They have to cater for us, right?
The truth is, the average 7-year-old with his Penguin Club cards and his 12-year-old sister with her Facebook credit are probably spending more per month on games than you are. And neither of them want to play Shadows of the Damned or Child of Eden, more’s the pity.
nofi
CoE’s problem was that it really, really isn’t worth £40. It’s a) not as good as Rez and b) not as good as a lot of downloadable games at a third of the price. IMO, anyway.
Shadow failed because EA didn’t market it.
djhsecondnature
Spot on. No idea why CoE wasn’t a downloadable title.
Forrest_01
Multiplayer is another factor that plays a part – When people are faced with ‘x’ game that is singleplayer only for £40 against ‘y’ game which is also £40, but has multiplayer as well as a singleplayer & that their friends are likely to play for the coming weeks/months/years, the choice becomes a lot less of a choice & more of a sensible purchase decision.
I am of course not saying that singleplayer games are doomed to fail from here on (as I personally love to get my teeth stuck into a good narrative), but how many people do you know that absolutely live for their mutilplayer fix & the opportunity to ‘pwn n00bs’??
Personally, I can see myself purchasing Shadows of the Damned, but only when it has come down in price a bit. Which I suspect is probably a common thought due to the lack of advertising (as I mentioned above, I had no idea about the game until it was released & reviewed & the hype train needs to start a lot earlier than that!).
Jen A
With limited free time and limited money to throw at games, the average consumer who won’t soak up every bit of gaming news about such titles, just won’t take the risk. I don’t blame them either. There’s a lot out there vying for their time/money.
Plus of course CoD and FIFA has huge amounts of longevity when you throw in multiplayer and mates playing it.
Thing is we (as in both writers and readers on this site) will always see it from an entirely different perspective as we’re in our bubble of knowledge so to speak.
OneShotWook
Totally agree with whats been mentioned about weighing up cost.I was due to be a day 1 Shadows buyer right up until i found out there was no new game+,no cool unlocks either just an extra difficulty lvl.So it went straight to my lovefilm list and i saved the cash,i put this alongside Vanquish,games that are loads of fun for a weekend at most.Their both from devs known to put huge amounts of replayability in their previous games(Bayonetta most recently springs to mind)and yet for some reason have ditched those ideas,i’m not certain why either.
Can’t comment on Child of Eden as it doesn’t really seem marketed at me,come to think of it all i have seen in the way of marketing is some trippy pop vid with a girl dancing about in it.
Milereb
In a sense, this ties in nicely with the recent discussion about the JRPG being dead. It’s not that the genre isn’t popular anymore – seeing as little indie titles, like ‘Cthulhu saves the world’, within that genre do amazingly well. (It is however true that most JRPGs don’t originate in Japan anymore, but do they really have to?)
Instead in my opinion developers nowadays (also in light with the current economic climate) go with what they know well and will sell well. Which is largely due to us, consumers going with these safe choices as we know what we get for a COD or a Battlefield at full price.
Games which are original or that differ from the mainstream genres make us weary. Are these games worth their full price if in a week I can buy them new for 10 to 20 pounds less?
(I have to add that here in The Netherlands games don’t plummet that quickly into bargains, they stay full price for almost a year if not longer. Also trade-ins only because legal and ‘popular’ the past year. – To compare HMV was selling LBP2 new for 25 pounds the other month, whilst here it was, and in some cases still is, at a firm 60 euros)
skibadee
just because others see things as great some might see it as rubbish you can not expect everything to sell 2 million units or even a million.
hiab-x
Wasn’t Child of Eden widely reviewed as being fun but very short? Short games in a lot of peoples minds don’t equate value for money.
Jambo
Child of Eden was just too expensive, I know a few people waiting to pick it up on PS3 at £18 though.
With Shadow of the Damned, the only reason I have heard of it was the review here. No publicity at all.
jonny_bolton
I played Child of Eden on the Kinect and really enjoyed it. The only problem I found was that it was insanely short and that would have put me off buying it at full price (I don’t have Kinect btw).
With Shadow of the Damned, my boss went on and on about amazing it was going to be. The guys who made it were legends in all fields and by all accounts, in his eyes, it was going to be the perfect game of that particular genre. He bought it, played it, and traded it. He didn’t think it was that good so if someone who loved everything about the game before playing it tells me it’s not worth it I certainly wont be taking a punt.
asparagushunter
Like many others I blame price, especially for CoE. And even with coverage on this site, I seem to have let SoTD slip me by completely; marketing must have been poor for that game for me not to notice.