Focus Groups Said Overstrike’s Style Was “Something For Their Little Brother”

[drop2]Overstrike’s change of visual style into what’s now known as Fuse wasn’t without some criticism, with many wanting to write the game off as just another shooter rather than something innovative and quirkly, like we’re used to from Insomniac.

But it sounds like it was the result of focus tests, tests that suggested the original aesthetics weren’t up to modern trends.

“We started to discover that everyone thought this was a game for their younger brother.”

“We would hear this from 12-year-olds. So we decided that we needed to make a game that had an older appeal,” said the company’s Brian Allgeier speaking to IGN.

“The game started out with a much more stylized and campy direction. We were actually going for something on the level of Ratchet & Clank, except with humans,” Allgeier said. “Maybe it was going to appeal to gamers who, we thought at the time, might be in their late teens.”

“The industry’s changed quite a bit,” he added.

It’s perhaps worth mentioning that according to Insomniac’s community guy, this interview might have been talking about a style prior to the one shown at E3. An even more quirky, camp style? That sounds lovely.

12 Comments

  1. We need more games “for their younger brother”, then. Have some creative confidence instead of handing your game to a damn ‘focus group’.

  2. They didn’t have to change the style if the game to make it more grown up appealing, slapstick action is good, look at borderlands the style of it doesn’t look grown up but still people bought it cause its different its not trying to be every shooter out there. anywayjust stick the age restriction on this mofo & sorted.

  3. “We would hear this from 12-year-olds. So we decided that we needed to make a game that had an older appeal,” – so how about having a focus group made of older gamers? Didn’t cross your mind?

    • Exactly what I was going to say. Why the hell would you ask 12 year olds how to make a mature game? Seems moronic.

      • Just watched the trailer; it gets my official rating of “won’t buy”. Looks like when they say that they “changed styles”, they meant that they removed all semblance of style.

        Seriously, looks like borderlands stripped of all originality. This is what happens when you work with EA.

  4. In some ways, after the gritty look of Resistance, as long as the core game was as playable as insomniacs other games, a quirky look wouldn’t matter. Look at when timesplitters when that first launched, very quirky but play the 4 player split screen & the looks didn’t matter, it just worked.

  5. Isn’t that what went wrong with resistance 2? That insomniac listened too much too other people rather than trust in themselves. Ratchet and clank with humans sounds great to me.

  6. They took advice from twelve-year-olds? Of course they’ll say it looks childish, in fear of not being cool. It seems to me like most grown up gamers are tired of games aiming to be photo realistic, and prefer ones with a neat artstyle. Or at least, I am.

  7. Perhaps they should stop talking about the game before they put everyone off, they’ve basically just given the impression that Fuse is aimed at 12 yr olds.. :/

  8. Thats like asking a twelve year old girl if she would prefer her hair in braids and a nice dress, or whether she would rather wear make up, heels and an outfit that would cause mr gadd to go boing…

  9. So instead of getting a focus group that consists of their target gamers, they got a bunch of twelve year olds. Why? Suppose it could be worse, a bunch of horny 13 year olds. It’s not like that’s. already happened with another game by certain developer. Oh wait..

    If you can’t put faith in yourself, then you probably shouldn’t be developing a game.

  10. I can almost guarantee that Sony would have let them run with the original design. They shouldn’t have gone the EA way.

Comments are now closed for this post.