ToriJ's Reviews Q&A Session

[Ayen]

How long do you believe a formula can work in a game series? When is it time for a breath of fresh air?

I think it can work for as long as the consumer make it work. If the vast majority of your audience is tired with a formula then obviously something needs to be changed otherwise you risk losing consumers' interest and performing poorly in the next game. Obviously there was something about the Mega Man formula that stuck with people because they made eight freaking games about it. Call of Duty is another game franchise that gets a lot of flak from people for basically being the same game with a few updates ever since COD4, but it still had its loyal fanbase and was making a profit so the developers had no incentive to shake things up. That only changed in recent years when even fans of the series was getting tired of the same formula, and Activision needed to do something to get interest going again. That was their motivation going into Ghosts, and it looks like the game that would actually shake COD up again would be Advanced Modern Warfare.

AMW had probably the longest story campaign by Call of Duty standards, a solid voice acting cast, and even managed to bring people who were alienated with Call of Duty to give it a chance because of the changes they've made. Even Pokemon, which is a series I love, is guilty of a lot of the criticism that Call of Duty faces on a daily basis. After a while it was basically the same game with just a few updates every now and again, now we can have two Pokemon out during a battle and there are megaevolutions. Then Pokemon embraced 3D technology and wowed people with its graphics and next time I turn around everyone and their mother is playing Pokemon again. Mario has been more or less the same game for 30 years, and while he been put in different kinds of games, he's always been the Italian plumber that jumped on enemies and saved the princess, and Mario fans for the most part are content with that. Unlike Sonic who did try shaking things up by adding more characters and making the story darker to where its fans wish they'd just go back to the original formula where Sonic was running around at high speeds rescuing animals.

And when that point is reached, how should a developer recognize and react to it?

You have to look at it in the long term. If the re-imagining fails and you throw the old concept out the window entirely then you're going to be up trout creak without a paddle. The most recent example I can think of to prove my point is with Devil May Cry. Capcom wrote themselves into a corner with the Nero character in DMC4, so what did they do? They rebooted. They threw the old Dante, and everything to do with him out the window, and made a new game that a large part of the fanbase did not like, and they did not want. And while I enjoyed the new game, it did horribly financially. It made less than the last game that Capcom thought was a flop. It didn't help that Ninja Theory was more arrogant than the Dante character himself that pissed the fanbase off even more when they were already against the product being made. So now they don't know what to do. Do you make Devil May Cry 5 or do you try to fix the problems with a DmC 2?

I find it ironic because I think Capcom approached the reboot idea better than most developers do. Going back to Mega Man again, they made Mega Man X take place so far into the future that it didn't interfere with the established canon that was already there, so if it failed they had the old games to fall back on. Luckily for them Mega Man X didn't fail and they were actually able to have the original Mega Man and the new Mega Man run side by side, and they did it again with Mega Man Legends, and they did it again with Battle Network. Whereas a game like Castlevania threw out 24 years of lore out the window and made Lords of Shadows. With Capcom's Mega Man you could always go back to what worked before. As for recognizing it, unless it's obvious that the vast majority are tired of it, you may have to look at sales figures which can be a difficult thing in and of themselves because there are fans who will buy your games anyway and then complain that it was the same thing as the game before so you're still making a profit. Unless you do a survey or something.

As for Rush, I have no idea what possessed Midway to change the formula. I am a newcomer when it comes to Rush and only played the first game. If I had to guess, I think the appeal of Rush was because it was so over the top that a more realistic racing game in L.A. Rush completely ruined that experience for a lot of people, and the fact they had most things locked forcing you to do a campaign mode to unlock it, put a lot of people off. Which is a crying shame because the explosions already looked like something out of a Michael Bay movie, I can only imagine how over the top and fun they could have made it on the PS2 or the PS3 if it survived that long.

This also brings up a question of brand identity -- how heavily should brand identity weigh on game designers, and how much should it weigh on consumers?

I think it depends how the changes are implemented. Some people criticize Mass Effect for steering away from its RPGs roots and becoming more of an over-the-shoulder shooter game, but that style was more positively received and a lot of people will tell you that ME2 gameplay improved vastly upon the first game and they are a lot more drawn to the shooting aspect of it, and I think for Mass Effect that works more than being like a JRPG. Then we have a game like Resident Evil that tried to be action, but it also tried to be horror and by RE6 you could tell trying to please everyone was not working. As much as I dislike Resident Evil 4 for everything its done to the series, it was a success. The problem came when they didn't know how to follow it up, so what did they do? They made the same exact game, changed some things around while completely missing the point of why people liked RE4 in the first place. People like Resident Evil because it doesn't take itself too seriously, the moment you take yourself absolutely seriously and cross the threshold into melodramatic (which a lot of Japanese games are guilty of doing) you completely lose the experience that lured us in in the first place.

So it depends, and I haven't played the Paper Mario games you're talking about so I can't comment how well the changes were implemented, and how they mesh with the brand, but Mario, for a fat guy, is probably the most flexible person in the game industry. It's been a platforming game, it's been a racing game, it's been a party game, a golf game, a tennis game, a fighting game, a cleaning game, a space game, a ghost game, and a RPG. Super Mario Bros. 2 was originally an entirely different game, but despite its roots it still felt so much like a Mario game that it actually felt like an improvement to the first game to where when the third game came out it felt like a step backwards. So if anyone can survive shaking things up it's Mario, and if he can't do it then I don't know what to tell those people.

As a developer in a large company, how much innovation should fan reaction and expectation force upon me?

I think it comes down to what your motivations as a developer are. If it's because you love Mega Man and want to honor the gameplay from the original games, then you may have to accept that your games might be a niche and only appeal to the people who are the same as you, and trust me there are seven billion people in the world you're going to find people who feel the same way you do. If your goal is to make money, you may have to consider changing things up but still having a plan in place for if that fails, because gamers are fickle and we say one thing and do another. Pretty much like people in general. But you also need to think of what we're talking about in terms of innovation. How is it different from what else is out there? How does it improve the games you're already making? Just because something is innovated, doesn't mean its good. You could say Final Fantasy II innovated, and you could also argue (Don't kill me Pike, I like the game) that the innovations sucked. Where the gameplay is involved. You have things like fists doing more damage than weapons, shields improving evading, and all sorts of stuff that doesn't make sense and a lot of people couldn't figure out on their own that's why we have walkthroughs taking you through step by step on how to enjoy the game and not punch yourself in the face.

What about fans in general, how much sway should they have?

Fans have more sway than they should, and less than they think. I think in the case of Mass Effect 3 it was a good thing, because the endgame there was to get people to buy more DLC. They wanted you to pay more money for the game you already bought to get the most out of it, and that's bulltrout. If I'm paying sixty bucks for a game it better be a complete game. I shouldn't have to have DLC, I shouldn't need patches, it should work and everything that needs to be there should be there. I'm not against DLC as a bonus if the prices are reasonable, but I should not NEED DLC to get the overall experience I want going in.

Other M is something I can't really comment on because I have not played the game, so I have no idea what changes they made to Samus and how they fail. Art is subjective. You can get into pages of debate on whether or not a creator's vision is the right thing for the character or vice versa. A creator can intend one thing and to another person be interpreted completely differently. Just look at how George R.R. Martin looks at Littlefinger on the TV series compared to a fan. To GRRM, the creator, Littlefinger on TV is nothing like his book counterpart. To a fan who read the book he is every bit Littlefinger as the one they read in the books. Is the fan right or is the author correct? Obviously you're not going to tell the man who created the character that his interpretation is wrong, but why would you tell the reader that their interpretation is wrong? It's up to the imagination that's why it's art in the first place. I know a lot of people have trouble looking at games as art, but I think we've come to a point where you can do that now. And a lot of times people who study art don't care what the creator intended, and that's a whole other discussion.

But ultimately it goes back to whether you're in it for the art, or are you in it for the money? If you believe in a vision, and have good arguments for that vision, then state them. And if you can't come up with good reasons for why you made the decisions you did, then maybe you should at the very least consider what your critics are saying moving forward, but if you believe in that vision stick with it. Just understand that it's probably going to cost you from a financial standpoint, it's probably going to cost you fans, and in the industry today that can be toxic. Because look at how much money is being thrown into AAA games. If it doesn't make back what it owes, then it isn't a worthy investment and that's why most developers today don't take risk, and they don't innovate, because they need to stay in business. Then there's the point that Nintendo has been surviving off it first-party titles for decades, and if they start changing it so much that fans don't recognize it, it can really hurt them.

And, finally, what is your opinion on crowd funded games?

I think it's great. I think it's a way for people to put their money where their mouth is and support the kind of games they want to see made, and Kickstarter has given a lot of people the opportunity they wouldn't have otherwise had, and a lot of good games came from starting at Kickstarter. As for the power thing, once again it's good if its in the right hands, but it can be abuse if it falls into the wrong hands. I don't think it's going to be something you can regulate, obviously you just have to hope for the best and hope people don't be dicks.

How do you Feel about Frocobo's? do you think they should become a series staple?

I hate to think just how much bird poop is hiding in Sazh's afro by the end of FFXIII. I found it amusing, but I don't know if I'd want to see it become a series staple, not because I hate FFXIII, but because I feel it's something unique to that character. It makes him stand out for good or for bad, and giving it to more people would just diminish what impact it had, because now you've seen it again and again so when you get to where it started you're like “Oh, okay. I've only seen that a thousand times, but whatever. Cool.”