Why did massive video games fail despite their intense promotion?
Spoilz does not only aim to publish it’s games to the public, but also to provide everything that interests the Arab Gamer in general. That is why talking about video games in their raw (monetary) form fundamental to us.
That is why the failure and success of video games is one of the topics we pay attention to the most here.
Battle Royale games have been popular for years, but because we do not like picking sides, we wanted to support the story games similarly in the previous article titled: “Why did the story games not die despite the dominance of the Battle Royale?”, And the story is not over yet; not even close.
Yes, games occupy a significant part of our life, but not all of them are expected to be good. Some long waited for games go down in the dumps, while unforecasted for success, become one of the best games of the year in which it was released in, even game of it’s entire generation.
Here we raise the million riyal question: Why do video games fail despite the “huge” marketing?
The Failure of massive Games: An array of factors delima
Lack of Optimization
This time, begin the article with an online combat game that was expected to have a resounding success, but whose failure has become the scale of the total failure of video games in contemporary history.
It is ‘Anthem’ game published by Electronic Arts and developed by the well-known studio BioWare. The game’s marketing was huge in every sense of the word, no one had ever expected it to fall in such an emphatic manner. After a huge marketing campaign, the game was released on January 25, 2019, people bought it, people played it, and people left it.
that simple!
The reason is due to the lack of programmatic integration of the game with itself and with the devices running it. On the PC, the amount of bugs on the Origin player were really unbearable, and the gameplay itself was contradictory. And if the game opens its doors to you and the operator is satisfied with you, you will find that the tire fall is very clear and noticeable, which ruins the playing experience. Later, when EA caught the matter, they released updated patches, but only after people had already lost their passion.
Here we learn an important lesson: Constant and rapid development is the make or break line of video games in one form or another. Bioware studio is flawless, the great ‘Mass Effect’ series has developed, the release of the game well before crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s raised expectations for almost nothing..
Rushing to launch a game
The example here is ‘Godfall’, matter of fact, this example might seem unfortunate at first, as it’s one of the long awaited PS5 titles anyway, isn’t it?
The failure of video games is not only associated with integration, but also with haste, and haste in impulsary results in disasters, including the lack of integration itself. ‘Godfall’ was announced in the official review of the new PS5 games, and a meeting was held with the developers. And in the gaming industry, there is nothing better than promoting the game when a new console launches, an entire generation whose first games are the knockout, the cherry on top. And honestly, people’s expectations can be deadly for such games.
Unfortunately, that was it’s pitfall. According to some official reviews, the game was said to be more powerful than the console itself, which resulted in a noticeable frame drop, and completely ruined the gaming experience. The phrase was even bluntly said: “The game is worse than ‘Anthem’ and the ‘Avengers’,” which is really a big statement.
Besides some bumps in the Gameplay, on top of it is the similarity of double strikes in almost all weapons; This killed diversity.
All this resulted from the rush to release the game, if it was released later, the studio would have missed the launch, yes, but in return the game would have gotten the chance to fight at least, instead of being crushed in this unfortunate way.
Relying on the love of people only
People’s love for studios is conditional, there is no unrequited love except in fantasy novels as they say, right?
Video game failure maybe connected with successful studios, for example, ‘Dontnod Entertainment’. It is the studio that introduced the most popular series of ‘Life is Strange’. The studio released a new game in 2020 under the title ‘Twin Mirror’, based on people liking the previous series, accordingly they believed that they would love the new game; This did not happen.
The game was released on the EPIC store (first bump), then it dealt with a gaunt story (second bump), and finally a short length of gameplay (nail to its coffin).
Steam is a popular store for PC folks, and the previous series was a genius story with a remarkably long gameplay.
All of them collided hard with the ‘Twin Mirror’, so people didn’t like them, and the studio might actually have learned the lesson.
The audience does not like the studio, the audience loves good works; whichever studio. ‘Cyberpunk 2077′ released by the same studio that introduced ‘The Witcher Three’, one of the greatest works in contemporary art history, yet fell out of favor with its lack of alignment with audience expectations.
So it is a first and foremost tip, if you are a game developer, make sure that your good user experience is your priority; Without it, you will not have a user for long.