Alone In The Dark Proves That Games Aren’t Allowed To Fail Anymore

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Jade King

Published Jun 21, 2024

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Video games used to be a🐼n art form where every single thing didn’t need to set the world on fire. Developers could afford to try new ideas, take risks, and embrace failure because they knew that even if reviews 👍were middling or sales were passable, they had a chance to dust themselves off and try again. That time has passed, and the medium is forever worse off.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Alone in the Dark launched earlier this year and was neither a critical nor commercial success for developer Pieces Interactive or publisher 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:THQ Nordic. The studio was already victim to a round of layoffs recently, but I don’t think any of us expected them to be shut down. But to save money and recoup losses, that is preciseꩲly what parent company Embracer Group has done. and is heartbreaking for its brevity, as ten years of har🦩d work and creativity were snuffed out in an instant.

Alone In The Dark Couldn’t Afford Any Sort Of Failure

The painful part is that, in an ideal world, Alone in the Dꦓark would have achieved moderate success. It starred David Harbour and Jodie Comer as its two lead characters, featured an interesting take on the classic property, and wasn’t afraid to do its own thing. The end result was far from perfect, but was admirable in its visual presentation, unorthodox puzzle design, and in creat⛦ing an aesthetic that we don’t see from this genre all that much. But it wasn’t a universal banger, so it was doomed to failure, and then death.

Games take too🐲 long to make, are too expensive to produce, and present too many risks in the modern climate to be anything other than absolute juggernauts, and it feels like many of suits making the decisions at the top are incapable of scaling their creations or realising that success can come in all di🌠fferent shapes and sizes. Unless you are an established franchise able to pump out constant sequels or a company with ample capital to take an actual risk, it’s hard to see how anything outside the indie scene is able to earn a seat at the table.

Putting Your Game Out There Is Harder Than It’s Ever Been

You need to capture the attention of a massive audience to stay afloat in the landsca♔pe too, especially in a world dominated by live-service titles that demand our constant attention with frequent seasonal updates and cওhanges that punish us for failing to stay in the loop.

This actively incentivises players to find one game and stick with it, when just a couple of decades ago we’d been willing to take a chance on smaller games and different games and weirder games that needed that sorಌt of mindset to survive. But unless you’re a hardcore gamer with an eye on the indie scene, that doesn’t exist anymore.

Player standing in a chapel in front of stain glassed windows.

When I was growing up during the Xbox 360 and PS3 era, you could walk into a store and browse the shelves for familiar classics, new blockbusters, and a litany of games you likely hadn’t even heard of before. The digital realm had yet to take over, so taking a chance on a game or listening to word of mouth recommendations was often how ꦦhidden gems survived, and were able to foster reputations that would grow into something bigge𒆙r.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Demon’s Souls is a core example, with the PS3 exclusive only receiving a localisation because of fans actively porting it from Japan and spreading the word of its brilliance. It was a risky, masterful venture that changed the landscape of gaming forever, but we’ve taken away all the conditions that helped to facilitate it in the first place. Will we ever get another game like this, oꦗr a new creation which can break through the noise and change how we view video games forever? I’m not sure.

If Alone In The Dark Doesn’t Succeed, What Can?

Now new and existing studios aren’t allowed to grow, build portfoli𒊎os,๊ or establish what they do well without a surefire hit on their hands, but such games don’t come from nowhere. They are products of individual creative visions, tight-knit teams, and audiences who are followers of the genre and willing to support them. As a teenager, I could pick up a game I’d never ever heard of before and have it change my perception of video games forever, but every day we are moving further and further away from that. The things we play cost so much and take so long to make, that anything that doesn't take over the world is doomed to stagnate.

Alone in the Dark is an established franchise with a cult following, and even that fell through the cracks and struggled to maintain an audience. If something like that from 🐻a studio like Pieces with major starsꦯ attached is going to crash and burn, what chance does new blood have with a similarly budgeted game? None at all, and that’s not going to change until entire parts of the industry are uprooted. That isn’t going to happen anytime soon, and the games we love to play are only going to suffer because of it.