Ghost Razor

There’s a phenomenon that seems to be emerging of late. I’ve never noticed this to happen earlier than a couple of years ago, but if anyone could point out an example of it, I’d appreciate it. This phenomenon is a scourge on the industry, and any gamer who’s interested in playing a certain type of game near release is liable to be sucker-punched by it.

Here’s what happens:

A developer licenses some Intellectual Property, which has a fixed cost.  They come to the conclusion that the best way to maximize their return on the investment of these fees is to distribute the title they’re working on across as many different platforms as possible.  Some developers (I’m looking at you, Ubisoft) have IP internally that is powerful enough to compel them to make games for many platforms as well, presumably to sell more titles and thus earn more income.  This is all well and good, certainly I don’t have any qualms with releasing titles on multiple platforms.  However, not all platforms are created equal.  We can therefore expect a certain level of negotiation with respect to things that are affected by the limitations of that particular platform.  Obviously a game coming out for PS3 or 360 would need to have its graphical capabilities, etc. scaled back if it were also being released for Xbox.  A game coming out for the Wii might need to have the interface modified somewhat to accommodate the Wii’s unique controller.

What should NOT change, however, is the overall game experience.   When a game is publisher and has a certain name, but is released on multiple platforms, customers assume that regardless of which platform they choose to purchase the game for, They are purchasing the same game.  When this fails to be the case, if the different versions of the game are significantly different from each other, but all have the same cover art, same name, same advertising campaign, you are creating brand confusion.  Perhaps some examples will better illustrate what I mean.

The year is 2004, Spider-man 2 comes out.  Despite the fact that most games based on commercial blockbusters are complete critical failures, everything I heard about this game is that it’s phenomenal.  Metacritic gives the PS2 (and Xbox) version of the game 80 out of 100, a reasonably good score.  The game is acclaimed for having the free roaming nature of GTA, but in three dimensions.  Swinging around Manhattan, freely exploring the city sounds like a great deal of fun.  I buy the game for PC, because at the time I was travelling and didn’t want to drag my consoles around when I could play on my laptop.  One would at this point assume I was buying the same game.  After all, there’s certainly nothing you can do on a console you can’t do on a PC.  If one wanders over to Metacritic and looks up the score on the PC version of this game, the score of 42 might come as a bit of a shock.  Why is the score for the PC version of the game nearly 40 points lower than the console versions?  Because it’s an entirely different game.  One is no longer free to explore the city at will (the major selling point of the first game), in fact, you’re restricted to where you shoot your webs by little floating web icons which hang inconspicuously in the air.  The entire PC game can be finished in two hours, and there is absolutely no reason to backtrack.  Why Activision decided to release a PC game which is entirely different from the console version (and much, much shittier), and throw it under the same brand, when it would have been much simpler just to port the console version over, is beyond me.

Case two.  Splinter Cell:  Double Agent.  I’m pretty sure this title is an inside joke, because there are actually two different versions of this game.  Version 1 was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, the folks who brought you Splinter Cell 2, and was released for PC, 360, and PS3.  Version 2 was made in Montreal (Splinter Cell 1 and 3), and came out for Xbox, Gamecube, PS2, and Wii.  The general storyline is similar, but major sections of the game are changed.  A big feature in version 1 were levels where Sam is instructed to perform some menial task by the terrorists, who will return in a given timeframe.  In each of these levels, Sam must complete the task, but also use the remainder of his time to discover new plot information, and to perform covert tasks for the NSA.  Version 2 completely omits these levels, but instead has entirely new levels which are not present at all in version 1.  The plot in version 2 is also much more throughly fleshed-out, so many gamers playing version 1 may complete it and be left scratching their head.  Despite this, there’s no real indication that the PC version of the game might be significantly different from the PS2 version of the game.

I’m completely fine with having two studios create similar but not precisely the same game for different platforms, simultaneously, but please, brand the game differently.  Brand identity is the sole discriminating factor game developers have to identify their organizations and products.  By creating multiple products which are similar, but fundamentally different, and branding them identically creates confusion which erodes the value of your brand.  This is especially true when one of the products is extremely inferior to the other.  Understandably one would want to leverage the cost of their licenses to get the most profit out of the equation possible, but if you have to mess your brand up to do it, you’re selling a piece of your hard-earned soul that you may not be able to get back in the long term.

Stop making a game for 8 different systems, giving it the same name, but having it be a totally different game.

Tags: Industry, Marketing //