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a slim pixie
Dec 29, 2008

an earworm burrowed into my frontal lobe

Under the vegetable posted:

I was under the impression combat was going to be undergoing significant overhauling tbh. I don't remember where I got that idea.

Relevant rope kid interview to understand how he approaches sequels http://www.gatheryourparty.com/2012/10/10/interview-josh-sawyer/

quote:

Josh: Yeah, it can be really strange to see how publishers react to an initial title in a series that does well. Let’s say it does well, modestly well. Sells enough to warrant a sequel and then the sequel comes around and the things they change to get that wider appeal. So I would say a success story of that would be from Assassin’s Creed to Assassin’s Creed II. That was probably a rare success story of that happening. The first one had a lot of problems. People really liked the concept of it, but there was some weird stuff going on in it. And it wasn’t terribly fun either.

Now I don’t know a lot about the AC II team, but looking at the final result it’s easy to see them saying, “You know people really do like running around on roofs. They really like the stealth kills. They probably don’t like collecting flags. They probably don’t like doing this other stuff.”

Del: Sitting on benches and listening to conversations.

Josh: Yeah, yeah! “They probably don’t like any of this stuff so why don’t we keep the stuff people really like and ditch the stuff they didn’t like.” And again it really seemed as though they paid attention to the people that really wanted to like the game instead of the people that hated it. I don’t want to name names, but I can think of other games where it’s a new IP. It does modestly well and I don’t know if it’s the developer or publisher, but they come to all these weird conclusions and change these things that cause the people that liked it to hate it.

Del: I really don’t understand that mentality. I don’t know what happens. Going back to what you said about games and the human condition. It seems like people see something and go, “Ok, so if X amount of people bought this then we just need to change this-and-this-and-that and then X plus Y will buy it next time!” You know maybe that’s not a good thing. Maybe it’ll make you more money, maybe. If X plus Y do indeed buy it, but maybe just going for the original X again is fine. If that paid the bills and made enough money to make another game, isn’t that ok?

Josh: I think it comes down to–in a lot of cases–that instead of people listening to criticism they just know there is criticism and then they decide independent of it that they’re going to change some stuff. So like you said, you made a modest impact, you really struck home with some people that really liked the game, and maybe the execution needed some work. So why not just make the execution of what you were going for so that the next one is totally awesome and those things that people loved about it is now even better. Then if there’s stuff that’s janky about it, yeah change the janky stuff, but not if it’s something that those people that loved the game really liked. Just make it better. I think there’s where things go wrong. People look at something and go, “Ok, so we have this core of people that love the game and this other group that fundamentally hates it, so let’s make it a different game.” And it’s like, “Well… no. They hate the game. They didn’t like anything about it. You’re not going to win those people over. They don’t even like the idea of what you’re making.”

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