At the end of the day it’s just a Mario type platformer with an online level editor.

Your checklist works in the same way:

- Highly saturated: Check.
- No dialogue, just like Mario: Check.
- Jumping from platform to platform: Check.
- Child like Fantasy: Check. (almost forgot that one)
- Cute, ‘loveable’ character: Check.
- Familiar Setting: Check.
- Familiar Play: 100%.

The only ‘new’ feature is the ability to build and upload and share your own levels, but people have been doing that with other games for years.

At the end of the day, people are not buying the game as we all thought that they would not because it’s an alien, totally original game, which it isn’t, but for some other reason.

Probably because 2D platform games are just not as exciting as they used to be.

As for Gears, then I have no problem if you don’t like it at all. I’m sure that many people don’t. But I don’t think that it sold in such huge numbers because it was familiar, but because it was one of the best looking games ever when it got released.

Up until then, nothing even came close in terms of visuals, whether it’s desaturated or not.

It was straight forward, easy to play, and it had one of the best multiplayer modes on console.

Then on top of that it had the guns and the gore.

Many clones (Army of Two, Dark Sector et al) have tried to copy what Gears did since then, but haven’t managed to achieve it, so I don’t think that the familiarity sells arguement works here either.

Lets repeat the fact that LittleBigPlanet sold perfectly well, even though it wasn’t at the top of the charts.

Does it *have* to sell more than the latest blockbuster-game to be a justifiable hit? There are plenty of creative games out there, and plenty more on the horizon.

To say you’re being fatalistic in regard to the gaming industry would be an understatement.

…as for Resistance 2, that just replaced grey with brown.

Danish top ten – all format – (if anyone cares)

WORLD OF WARCRAFT: WRATH OF LICH KING
FOOTBALL MANAGER 2009
GUITAR HERO: AEROSMITH
CALL OF DUTY: WORLD AT WAR
FIFA 09
LEGO BATMAN
FALLOUT 3
GEARS OF WAR 2
COMMAND AND CONQUER: RED ALERT 3
QUANTUM OF SOLACE

———–

LBP

I can’t agree with you more, and I do get the feeling that this is primarily Sony’s fault. I tend to say this a lot, but it bears reiterating: The human condition is flawed, and whilst tedium never gets tedious, the majority of humanity will pine for boredom and familiar surroundings. Put a human being in a World of infinite novelty, and within five minutes they’ll want to be back in the hellhole of a cul-de-sac they grew up in.

The moral of this story: Ingenuity cannot compete with familiar blandness, it never could. There’s a divide between the people who welcome ingenuity, and those who would simply opt for something they’ve seen and done before. The crowd that desires ingenuity is a minority, a vocal minority but a minority nonetheless. And as we can see here, money speaks. It means that after this year, the industry will probably stray away from ingenious gaming efforts and back towards franchises, IPs, and amazingly unimaginative scenarios.

No more Mirror’s Edge, no more LittleBigPlanet, just Worlds of grey filled with guns and explosions. I even worry that Resistance 2 will be taken unfavourably simply because it broke from the ubiquitous greyness template, thus breaking the minds of many people to the point where they simply couldn’t conceive it and didn’t know what to make of it. Resistance is men with guns again, but at least it’s a bit colourful. That colour will drain away soon enough though, and I’ll be left wondering why I bothered to get a HDTV in the first place.

@Gigs – “I don’t buy this new IP excuse.”

It’s not just generally IPs. I’ve played Gears of War, I played the PC version back before I had an XBox. And I’m sorry if it offends you but I found it to be bland and unimaginative pap. The more brave PC magazines out there actually admitted it too, because the PC is still the occasional bastion of inventive gaming (thank goodness for indie stuff).

Look, here’s the checklist:

- Very Grey: Check.
- Preschool/Basic Dialogue: Check.
- Big Guns/Guns as a Symbol of Power: Check.
- Power Fantasy: Check. (almost forgot that one)
- Manly Steroid-Men/Super-Women: Check.
- Familiar Setting: Check.
- Familiar Play: Almost.

The point with Gears of War is this: Whilst it might have been fun, it was so familiar that it might very well have been an IP, it actually felt like an IP to play because it fell so well into the feeling of having been there, and done that. It was a round peg for a round hole, it was the quintessential “What the masses want.” game, and there was nothing really special at all about it beyond some new play mechanics.

And play mechanics are what Epic does well, one has to admit. Looking at their previous games, it seems to be the thing their success has hinged upon… but I won’t get into that now.

LittleBigPlanet and Mirror’s Edge on the other hand didn’t meet that checklist. They were alien, and that’s why they didn’t sell.

So it’s not really just an IP thing. It’s a deja vu thing.

and now Sony is basing themselves on METACRITIC scores? what has this world come to? they are trying to make it look good for the holidays as they say its suposed to be number 1?

You won’t necessarily sell less though.

Even if you take a much smaller percentage of overall games sold, you very well may end up still selling a higher number of units than if you released at another time in the year.

So you could get 60% of game sales in February and sell 5000 units

or

Get 4% of game sales in December and sell 8000 units.

I don’t buy this new IP excuse.

Sure, sales suggest that sequels do well, and they do, but if a new IP is good enough, people will buy it.

There are games that get amazing reviews and sell poorly because most of the public aren’t that interested, and there are games that get average reviews, but sell well because they capture the imagination of said public.

Whether they are a sequel or not.

Look what happened when Ubisoft launched their new IP this time last year. It became the fastest selling new IP for years.

Um, yeah, I realise that. I was just saying that they’re doing well in that single Tesco store. It was just a throwaway comment.

How about we just enjoy it for the great game it is? Does it really matter where it was in the charts?

What on Earth possesses these companies to release new IPs in the run-up to Christmas when the briefest of glances at the previous years’ data would’ve shown them that it’s pretty much ‘sent to die’ season if you’re not an existing franchise?

Nobody’s going to be buying LBP or Banjo or Mirror’s Edge when there’s FIFA and CoD to be had. They’ll all end up in the bargain bin by Boxing Day and then the companies will whine that nobody bought their game, whereas if they’d waited until January or February they’d have been pretty much the only new game around.

Still, a lot of comments are beautifully (and deliberately, I suspect) misinterpreting what was said in order to bang the usual drum.

It would have been better as a download title with less hype\pressure put on it. Level building is hard work and will *always* be a minority activity. A better approach would have been a more low-key launch and letting word of mouth do the promotion.

Now we have a fantastic title being labelled as a bit of a disappointment instead of being celebrated.

Remember the first thing you’re supposed to do when you’re in a hole, chaps.