Randomly Mine: Trends...

Splinter Cell: Conviction is strange for me. Mainly because, it was my first """"""""stealth"""""""" game. Conviction was made for how I was at the time, unappreciative of the genre, believing it to be nothing but watching sound meters while moving slowly through the environment.

And I imagine that's how Conviction got green lit in the first-place, after the game's original plan of depicting a long haired Fisher getting into fisticuffs in DC was scrapped. Ubisoft likely wondered how to get the shooty shooty players invested in Splinter Cell. This was also in conjunction with the 2008 financial crash, which seemed to be a time when publishers collectively consumed their Kool-Aid, and elect that certain genre's just weren't viable anymore.

What's fascinating however about Conviction, is how it put so much effort into rebuilding this franchise, only to earn about the same number of copies sold, if not lower. Now, it did have the extra challenge of being an Xbox 360 Exclusive at launch. But Ubisoft did not usher in a new era of Stealth with these changing mechanics. Which is okay.

Trying something that then doesn't work out, doesn't innately make a company bad. This article isn't about Ubisoft. 

What's interesting is that many others followed in the game's footsteps.

Hitman: Absolution lifted entire mechanics such as Mark & Execute, along with a shared emphasis on immense marketing budgets, lavish cutscenes, and "streamlined" design. Square Enix's Thief took a similar approach with its reboot, attempting to make the franchise's sandbox maps more approachable in the name of selling this stealth game to the mainstream.

And both were considered failures by their publishers.

What I'm fascinated by, is when companies try to predict the future. Collectively following someone who they thought would start the next ball rolling, only to hit a wall sooner than expected.

Another potential example is...

Made by the people who truly did usher in a new era of FPS design with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and its sequel, everybody seemed to think history would repeat with Titanfall. Warp back to 2013, and journalists couldn't stop raving about how fresh the game's enhanced mobility felt after years and years of modern military shooters that so often constrained you to camping hallways.

Just like Conviction then (though to a much larger extent), companies began echoing Titanfall's design. Most ironically, Call of Duty implemented enhanced mobility from Advanced Warfare to Infinite. Halo 5 augmented the franchise's armor abilities. Even single-player action RPGs like Mass Effect Andromeda featured jump-jets, and dash maneuvers.

Thing is... the mechanics began causing the opposite of Conviction's intentions. Enhanced Mobility made each game far more complex, fast-paced, and input based. Lots of people began noting the similarity in skill-curve to arena shooters, where someone who's that little bit better in navigating the environment has an immense advantage over someone who doesn't.

Not only is there now so much more to learn about each particular game, it's more punishing those in the midst of learning. It's harder for newer players to feel encouraged to continue when enemies escape every gun-battle just to turn up behind em, and quote memes.

As I've said in the past, the shift to Battle Royale and/or character based games is due to those genre's being much more palatable for newcomers, while having a large enough learning curve to satisfy hardcore players. Those who invested hundreds of hours have lots of content to fixate on, and newer players can attribute loses to bad luck or a character's ability, rather than their developing skill.

Perhaps I'll do a video on this some time, but there'll always be Developers & Publishers trying to predict the next big thing, and even throw hundreds of millions of dollars to make something the next big thing.

But you can never make the next big thing, intentionally.

Or EA would've put their money on Apex, not Titanfall.