Trying to Predict Success

It's easy to forget how big of a deal the original Titanfall was. I wouldn't go as far to put it alongside Advent Rising or Too Human, because while those games had a hype cycle due to their ambition, scope, and concepts, Titanfall was a new sci-fi franchise that got attention primarily through its pedigree.

It was advertised mostly through word of mouth as "from the makers of COD4."

That's what everyone approached it as, that's what everyone judged it as, and I'm not just talking about players…

Whether it was developers, publishers, or both, after Titanfall's development became known, we entered a whole era of Advanced Mobility shooters. Now some of this, was a little bit coincidental, 343 Industries were prototyping these ideas not long after Halo 4's release, it was the same story with Bioware Montreal via Mass Effect Andromeda.

However, I don't think people were told to copy Titanfall, I think everyone saw what Respawn Entertainment was doing, and judged they were going to repeat COD4.

They were going to make a game that would show the way forward, what shooters, big mainstream AAA big budget shooters, what they needed to do next to become even more in-depth, beloved, and profitable.

So "Advanced Mobility" was IN.

Thing is…

Advanced Mobility doesn't make your shooter more accessible to a wider audience.

In-fact, it makes things so, so much harder.

To chain a series of wallruns without touching the ground, traveling faster than the average vehicle around tight, winding maps with harsh cut-offs and chokepoints, all the while juggling between an aggressive arsenal to kill enemies which are doing the same thing as you…

You need to be good at the game.

You can't pick a good sightline and nail a couple people in one burst of an M16 to net a UAV that assists with your later streaks.

Titanfall, unlike COD4, is not pick up and play.

It tried, it really tried via the Smart Pistol, Titan Speed, and low time-to-kill, to keep people unlike most Arena Shooters at the time…

and it didn't work.

Titanfall has a passionate but niche fanbase that'll play till the day they die, but it was never the game to retain its massive influx of players who were mostly purchasing it with the Call of Duty 4 association.

Except suddenly there's a whole host of games with Titanfall's skill-gap. Some of them even carrying the label of Call of Duty. 

Advanced Warfare was honestly even faster paced than Titanfall.

Halo 5 gave you not one, two, three, four, but seven base abilities.

Even Singleplayer games like Mass Effect Andromeda and Sunset Overdrive were investing in double-jumps, thruster packs, combos, and dodges.

While there's a whole generation of games that I adore in this era, there's a trend, and one that I don't think was very well thought out.

It's not the first time either.

'04-06
Metal Gear Solid 3, Splinter Cell Chaos Thoery, Hitman Blood Money.

'08-12
Metal Gear Solid 4, Splinter Cell Conviction, Hitman Absolution.

One day, a whole collection of Stealth Game franchises decided that what they needed to deviate from was… stealth.

At least, how players knew it.

Despite these game selling millions upon millions of copies, in the case of Splinter Cell, Ubisoft thought the "it's still one of the more complex and difficult games to play."

So, especially after the 2008 financial crash, and niche genres like Stealth and Horror were getting the shaft, there became a whole trend about speeding up Stealth, either as an extra playstyle in games like Far Cry, or even in dedicated franchises like Hitman.

All to appeal to an audience that… isn't interested.

Why would they be?

Why would someone who's never heard of Splinter Cell care about seeing it's man hero go rogue? What person wants to play an action Hitman where you're penalized for every single kill?

Personally, I've been on both sides of the fence. I was one of those Teenagers that hated stealth games because they were too "slow", and I bought Conviction hearing that it's "faster", and I bought it, and really enjoyed it at the time.

Part of me still does.

Except…

How many Teenagers were going to abandon Call of Duty, Halo, and Gears of War to play old men shooting people up with worse gameplay than any of the franchises mentioned?

Yeah.

Of course, I'm able to say all of this from my gamer armchair. Hindsight really is more than 20/20, and I've got my own long list of bad predictions.

Really, this isn't about "publishers be dumb."

They are, but that's separate.

Really, it's just fascinating that even with all of the people, all of the data, all of the money, all of the time devoted to this one industry, that all of the signs can be either missed, or ignored.