Recently the gaming community was informed of layoffs at Respawn and that a project rumored to be Titanfall 3 was cancelled. For an industry that has continued to see turmoil in terms of layoffs of talented individuals, delays, and lower than anticipated sales for some releases, the news was sad and disturbing.
The news that work will continue on Apex Legends and the pending third game in the Jedi Survivor series despite reductions in assigned talent. The news was met with disappointment, sadness, and anger by the gaming community as aside from more talent being out of work, the notion that a third game in the Titanfall series was not going forward upset many as they have loudly said that they would prefer this over more content for Apex Legends.
I saw it as a sign that companies will be even quicker to scrutinize projects that are in development and that in many cases it will be cheaper to scrap new projects and continue with updates for games with a financial factor than to create new content or new chapters in a series.
Call of Duty is a successful model as not only does it offer a new game on an annual basis, but there are loads of paid cosmetics and weapons available which when paired with the numerous free content updates makes it appealing as there is a steady revenue stream to pair with the impressive sales for the game. So much so that the games were added to the subscription service where sales would take a hit but potentially more would be earned in content as well as attracting new players to the franchise.
Safe and familiar appears to be the direction that games may go as sequels, DLC, and remastered content may be the wave of the future versus investing in new and unproven properties or investing in revivals of dormant franchises. I saw the other day that a patch to allow 60 FPS play for Far Cry 4 is coming. While this is an interesting update, it is not the most recent Far Cry game as people have been waiting on news of a potential Far Cry 6, so I had to wonder why we are seeing an older game get a patch of this type. My answer is that it is likely to draw attention to the franchise as it is a low-risk offering.
It was interesting to see more larger name publishers are taking part in PAX East as I have often said that the loss of E3 and major players being at PAX was an issue as they missed value feedback from media and players who got to see and play games in development which for me offers much more than a carefully edited clip does and the resulting hype from a good showing can generate pre-sales and interest. Sadly the name of the game appears to be to play it safe and during such a volatile time in the industry you can expect this to be more and more common for the time being and hopefully there will still be a place for adventurous projects to find a way to market and success.
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