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Tough Times for Lionhead Studios
Alice, over at the Wonderland blog, discusses Lionhead's decision to reduce the size of the company. The maker of The Movies and Black and White 2 has apparently not been doing so well financially this year. From the article: "Over the last few months Lionhead has been working on plans for a new AAA world class game. As work on a number of its titles draws to a close, a pool of 100 super talented developers at Lionhead are available to create a new super team at Lionhead. This will be in addition to an existing team which is working on an amazing next generation title. This strategy was presented to Lionhead this morning in a company meeting but sadly it will mean some redundancies."
AAA world class game made by an amazing team? Well, that's a relief--at least they aren't putting out mediocre games!
English is easier said than done.
How you've fallen from grace! Black and White 2 was nothing more than a slick RTS with terrible multiplayer gaming, Fable was a pretty rail adventure, and the Movies is an elegant slice of what might have been a good game if not for the overwhelming micromanagement. I dont want to even mention Black and White and how you released a game that could not be finished because of the poor debugging.
Its no wonder that Lionhead has to downsize; they're not trying to make 'popular' or 'successful' games... they're still trying to make 'innovative, groundbreaking games' and failing. Mabye they should take a que from Will Wright with his new SPORE, which is the sort of thing that I used to expect out of Lionhead or Peter Molyneux.
Lionhead is best at trying new concepts, and in creating games that give players a great deal of leeway in how they want to play. But they are not so good at creating games that trigger the 'must buy' reflex in the average consumer. Alot of that is that their games, particularly the gameplay, dont seem to be the sort that lend themselves well to typical marketing campaigns. Black and White was a fine game, but how do you sell someone on the notion of spending hours training a giant cow?
The games are excellent in the most abstract and fundamental sense. Be a god, good or evil as you choose. Be a villian or a hero. But the gameplay often falls just a bit short. I would say that Fable is probably Lionheads most commercially viable franchise. Black and White and Movies are just too hard for marketing to sell.
The simplest way to create a monster hit is to have fundamentally solid gameplay mechanics paired with a style and tone that both compliments that gameplay, and that the intended audience can identify with even without being hard core gamers. I believe that most of Lionheads problems are primarily stylistic.
END COMMUNICATION
Black and White was a fine game, but how do you sell someone on the notion of spending hours training a giant cow?
I don't know. Nintendo has done a good job sucking people into NintenDogs...