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Urban-Themed Video Games 'Basically Dead'?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fewer-boyz-less-hoodz dept.

simoniker writes "Midway CMO Steve Allison has been talking about why he thinks the urban game genre isn't worth entering, suggesting of the cancelled Snoop Dogg/John Singleton collaboration Fear & Respect, which was in development at Midway: 'We killed Fear and Respect... because we have enough data-points to know the hood thing is basically dead. It would be dead before it came out. And you don't want to come out on a dead vibe.' Do people really not care about GTA-style urban shooters any more?"

6 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. FP! by dosius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think it's more a matter of every game genre can be cloned to death and the GTA-clone genre has reached that point.

    -uso.

    --
    What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
  2. New Ideas by mrxak · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gee, are they saying that they're actually going to try a new game genre? Here's an idea for a new one, WWII shooters!

    --
    -mrxak
    Onions Will Kill You
  3. Um... by p0tat03 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about the notion that they're just out of touch with their demographic? Every time I see an "urban" game (Need for Speed: Most Wanted, I'm looking at yoooooou~) it's always come off as being poser and totally fake. What can you expect? You're getting a bunch of 35 year-old, predominantly-white, middle-class geeks to develop your "hip" urban game!

    And NFS:MW wasn't even the worst offender... I can think of many worse...

  4. Meh. by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Do people really not care about GTA-style urban shooters any more?
    Like most gamers, I care about most styles and genres of games if they're done right. The problem is when a genre or even a particular game (especially something like GTA which nobody had seen before) is popular, everyone wants to cash in with their own "me-too" knockoff. These of course aren't as impressive as the original, the market gets flooded with low-quality xeroxes, and the genre loses momentum. It's happened many times before with countless games. In the 8-bit era everyone wanted to make a Mario-esque platformer or a Zelda-like fantasy game. On PS1 there was the glut of forgettable 3D platformers and vectorized fighters, among others. How many Tetris clones can you name for game boy or cell phone?

    Also, sorry Snoop, but gamers are savvy these days. Not since "Cool Spot" or "Yo, Noid!" for NES has a catchy license ever been enough to sell a game. In fact, it tends to raise a red flag for most gamers nowadays. "Why do they need to CGI-scan Joe Blow Rapper into the game, or have Billy Bob Actor do a voiceover? What crappy gameplay are they trying to distract us from? Is this another "Bruce Willis in Apocalypse?"
    --
    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  5. Publishers Don't Understand GTA by ArmyOfFun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure, part of the appeal of GTA is being an urban sociopath. The real draw of the GTA series though is its open world. GTA 3 was one of the most open 3D games that had come out in a while. You can get fares in a taxi-cab, drive sick people to the hospital in an ambulance, or totally ignore the missions and just cause mayhem.

    Instead of publishers trying to copy GTA by focusing on its gameplay, they instead focused on the hip hop vibe. What they don't seem to realize is that GTA was popular despite its urban flavor, not becaues of it. GTA is more similar to Oblivion than it is to Def Jam: Fight for NY. You want to have a GTA or Oblivion style hit? Create an unquie world and make it open and give the player a lot of different stuff to do. It's a little puzzling that the open world genre is really lacking in quantity right now despite the huge success of the few games that have done it right.

    Remember all the side scrollers that came out after Super Mario Bros? What if instead of side scrollers, publishers figured Mario was popular because it featured a fat plumber and all games of the NES era all featured plumbers or fat blue collar workers, but totally ignored the side-scrolling action that made Mario fun. That's exactly what's happening with the companies that tried to ape GTA by putting focusing on MTV style hip hop rather than on open gameplay.

  6. Duh! GTA was taking the piss! by payndz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What all the wannabes apparently failed to spot was that the GTA series mocked first the mobster, and then the gangsta genres. Anyone who listened to the radio stations (never mind playing some of the missions) in Vice City and thought the game was in any way taking itself seriously needed their head examining. The same applied to San Andreas once CJ escaped from the oddly humourless Los Santos missions in the first part of the game. As soon as he met up with The Truth, all bets were off.

    Part of the fun of the GTA series is seeing how a bunch of weirdoes in Scotland will take the piss out of American pop-trash culture in the next mission - but the (US-developed) imitators all missed the point and played the whole thing straight. No wonder people got bored very quickly - if you're not taking the piss, there's literally nothing to hold your attention.

    --
    You must think in Russian.