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Why Beyond Good and Evil Tanked
Via Joystiq, a post on the JumpButton blog talking with a PR manager at Ubisoft about the title Beyond Good and Evil. Despite critical acclaim and crackerjack gameplay, the title just didn't do very well commercially. The rep explains why it did so badly in the stores, and what that means for future quality game titles. From the article: "When BG&E was released in 2003, it was competing against some of the strongest franchises in gaming. Like a weak wolf cub in a litter, it was forced to fight its siblings for attention and nurturing. Strong brands such as Tom Clancy and the reinvented Prince of Persia were the favourite sons that year. While XIII, a stylish FPS based on an obscure Belgian graphic novel, almost suffered a similar fate to BG&E, but sales in European territories still managed to qualify that game for Sony's best-seller Platinum label. It was only late in the piece that IGN.com managed to arm us with a majestic and summarizing quote for the difficult BG&E: 'Zelda for grown-ups.'"
haven't played the game, but saw the trailer for the game with my prince of persia game and i can tell you it looked boring as anything, was quite surprised that it was actually critically acclaimed from the article, perhaps most of the audience was put off by the trailer like i was.
A VERY relevent story for this forum. Everyone's always complaining about gameplay. Well BG&E had gameplay*, and look what happened. Apparently people were unwilling to put their money were their mouth is.
*I'm playing it right now.
After hearing a lot of critical praise for BG&E, including from people I used to work with in the games magazine business, I decided to pick up the GC version (second-hand) and give it a try.
I'd heard it was something to do with a photojournalist fighting a conspiracy in a sci-fi/fantasy world, so that aspect of the game was expected. What I didn't expect was the heroine's sidekick to be a talking cartoon pig, along with a host of other characters who looked like refugees from Banjo-Kazooie. Kind of a 'WTF?' moment that threw me out of the game to begin with. And I bet I wasn't the only one.
I got past it, though, and started to enjoy the game as it opened up. Unfortunately, then my GC's memory card crapped out on me and lost my saved game, and I just couldn't face playing through the whole thing again. So I guess I'll never know how the story turned out. Shame.
You must think in Russian.
As subject says. It was a good game, but a bit too short, and definitely too girly (for mainstream).
Having said that, I stayed up for 3 nights in a row and finished it faster than most games I've played - it was definitely fun, quite playable, and i liked the slight quirkyness, but i'm probably not your average player.
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
I bought the game (for PC) when it was discounted in the sale, as I'd heard it was meant to be quite good.
I enjoyed playing it, and have recomended it to friends. It was a nice change to play something that wasn't yet another FPS/RTS/whatever that was just the same as all the rest.
About the only bad thing I would say is that it did get a bit too easy towards the end.
I always assumed it didn't do too well because people looked at it and thought, "What? I'm a photographer? and I take pictures of things? F%$& that." without bothering to try it out.
Actually, he's right and his comments are far from lame.
There are three "main" existing ways of creating a story driven with text that is aided by drawings.
A) There's the way that originated in america: The "comic" version.
The comic version is small publication that is sold in the way that magazines are sold. A periodical release. Usually contains publicity and the paper size is usually small. Small number of pages (if you exclude publicity). Sometimes a "collection" of comics can be re-published as "trade-paperbacks" in a larger volume.
B) There's the way it originated in Europe: The "graphic novel" version.
The graphic novel version is longer than a "comic". Their release is irregular (usually once every year or two for a major series). The number of pages is often "around" 40 and the size of the pages themselves are bigger.
C) There's the way it originated in Japan: The "manga".
Usually black and white, very small sized, but with a number of pages that is often over a hundred.
NOW, you can use any terminology you want, but these three ways of doing things are there. Comics exist in Europe, Bigger "graphic novels" also exist in North America. Mangas now exist everywhere, but they are often cut in "comic" size for the american market. Likewise, comics are often presented only in their trade-paperbacks form in Europe.
TinTin, Asterix and XIII are all originaly made the European way. Big graphic novels.
SpiderMan, X-Men, BatMan are all originaly made the North American way, small comic publications.
Ranma, Sailor Moon, are all originaly made the Japanese way, small books with tons of pages.
Now about XIII...
XIII is a MAJOR series of "European-type" graphic novels. Just because it hasn't been released or is wide-known in the U.S. doesn't mean it's "obscure".
XIII is big in Europe. It's scenarist, Jean Van Hamme, has done some of the most well-known European graphic novel series that i would rank right after TinTin and Asterix in popularity.
Saying that XIII is "obscure" is to put a blind-fold over your eyes and refusing to see that there are people living outside your own country that are doing thing you don't know of.
I don't live in Europe, i live in Quebec, Canada. Due to the fact of the bilingual situation here, we get the best of the three ways (European, American and Japanese [we get both english and french translations of those]).
In our market, European graphic novels actually is making it as big as the American way, if not even bigger.
The french versions of american comic books (in their trade-paperback forms as they don't exist in "comic form") are NOT those that sell the most. European graphic novels like XIII sell a lot more.