Gaming Goes Indie

Established Developers Ditching Successful Franchises For Entirely New Development Strategies.

 Since 2003 Treyarch & Infinity Ward have released 22 games under the Call of Duty IP, with a 23rd title 'COD: Infinity War' expected in the Fall of 2016. While the franchise has made over $10bn in sales since 2003, the trailer for the upcoming 'Infinity War' has, at the time of this articles publishing, 2,945,849 dislikes and growing. We have also seen Ubisoft take a break from its Assassin's Creed franchise.  With new title in the massive COD franchise hitting the top 10 most disliked videos on youtube & Ubisoft taking a break from Assassin's Creed, what does this say about what gamers want from developers? 

 Luckily we have an answer in the changing focus at a well established developer, EPIC Games. In an interview with Polygon, EPIC Games CEO Todd Sweeney discussed EPIC's new direction as "EPIC 4.0". The main focus the developers shift, says Sweeney, is putting an end to developing games to be "finished out of the box". EPIC is leading the charge in established developers ditching successful franchises for entirely new development strategies. With new titles like Paragon & a sequel like Unreal Tournament being Free To Play & developed in tandem with the community.

Unlike other developers, EPIC communicates regularly with the player community on the Paragon sub-reddit & on both  the major ranking website forums for the game, Fury.gg & Agora.gg. This strategy is keeping the companies new titles constantly up to date with the patches & improvements that their millions strong community discuss & share with them.

This shifting focus is happening at a time when indie developers like Hello Games are being backed by Publishers like Sony to secure NoMansSky as a PS4 exclusive.

We are seeing this trend of community generated content given the same respect as developer created content in another area as well. Fallout 4 developer Bethesda has brokered a deal with both Sony & Microsoft to allow user created Mods to be downloaded to the PS4 & the XboxOne. This development is going to increase the lifespan of console games as new content can be generated more quickly while the developers focus on new franchises & sequels. This shift is showcasing the changing mindset of Publishers & Developers as they begin to release titles in development & outsource much of their games improvement to the community. The future of gaming is not decade long franchises & sequels, we are seeing a paradigm shift as developers blur the lines between company & community. In the future pro gamers might be pro developers as well.

Justin Asaya is the lead writer at TheGamingRoom ©2016 

When hes not writing hes streaming new content on Twitch @TheAsaya