@ezekiel said:
@monkeyking1969 said:
Yup, those ratios of interest seem pretty indicative of the mood.
I think Bat-man stumbled in the last game and is suffering for that now. There was a lot of bad blood with how DLC was handled, speicafilly how missions were cut out to be sold. Truthfully, I think people are burned out too.
My thinking is that as soon as Warner Bros. Interactive saw that Rocksteady has made a hit they should have been on the phone with DC making a strategy to create more DC character games. I don't mean rush out and make these games - I mean STRATEGIZE. Sit down and really think about games and these stable of characters and look at what went wrong with past games. Maybe, out of that thinking take the two most solid ideas, say Green Arrow and Super Girl and make games using them.
That pattern should have been to put other games in between the Batman games. That way those games get time off for fans to want them, but also we see more games with interesting and different mechanics.
I only like Batman. He's the most popular superhero, so it makes sense to keep making games about him. A game about Green Arrow or Supergirl with Batman's budget would fail. I hope for their next game they're allowed to do something original. Or a Matrix game. But I kind of doubt The Matrix is still that profitable for Warner Bros.
You also have to take it in context of other superhero games. After over a decade of yawn inducing games that only made money based on the success of the movie they were tied to, I'm sure WB was a shocked as anyone else that Arkham Asylum caused as huge of a sea change as it did.
And if that were the case, they'd want to treat that series delicately, and not tarnish its reputation with some other DC titles that reminded folks that most superhero games just don't really work.
All games we play are somehow super hero games, except for a very rare few. I think the issue with super hero games in teh past, Aquaman, Superman, Cat Woman...the list goes on is they were very straight forward with the material...slavishly so.
People respond to good gameplay. That is really it. The PS2 Spider-Man games were not even 1/10 as deep or as varied about Peter Parker vs Spider-Man as any given comic. Neversoft just made a good game with what Spider-man was, that was it. The current crop of Rocksteady Batman games are just good games, they even have some weird flaws, but since it plays pretty well the rest of what Bat-man is or isn't falls away.
If you have a compelling character, which DC does in spades, a game can be made that is fun or engaging with that character. In some cases innovative gam play is needed to be created from whole cloth, in other you can riff on the gameplay people like or enjoy in other games. Like I said nearly every story based game we play is a "super hero" story at its heart. Make a good game, and people will like it and accpet it; just as long is it tangentially fits to the character in some facet they will accept it. Ninety percent of who Batman is, what he does, and how he works is not even in a Rocksteady game; However, it plays well enough,it is reminiscent of some aspects of Batman, so it is accepted.
At this point just putting out another Batman games IS TARNISHING what they have, forget about fear of Aquaman doing it, Batman is making people tired of Batman now. They need another game to distract people while the need for another Batman game builds. I think we are in the era of diminishing returns on the franchise if they keep trotting one out every 18 months with Warner cracking the whip.
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