6mo ago

Saber Interactive CEO says Saints Row had to die because the games were too expensive: "The days of throwing money at games other than the GTAs of the world is over"

www.gamesradar.com

24 comments

Saints Row was among the GTA's of the world in it's heyday. That shit falls on the suits.
- SR never had the brand awareness or "prestige" that GTA has. GTA presents itself as a satirical crime series, SR after 2 was cartoony fun.
  Around GTA 4/5 , SR 3/4 I started preferring the saints row series.
  I fucked up and ignored agents of mayhem.
  
  I always felt 4 was just too cartoony to last. I enjoyed the super powers, but it did way too much damage to the series' world (literally and figuratively) and left very little room to realistically expand. I get that they lost what they were planning with the whole Ultor thing when the rights split happens, but the path they took feels, and I didn't intend the pun when I first wrote this, pretty scorched earth.
  
  Yup sr 3/4 were fun whereas GTA was not by 4/5. I hate driving in those games.
That title really doesn't seem to reflect what the guy said. The issue he seemed to mean was the soulless lack of direction most AAA studios have.
The crazy mofos were releasing a new game every two years when all they had to do was one game between GTA releases.
- And locked themselves into the Sims-like cycle of DLC.
I'm sure this joker's salary isn't hindering games.🙄
To be clear, he seems to be talking about the reboot. I don't know if he feels the same way about 3 and 4 from the article.
I may argue that going from the reception of the end result he may not be wrong. Whether that would have been true of the team that was making the two games people actually like or why they went from that to Agents of Mayhem is not something I have an informed opinion about.
He's definitely right that the industry isn't throwing money at the wall to see what sticks anymore. That kinda sucks for innovation on high end games. You really need a big, established publisher to take a big gamble on a well planned project to even have a shot now. It makes a lot more sense to start small and build through iteration (or just make a million meme games and hope for a REPO or a Lethal Company).
We'll see where that takes the industry, I guess.
- He’s definitely right that the industry isn’t throwing money at the wall to see what sticks anymore.
  Depends on what you mean by "the industry". The indie scene is doing exactly that. Every flavor of game in every type of combination is being done right now, all at the same time.
  
  Nobody is "throwing money" at them, though.
  That's exactly the state of the industry I'm referring to. Indies are effectively brute forcing creativity with a firehose of smaller games, either self-funded or supported by a few indie publishers, but nobody is funding efforts along those lines with higher budgets. Unless your name is Kojima, I suppose.

24 comments