It has been no secret that Ninja Theory has been striving to make Hellblade as fun as possible with a small budget. The core team is only comprised of about 12 people, but that apparently will be enough to make an appealing game. However, Project Lead Dominic Matthews recently explained that he does not expected to have the game be appealing to everyone, and that is okay.
Actually, Matthews said recently, a lot of games try “to hit unrealistic forecasts,” which seems to not only apply to deadlines, but also to the amount of people that a company thinks will be interested in a game. Matthews went on to say that Ninja Theory apparently does not have “unrealistic forecasts,” and is not looking to have Hellblade generate interest in everyone.
With Hellblade, it’s really nice that we can be comfortable in the fact that we’re not trying to appeal to everyone. We’re not trying to hit unrealistic forecasts. Ultimately, I think a lot of games have unrealistic forecasts. Everyone knows that they’re unrealistic, but they have to have these unrealistic forecasts to justify the investment that’s going into development.
Ultimately, a lot of games, on paper, fail because they don’t hit those forecasts. Then the studios and the people that made those games, they don’t get the chance to make any more. It’s an incredibly tough market. Yes, we’ve enjoyed working with our publishers, but that’s not to say that the agreements that developed are all ideal, because they’re not. The catalyst to us now being able to do this is really difficult distribution. We can break away from that retail $60 model, where every single game has to be priced that way, regardless of what it is.
We can now say our game is going to be 20 quid. We can make a game that is appropriate for that level of pricing.
What do you think of Matthews’ claim that many publishers have “unrealistic forecasts?” Do you think flawed games like Assassin’s Creed Unity or DriveClub would constitute as games that either did not live up to expectations or that tried to release too early?
[Source: Games Industry]
