With the current gaming industry resembling a noodle pile of potential, bankable ideas, insanely talented creative departments and million dollar IPs, any one misplaced element can spell disaster for an entire project.
It makes you worry about the future of any hyped-up title or sequel; that notion that we’re either not being shown the reality of the game beforehand, or that come launch, there’ll be some catastrophic bug that sidelines the whole thing.
After all, you need only look at the stratospheric misfire that was Anthem to realise the biggest, most dependable studios can also crumble from the inside. Even if we saw it coming a mile off.
Because making video games was always hard – the product of literally turning numbers into interactive elements, levels, characters and stories.
As the medium has gotten bigger and budgets inflated; franchises became more investible and the developers alongside. That challenging act of creating a video game turns into an altogether more intimidating prospect.
Suddenly every strand of code is worth millions, every second of social media is spent dissecting trailers and gameplay, and it’s all the more impossible to ever stick the landing.
The following titles all look incredibly promising, but I’d be lying if I said they’re without potential downsides.
