The video game industry has been built on the foundation of success and failure. The lack of quality control in Atari 2600, Intellivision and Collecovision games led to the implementation of Nintendo’s strict quality control scheme, thus winning the trust of North American consumers and contributing to their success. Nintendo’s betrayal of Sony in selecting Philips as a CD attachment partner led to the creation of the Playstation and a new rival. The commercial success of the Nintendo Wii encouraged Sony and Microsoft to experiment with peripherals and new ways to play games. The list goes on.

On a much smaller scale, individual games are capable of not only influencing future games, but how consumers perceive the industry. I can only imagine what Jak 2 would have looked like if Grand Theft Auto were not such a success. I can also imagine consumers have recently had their faith in pre-release footage shaken following games such as No Man’s Sky.

I challenged myself to think of five games that contain lessons for future games and consumers. In doing so, I encouraged myself to think outside of the box in the hope that you will read something new and refreshing. As a result of this challenge, this list will not contain obvious revolutionaries of gameplay or disasters such as Daikatana or Too Human.

For the purposes of this article, the ‘video game industry’ refers to: everyone involved in the creation and development of a game, the marketing of a game and writing about/reviewing a game.

Please enjoy.

5. Kid Icarus: Uprising

2016 was a year when video game localisation became a fearful prospect for everyone involved. Consumers were worried that a game they were excited for would make it to their country with removed content, censored content, poorly localised text or memes crammed into every text box. On the flipside, one flat joke in an otherwise well localised game was enough to get consumers to rally together to try to get the person responsible fired.

The year is 2011. Masahiro Sakurai, the brilliant man behind such greats as Kirby and Super Smash Brothers, is working on the newest game in the Kid Icarus series after 20 years. As director and scenario writer of the game, Sakurai’s goal for the script was to create a comedic story reliant on Japanese culture references and puns based on Japanese wordplay. When the script was finished and discussion began on the localisation process, Sakurai had very clear instructions for the game’s localisers – go nuts.

“The Japanese version is definitely very comedic too. It’s something that takes advantage of the nuances of Japanese conversation, and not all of it works directly in English. We had NOA handle the localization, and I told them to change the meaning and content as much as they want – that I wanted conversations that sound natural and enjoyable to a native speaker.”

– Masahiro Sakurai, 2012.

Nintendo Treehouse, the studio with boycotts and petitions on their heads in 2016, had free reign on the script of one of gaming’s most beloved creators.

Kid Icarus: Uprising is one of the funniest games I have had the pleasure of playing. It is full of quirky, endearing characters, well executed puns and even jokes based on mistranslations in previous games – not a meme in sight. For this stellar script and localisation, Nintendo Treehouse mainly have Mike Drucker to thank. Drucker is a comedy writer whose resume boasts shows such as The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live. Drucker worked with four localisers in Nintendo Treehouse to create the English script, bringing Kid Icarus: Uprising’s localisation staff to five members. In contrast, Fire Emblem Fates required twenty localisation staff, with none of these individuals having writing credentials similar to Drucker.

I wouldn’t dare say that the lesson to learn here is to throw out the Japanese script of a game and start fresh. Instead, I am advocating for an experienced writer to be part of a localisation team for times when pieces of the script may not translate well. It is perhaps the case that localisers rely on memes and cheap internet references for humour as it is quicker and easier than coming up with an original joke. It is during these times that a writer could create an original joke that generations to come will find funny, not just a joke for those with internet access in the game’s year of release.

Lesson to learn: Localisation efforts can only benefit from bringing an experienced writer to the team during times when direct translations are not suitable or funny to Western audiences. This would produce an optimal script, place less pressure on localisers to suddenly become comedy or romance writers, and is generally an ideal solution for everyone involved.

4. God Hand

Difficulty in video games in the past few years has been a baffling and even amusing duality. Forums and message boards quickly fill up with nervous consumers when game developers make a statement about how ‘accessible’ and ‘welcome to newcomers’ a game will be. In response to this, game developers and journalists alike rush to compare games to Dark Souls in an effort to point out its unforgiving difficulty, so much so that the phenomenon has sparked dedicated comedy pages.

For some, God Hand is the game that shook their faith in games journalism when an IGN employee scored it 3/10 after playing for one hour. However, God Hand is much more than the controversy surrounding it and contains one especially helpful lesson to the video game industry.

God Hand is among a revered collection of challenging Playstation 2 action games which include titles such as Devil May Cry 3 and Shinobi. When it came to marketing material for the game, director Shinji Mikami and the writing staff had no intentions of keeping the challenge a secret.

“I pushed hard to have the final line [in the game trailer] be “This game may eat your children,” but either marketing or ESRB or someone were not up for having that out there.”

– Jean-Pierre Kellams, 2012.

You will notice that I have been speaking about the ‘challenge’ of God Hand rather than its ‘difficulty’. I say this because the difficulty of God Hand is determined by how well you rise to the challenge.

When you start a new file in God Hand, you are asked to select your difficulty: Easy or Normal. If you were playing a conventional video game, either of these choices would lock you into a default set of enemy AI patterns, moves, damage taken, damage dealt etc. However, God Hand is different. In God Hand, every punch you land and every punch you take determines the difficulty you play at.

Let me explain. God Hand contains four in-game difficulty settings: Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 and Level DIE. These levels determine the intelligence of enemy AI and how much damage enemies will inflict. If you keep landing hits without taking damage, you will successfully progress through levels. If you keep taking damage or use an in-game move which begs enemies to go easy on you, your levels will fall. When you select Easy, the game places a softcap on level progression so that you can only ever get as high as Level 2. When you select Normal, you are free to progress and regress as much as your performance dictates.

I find this system to be genius and something which is criminally underused in video games. It makes so much sense to me to not simply treat game difficulty as a system of enemy patterns and damage values, but as a reward for doing well and a punishment for performing poorly. You weren’t paying attention and got hit by a bunch of mooks? Now you’re stuck on the lower difficulty and have to work to get back to a higher level. You’re playing amazingly and you feel like an untouchable god? Here, have these enemies who are ruthlessly trying to throw everything they have at you and see if you can survive the challenge.

Lesson to learn: More game developers should play around with dynamic difficulty which actively encourages and rewards good performance. This would help negate issues of watering a game down to appeal to more casual markets as the difficulty would be set low by default, then increases as players become better at the game.

3. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

We are at a point in gaming where limits are becoming harder to imagine and possibilities are becoming more endless. We are at a point where an open world experience is not simply impressive, but is the new norm. Games that previously involved tight corridors and tank controls are now open world. Games that previously involved hangars and cardboard boxes are now open world. Hell, even God of War is going open world.

With more games becoming larger by nature, this has placed pressure on genres such as role playing games which previously sold consumers on their levels of exploration. It seems that the solution to the challenge in this genre is just to make everything on a larger scale. Marketing material for games will viciously compete to have the largest maps and most playable content. Soundtracks will be on par with operatic symphonies, will feature celebrity musicians, or both. Feature-length movies will be made about the characters before the game is even released. User interfaces will be on par with predictions for a cybernetic tomorrow. Obsessive records will be kept of your level of interaction with each NPC to remind you of how much more potential the game has than just completing mainline quests.

And then you have a paper plumber jumping on paper mushrooms and whacking things with a paper hammer.

For the longest time, I struggled to see the appeal of the Paper Mario games. Why bother playing the childish adventures of a mostly-mute mascot when we have the likes of Final Fantasy, Xenoblade and Shin Megami Tensei to enjoy? I decided to give it a try based on the encouragement of my partner and the wonderful reception it has received online.

The game that I had previously written off as a childish adventure is a case study for good video game writing. The game made me experience a full spectrum of emotions, from laughter to excitement about more story content…to being downright devastated.

Upon entering a newly unlocked village, I saw a solemn looking NPC sitting on a doorstep. As I spoke to him, he uttered two text boxes of heart-wrenching dialogue and closed the door on my face.

My heart was broken and I sat there with my hand over my mouth. I needed to know more about this character. I had to know more about him. The game couldn’t make me feel these emotions and then never let me see the character again. I had to play on so I could find out more about this character and maybe help him out. I even spoke out loud about how dumb I felt feeling so much towards an unknown silly looking NPC.

I cannot think of a single game that has made me feel so much and provided so much motivation to play using so little dialogue. This level of efficient, snappy and purposeful dialogue runs throughout The Thousand Year Door and makes it an absolute joy to play. I cannot help but contrast this game’s joyful efficiency with games with mountains of useless dialogue and needing feature-length movies to establish characters.

Although ‘accessibility’ has become somewhat of a dirty word due to reasons mentioned in God Hand’s section, The Thousand Year Door could not be more accessible. It is a game with basic combat, but rewards well-timed attacks with more damage and provides feedback through audience members watching and praising your battle. It is a simple yet intuitive system which eases in unskilled players while instantly rewarding skilled players. I found it to be a refreshing solution to battle systems requiring tutorials lasting several hours and often interrupting the flow of gameplay.

I do not inherently think games like The Thousand Year Door are better than grandiose AAA RPGs, but demands for an HD Thousand Year Door and the success of similar games such as Undertale demonstrate that there is commercial success to be had from being efficient. It doesn’t matter if you can’t get Florence and The Machine to provide tracks for your game. It doesn’t matter if you can’t craft an intricate NPC interaction flowchart. If you can write well, if you can make people feel joy or sorrow or whatever it is you’re trying to convey, your game will be liked.

Lesson to learn: In a gaming world where large is the new norm, it is okay to opt for efficiency instead. It is entirely possible for efficient games to have commercial success and leave a lasting impression on fans and critics alike. This is encouraging for developers and writers who may lack the resources of the AAA scene, but can compensate in writing ability and simple, yet effective game design.

2. Catherine

For seasoned gamers, the debate over the importance of gameplay versus story will be all too familiar. However, with the rise of the indie game scene and editorial/blog-style video game journalism, it seems that this debate has become more visceral. Certain pedigrees of games journalists and developers have leaned towards the notion that a gameplay focus is too primitive and limits the progression of video games as an art form. On the other hand, games that choose a heavier focus on story run the risk of being labelled as pretentious walking simulators that are not for ‘real gamers’.

Games such as Catherine demonstrate that this argument is unnecessary and pointless. The video game industry is full of such talented and hard-working individuals that it is totally possible to not only have both aspects done brilliantly in a game, but to have them seamlessly woven together in a wonderful interactive experience.

When you play Catherine, you are playing a puzzle platforming cheating simulator. You play as Vincent, a dishevelled young man who has frequent run-ins with blonde bombshell Catherine while dating the demure Katherine. Through actions such as selecting speech options during dates and replying to Catherine and Katherine’s texts in a certain manner, you can influence how the story unfolds and ultimately the story’s conclusion.

On a superficial level, Catherine’s notoriety comes from its whirlwind of a story and jokes involving couples playing together and monitoring their partner’s level of infidelity*. It would have been evident from the conception stage that in the age of YouTube and Let’s Plays, a game reliant on cutscenes and story content would not be profitable. Atlus masterfully combated this by making the gameplay sections of the game addictive puzzle stages based on vivid renditions of Vincent’s fears and inner turmoil. When you are watching the story unfold, you can’t wait to see what new nightmares and intricate puzzles await you. When you are racing against the clock trying to beat the puzzle before dying, you’re constantly wondering what’s going to happen next.

I mentioned that Catherine is notorious for its story content and uncomfortable situations on a superficial level. The deeper and more underground reason for Catherine’s notoriety is the reason which cements Catherine’s place on this list.

As a lover of fighting games, I regularly watch fighting game tournaments streamed online. Running on autopilot one night, I visited a website dedicated to fighting games and clicked the stream with the most viewers. It turns out that I did not click a Street Fighter stream. I did not click a Tekken stream. I did not click a Mortal Kombat stream.

I clicked a Catherine stream.

Once you unlock an ending in Catherine, a competitive multiplayer mode unlocks in the game. This was put in mainly as a goofy afterthought and has no online component, yet Catherine’s gameplay is so addictive and so well designed that people travel around America and beyond to participate in competitive Catherine tournaments. These tournaments still happen today, five years after the game’s release.

I stayed awake until 7am watching that stream and it remains one of the most entertaining tournaments I have ever watched online. The gameplay impressed me so much that I preordered the game as it had not yet released in Europe – its wonderful story was just a bonus for me.

Lesson to learn: Gamers, developers and journalists alike who argue over the superiority of gameplay or story are selling their industry short. Games such as Catherine are living proof of the talent of the video game industry in creating a comprehensive interactive experience. If you are a game developer arguing that gameplay is too primitive or story is too pretentious, you are doing a disservice to your industry and should take lessons from the talented individuals in your field who have worked hard to deliver both to consumers.

*Disclaimer: My boyfriend and I played together and we vigorously cheated on Katherine. We have no regrets.

1. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

I watched as Capcom announced DmC: Devil May Cry and insulted core Devil May Cry fans. I watched as Capcom tortured and teased Megaman fans for several years. I watched as Capcom released Street Fighter x Tekken as an unbalanced mess with on-disk DLC. I sat back and watched as Capcom made every bad decision they ever made and hurt their fans in every conceivable way.

The thing that hurts the most is looking at the sales figures for Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective.

Ghost Trick itself can be best described as a puzzle-based visual novel which revolves around reversing time, saving lives and finding out who murdered the main character. It was sold on the most successful handheld of all time, then later sold on iOS. It features a story written by the Phoenix Wright creator with more twists and turns that a Tarantino movie. It features many brilliantly written female characters. It features beautifully animated 2D sprites. It has wonderful music. It has one of the simplest gameplay premises of all time – moving between objects, either pressing ‘Ghost’ or ‘Trick’ and repeating. Unless you’re someone who absolutely refuses to play anything that’s not heavily based in violence, Ghost Trick has something for everyone.

Despite the many, many positive factors the game has, Ghost Trick is one of the most poorly and incompetently advertised video games I have ever seen. Ghost Trick had a grand total of two trailers before releasing on the DS, then zero advertising when the game was released. None of these trailers mentioned that the game was created by Shu Takumi, a respected creator that already had an established following. I was thoroughly excited to see the game releasing on mobile platforms as this would increase its player base. Ghost Trick ended up being a disaster on iOS as firmware updates rendered the game unplayable for some users. This led to lots of problems and bad publicity as Capcom were very slow to react, eventually causing Capcom to pull the game from the store for several months.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, cult titles have been enjoying more success than ever. Sequels to the game 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors would not exist if fans did not petition and cry out for them. Cult horror classic D: The Game will be releasing soon on Steam 21 years after its original release. One of the earliest titles of Suda51, The Silver Case, has been re-released for all to enjoy.

With the recent gains in popularity of puzzle-based visual novels and the ease of re-releasing games, this would be the perfect time to strike while the iron is hot. A re-release of Ghost Trick on the 3DS, Steam or the Nintendo DS Virtual Console for Wii U would provide Capcom with the chance for a second advertising campaign which mentions Shu Takumi, includes decorated review testimonials and highlights many of the features I spoke about above to attract potential customers. However, this is Capcom we’re talking about.

In an age where games are constantly getting second chances to shine through HD remasters and re-releases, I don’t think Ghost Trick, a game that would be enjoyed by almost everyone, will ever get another chance to shine. It is for this reason that people like myself work hard to promote the game where Capcom has failed. This is not due to any love for Capcom or desire to bring them money, but because Ghost Trick is quite simply one of the most perfect games to exist in the video game industry. It is a game that is extremely difficult to put down because of how engrossing it is. It is a game where every character is made to feel important through virtue of being entangled in the events unfolding. It is a game with so many twists and turns in its plot that I would recommend not reading anything further about the game for fear of being spoiled. Although if anything, I would recommend MatthewMatosis’s spoiler-free review from his series titled Underrated Games.

Lesson to learn: The tragedy of Ghost Trick is that there is more than one lesson to learn from this. Ghost Trick is a lesson in how a lack of advertising can result in a game that was perfect for almost everyone being played by no one. It is also a reminder that in the age of remasters, re-releases and the convenience of digital distribution platforms, cult games do not have to survive solely on word of mouth. Cult games can be rejuvenated and given a new lease of life depending on how committed companies and creators are in putting their game back on the market. Capcom made sure that Ghost Trick was dead on arrival the moment they made it a stealth release with little to no advertising. By botching the game’s mobile release and not considering alternative distribution methods to give this spectacular game a second chance, they are placing twenty tonnes of dirt on Ghost Trick’s coffin.

Thank you for reading and happy gaming. ♥

Disclosures:

I am not affiliated with anyone in the video game industry and do not stand to make monetary profit from recommending any games.

I subscribe to MatthewMatosis, but I do not know the man and we have never spoken. I have nothing to gain from recommending his videos or his channel.