GoldbergBlog

There is little doubt in my mind that Brütal Legend will be brilliant. Psychonauts is one of the best games ever made. I wish I had easy access to Tim Schaefer’s other games but I don’t have a DeLorean and even if I did, it would have to be equipped with a Mr. Fusion in order to generate the 1.21 gigawatts necessary to power the flux capacitor (This reminds me: isn’t about time we had a good Back to the Future videogame? You could pimp out the DeLorean, sneak around in BTTF: Part II, play the world’s easiest drinking game with Doc Brown…actually, nevermind. The game would end up sucking. No use in dragging one of the greatest film trilogies (and even Part III is acceptable) through the mud).

But no one other than hardcore gamers who were in the know bought Psychonauts. Unless a game starts with “Madden,” “Halo”, or “Grand Theft Auto”, it will have a tough time getting older gamers to open their wallets (Sure, Mario and Zelda games sell great but they’ve had about twenty years to establish a brand). Imagine if in movies, the only films that were successful were franchise flicks. Granted, these are the ones that make the most money, but they’re also the ones that cost the most. Films like Superbad and Knocked Up would be under-marketed, unnoticed, and totally flop at the box office instead of making $121 million and $148 million, respectively.

Brütal Legend is destined to financially flop because it’s clearly genre bending, very stylish, and not easy to stuff into an easy, predetermined category. And while you could argue that Jack Black will be a selling point for the game, I’d like to remind you that Black has never opened a film based solely on his presence. Yes, School of Rock did well but it had fantastic word-of-mouth and generally positive reviews. Since then, the only film he’s tried to open by himself is Nacho Libre, which granted, did do well but paled to the grosses of School of Rock and Jared Hess’ previous film, Napoleon Dynamite (it was a small indie flick; I don’t know if you heard of it). While you could point to the success of King Kong or The Holiday, he wasn’t carrying the entire film. There were enough stars or other elements (love, giant apes) to attract viewers. So calling your game Brütal Legend and saying it’s from the creator of Psychonauts and features the voice of Jack Black isn’t going to get it off shelves. It will go in the ranks of great but underplayed games, alongside Ico and Beyond Good and Evil.

And that’s the marketplace. I love that sites like 1UP, Destructoid, and GameTrailers, devote so much time and energy to so many videogames and I appreciate that. I really and truly do. But they should know as much as anyone that while the hardcore gamers are always trying to find the great games that are gonna fly under the radar, the best selling games are the ones with a pedigree. Ironically, the non-franchise titles that gain that pedigree only get it through the work of the hardcore. So why wasn’t Psychonauts a huge success? I wish I had the answer. I truly do because then, I might know how to stop Brütal Legend from sharing a similar fate.

Tags: videogames //