The Dead by Daylight problem

Asymmetrical multiplayer games haunt my soul!

I understand exactly what a trend is, and what genres are, and why certain styles of games become a go-to for new and different development teams to attack and bring their own take to. In fact, one of my utmost wishes in life is for more developers to latch onto copying from my niche greats, like Persona and Yakuza, for everything that they do right. Copying and learning from the best around us is how we as a people build upon our artistry and improve as part of a bellcurve instead of as individuals. It's how a society can, as a whole, push the needle of innovation and evolve intellectually; basic society building principals here. Trends and art talents rely on a sort of quiet mutualism that permeates through pop-culture and is whittled down by the successful and unsuccessful projects so only the best talents survive. Survival of the fittest ideas. So why, even acknowledging all that, can I not come around on the Dead by Daylight copycat game?

I know I've talked about this before but after the recent release of Dragon Ball The Breakers I think I've reached my bloody breaking point. That is a Dragon Ball game where you play as a random citizen being hunted down by Cell, or Majin Buu or someone, whilst you try to survive long enough to turn back time or something; and it makes no conceptual sense! I know that in general Dragon Ball games can only really be fighting games or wastes of concepts, largely because the money men behind the franchise refuse to dish out real money to anyone with actually interesting ideas to adapt the long running franchise; but a Dead by Daylight style game has to be the absolute bottom of the barrel. It's such a nonsensical idea that you can feel that Dragon Ball trying to get out of the game concept. The actual 'escaping' or 'sending the badguy back in time' this game frames it's survivors around is typically forgotten as each game provides so many ways for players to track down souls of heroes to temporarily transform into super powered Saiyans and just have fighting game duels with the monster player. Clearly this game wants to be a fighting game; so why did they make a Dead by Daylight knockoff?

I don't want to just write it off and say "Because it's easy" like I usually do, because I recognise that no game is just 'easy' to make, beyond simulator games. (And that's because half of them don't bloody work.) I know it's conceptually easy to copy the building blocks of another game to a tee and just plaster your brand over the front cover; but surely there's more behind the blow-up in the Dead by Daylight model than ease of replication! It's the allure, isn't it? The allure of success that the Dead by Daylight model has nailed despite the reoccurring failure of other asymmetrical multiplayer games which have been popping up ever since Evolve. (I'm still sad about Evolve; that model had such potential to be a great lasting game... if only...)

The Evil Dead is another game that used an extremely similar model, and there it made a tiny bit more sense for fitting that horror game model, but still from a pure market standpoint if you try to make a game functionally similar to a successful and popular industry example, you better have one kick ass product to kick our your share of the market. Evil Dead bought some new ideas, as these new asymmetrical games all have to, but just as is the case with every single one of them; without a truly different feeling USP being aren't going to feel the need to keep coming back. Evil Dead might have had a chance born from it's brand recognition as well as just a raw gameplay advantage over Dead by Daylight, (I think the gameplay loop in Evil Dead is tons more fun) but the publishers sealed that games' fate by making it an Epic exclusive. Go where the crowds don't and you won't find an audience.

Hunt Showdown, on the otherhand, knew exactly what it need to do to mark itself out from the market copycats. And you may remark that 'Hunt Showdown' isn't an asymmetrical multiplayer game like DBD, and you'd be right. But the idea of playing matches centred around a single power monster entity in which you have to track down and interact with nodes... there's some similarities, okay? It's not a one-to-one. But the Hunt has it's own identity and the comparisons are strained, which should be the ideal state for all of these asymmetrical multiplayer titles if they really want to have a chance at securing their own niche in an industry slowly becoming more and more dominated with games that try and keep player's attention forever.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space is going to be a DBD style game, Texas Chainsaw massacre is going to be a DBD style game. I can't decide if boardrooms are enamoured by DBD's provenly successful model, if they're too scared to try their own sort of idea that isn't sold to them in the pitch meeting as "It's Dead by Daylight but-" This style of game wasn't even pioneered by DBD; it's just that through sheer perseverance they've manged to become ubiquitous with this niche of multiplayer game. And it's a niche with a dedicated following of fans that seem to mate for life, because I couldn't imagine being that attached to such a repetitive premise game. But after Friday the 13th and I can only assume a Nightmare on Elms Street game at some point, I guess this has become something of a genre with it's own genre-fans in-of-itself.

But the oversaturation of these styles of games is plain to see from the asphyxiated corpses of all those that never managed to hit their stride, chief of which for me was Resident Evil Resistance; a game I wish had done well. Resistance took it's cast through a series of simple enough objectives whilst they were hounded by a famous Resident Evil badguy player who summoned zombies, turrets and eventually a giant boss onto the map. It was unique enough, but the curse of the asymmetrical game struck again and despite it's quality, Resistance never struck with a large dedicated audience. Of course, it didn't help that it came attached to a single player game, which typically attracts a different kind of crowd to multiplayer games, but I would have hoped the quality would have transcended those hang-ups. Alas I hoped too much. Resistance was pronounced dead at the scene.

Any asymmetrical multiplayer game is going to suffer from the need to have a full match, which may not seem like too much when we're talking matches of typically 5 or so; but that 'full match' requirement means you're going to play as every role at least once whether you want to or not. Making sure every role plays fun is, therefore, paramount to keeping a player base, but that's only the development hurdle. Players just don't stick to these asymmetrical multiplayer horror games as much as they do shooters and more traditional multiplayer romps, and as a consequence the industry can't really sustain three or four titles of this style indefinitely. I wish there was enough going around for every game to have a heathy player base and thus be judged on their merits as games alone; but we don't live in the virtual space, ours is very real and distinctly unfair. As such, it's time that board directors learn that you need more than just an 'x is like Y but Z' to make a compelling- oh god, a Ghostbusters game in this style just came out, didn't it? It never ends!