Blumhouse horror

I can't believe this totally slipped by me- as though everything else just got in the way so much that I couldn't keep up with it all at the time. Yes- Blumhouse have announced their grand debut into video game producing to expand their horror line-up laterally and that is... actually I think it's pretty cool. Blumhouse represents some of the most consistent backbones of the movie industry across the past decade. As even sure-bet movie studios are starting to drop off piece-by-piece, raking up embarrassing losses that make their occasional big budget knockouts feel more like bandages across all the failures they're spitting out- never once has there been a Blumhouse movie that has collapsed and burnt. Not to say they've all been good. Most of them haven't been. But has there been a financial failure? Not even close. Why? Maybe because they're the only production studio in all of Hollywood that remembers how to actually make movies- like, within a genuine budget.

But what does that have to do with games and why am I bringing it up? Well- budgeting has kind of become an issue for the video game world, now hasn't it? Not in the same sort of manner- mind you- it's not like video game companies are spending money fabricating sets they could have literally just relocated to, or CGI coating the most mundane innocuous background assets- different medium, different costs. But you do hear about these big studios bemoaning production costs for these games that simply cannot sustain them- performing backflips to try and justify raising prices of games- as though we haven't been inundated with microtransactions and battle passes and virtual capitalistic guns to our heads over the course of the past decade. Meanwhile, here's Blumhouse, novices to the industry, approaching yet again with a high delivery method that- I'm going to be honest- is going to make them tons of money!

Because what is the biggest issue with modern game productions? It's actually something that Hidetaka Miyazaki commented around recently when talking about the way he runs FromSoftware- it's this all or nothing mentality that every big games company is hard committing to. Throwing all of your eggs in the same basket and basically making a suicide pact with all your work partners everytime you set off on a project. Gigantic budgets for gigantic games that need to marketed to everyone and be accessible for everyone, whilst also sell three million copies and generate a recurrent revenue source for at least three years with a battle pass and Microtransactions- but oh no- apparently people don't like that and now the game is reviewing bad and now it's not selling enough and now we've wasted another investment and now the company is broke and now everyone is fired. The real legends try not to do it like that.

FromSoftware hedges it's bets even at it's pinnacle. Elden Ring was in development at the same time as Armoured Core VI, both acting as collateral for the other. Bethesda are supporting Fallout 76 and trying to revive interest in even Fallout 4 whilst trying to get Starfield it's own identity to build a brand off of! CDPR threw everything they had into Cyberpunk and had to dedicate the next two years on an apology tour because if their brand was tarnished enough that their next game flopped- how could they possibly move on to the next game after that? Larian, also, threw everything they had behind Baldur's Gate 3 and if that dropped off a cliff- I'm not saying they'd be kaput but we'd certainly be looking at a more dire situation then they're currently at. (We'd be looking at definitely another Divinity instead of just probably one. >Shudder<)

Blumhouse are practically built from the ground up to work with smaller budget enterprises. They know how this goes. When everyone is throwing their weight behind that one mega game that takes 8 years and 50 million to complete- Blumhouse are going to ride off their name alone in order to push 5 low budget indie-sized horror games a year and people are going to flock to it for name recognition alone! I won't pretend that anyone could do this, Blumhouse has a name synonymous with horror, but the pattern is what I want to highlight. Horror fans do not have a high barrier of quality. They made Hello Neighbour a popular franchise and that hardly crosses the bar to climb out of the 'tech demo' territory! It's not about quality, it's about consistency.

And to be clear, Blumhouse's line-up doesn't look all that ambitious. Because they are working with publishing these games from small otherwise indie groups. That gets these small teams names out there and it builds the brand- everyone wins! Right now the only one they've got out is a game called 'Fear the Spotlight' that looks like a 90's stylised puzzle horror that gives me vague Resident Evil vibes for some reason. Maybe it's the PS1 Graphics with that font for their text boxes. You know the type, too big with colour tints. They know their audience. And of course they do- it's a passion project. And you know what? The game is reviewing well, people are liking it- perhaps making this game Blumhouse's most positively received product for a hot minute- but that's neither here nor there.

I'll admit to being sceptical when I first heard this announced. There are enough small indie horror games out there to drown out the Pacific Ocean but... upon review, I realised that in itself- indie horror is a gateway into the industry for a lot of creators. Sure a lot of it is going to be shovel ware, but some of it is going to be really clever and ingenious little takes on relatively small scale games that deserve the platform to elevate what could be a budding career. Having a studio dedicated to highlighting some of the best of these indies and getting them on a platform is like watering the grass-routes knowing the backbone it will go on to support. I don't know if that is what Blumhouse was considering with this venture, but I respect it under that light.

Now will I actually play their games? It depends. I don't mind a small indie game here and there, depending on if it fits my sensibilities, but at the very least I'll have a catalogue of some of the best to shift through- similar with Devolver Digital. And who knows, maybe we'll end up getting a new wave of ingenuity pulsing through the horror industry that will finally move us on from everyone trying to copy PT. It was years ago and I personally think that formula officially died when Ubisoft stole it for the dream sequence of Watch_Dogs Legion's Bloodlines- I'm serious by the way, they literally took that entire hallway and replicated it for no reason and thought we wouldn't notice. Most didn't. I did. We need new inspirations.