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!

Crossover Week

 Whoops, I slipped into the upside down timeline it would seem.

Who doesn't like a little bit of crossover action in their video games every now and then to break up the monotony? I mean you've got to get sick of staring at the same old mugs in the same old worlds all the darn time, why not switch it up and stick Batman in the Ironman suit? But moving away from the whole DC/Marvel crossover concept which I know riles some people up to even think about, what about when game franchises get to pop over the fence and see what their fellow series' are up to? Well, we get some of the coolest cross-over franchises of all time like Marvel vs Capcom, Kingdom Hearts and Super Smash Bros. It's a great way to envision otherwise rigid character roles in vastly different scenarios and set-ups wherein they can interact with others in ways that you might never have thought of in your wildest dreams. For example, who'd have thought that Goofy and Donald Duck would make such great battle friends in the war against the heartless? (Hmm? They're from the same- no way!) For me, I always love a little bit of a crossover time because it shows studio creatives shaking hands with one another and there really should be more of that across the art world in my opinion. However, that being said, even I have to admit that this past week has been a bit too much.

I'll never bemoan throwing franchises together every once and a while, but some sort of devil's bargain was pulled of these past few days because it's as though the magic boxes which contain all our favourite universes have just crumbled away and left us all in chaos. Not so long ago I thought that the most imaginative new crossover project I would see in modern years be the Final Fantasy XV crossover with Assassin's Creed. And to be fair that was absolutely wild, for a series that at least masquerades as being alternate history to crossover with a purely fantastical franchise, but I think some of last week's antics might be threatening to give even that the ol' run for it's money! I like to imagine the people who don't keep abreast of every development in the gaming world, like I do, and who might perhaps even be unfamiliar with the franchises being referenced. I'd love to see the reaction of a laymen to the Assassin's Creed Origin event where a fancy dressed Anime man teleports his way into a pyramid only to be chased out again by a gigantic flying knight with wings made out of swords. ("So which Egyptian myth was that again?")

Yet even with that sort of precedent, I myself am quite a bit taken aback by the event coming towards 'Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid', not least of all because that game was such a rudimentary fighting game easily outpaced by any of it's rivals that I didn't think it was worthy of receiving any support. I mean sure, the devs were going to take advantage of the lack of Power Ranger's games out there, mixed with the rabid fanbase, to fleece some overpriced microtransactions or two, that was a given. But why would any self respecting licence holder agree to having their brand associated with that sort of game/scheme? What's more, why the heck is the fighting game of the industry doing the crossover? That's right, Ryu and Chun Li from Street Fighter are actually suiting up as Rangers to get in on this game! (Hear that Jezebel? That's Chun Li from Street Fighter. Not Mortal Kombat.) This isn't even just skin jobs either. Both fighters have been given their own custom Ranger suits, which is a pretty big deal for fans, and their movesets are reminiscent of their Street Fighter appearances. Scrub my mouth out- but this actually looks like a well-executed Crossover coming to a game which may not deserve it. (How utterly weird)

But it get wilder. Because just as the gaming world was slowly trying to come to terms with the fact that was going to be happening and how we as a society failed to stop it, another crossover with a seriously questionable concept was announced. And I'm cheating with this one, because this isn't actually two gaming series' coming together at all. (Which does, in honesty, make it just a bit more odd.) For some incomprehensible reason fans of Rainbow Six Siege are getting Rick and Morty style skins added into the game. No, this wasn't announced a couple of weeks back on April 1st, this is apparently a real Collab. And want to know the worst part? One of the skin's is Pickle Rick. Oh god, the fifty year-old executives in the decision-room just learnt what memes are, but they're two years behind the curve anyway! That's right, the operative Smoke will be getting the Pickle suit (with Rat head) and a portal gun attachment whilst Sledge gets a Gromflomite uniform. Genuinely don't know what that second thing even is. Don't know if it's from a series I watched or if it came after I stopped watching because the community is the worst. (I should really finally catch up with Rick and Morty now that I'm reaching the end of Golden Wind- damn it, the crossover advertising worked!)

Yet of course that's not the end. Because what sort of 'Crossover week' would this be with only two crossovers? Pitiful numbers I say; Muda! What we also have to throw atop the pile is a crossover that at least makes a lot more sense, both conceptually and in timing, but still stands out to me because I just assumed this had already happened at some point in the past. Resident Evil announced a crossover with Dead by Daylight during their news blowout from the last week, but they've been pretty scarce on actual details like who's actually getting ported over. Now Dead by Daylight is actually no stranger to crossovers, with 'Stranger Things', 'Nightmare on Elm's Street', 'Halloween', 'Left 4 Dead', 'Evil Dead', 'Scary Movie', and 'Silent Hill' already in the rooster to boast about. Resident Evil might be seen as an inevitability. However, the question is what creature is coming this game's way to represent RE's finest; because there's actually a fair few to pick from. Mr X would be the obvious choice, given his reputation as the unstoppable stalker, but Nemesis certainly looks a lot more monstrous. And, if we really want to advertise the new game, may I suggest that perhaps Lady Dimitrescu and her glove/knife hand might make an appearance? Hey it was just a suggestio- what's that dog doing with that hammer? NO! Don't send me back to Horny Jail! I won't g- >Bonk<

And finally, to cap it all off, was a crossover which isn't really a surprise to anyone given that Fornite still holds the rights to crossover with literally anyone they point their fingers at. But even then, it's not as thought they announce a new crossover every week, they had to choose this period of crossover madness to reveal their 'Horizon: Zero Dawn' character crossover. Which served as a reminder to me that Sony are very willing to sell their character rights over to Epic, yet are desperately reticent on letting the actual games themselves get to the wider gaming audience. Yes, I did just turn this, otherwise unrelated, conversation into another complaint about how badly I want Persona 5 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Let not a week go by without my stating: Screw Sony. 

So that is at least four crossover events that all were announced at in this random week midway through April, and I can't be the only one scratching their head thinking there's some sort of Holiday I missed, can I? I mean, there's also the recently announced crossover with Dragon Raja (An MMO I've never heard of) and Evangelion, (A classic Anime that's getting an inexplicable resurrection soon) but somehow that didn't pop as well. And Illusion connect is crossing over with Zombie Land Saga- what the heck is going on! Am I crazy. Are hundreds of crossover events happening every other week and I've just never noticed it before? I feel like that can't be the case but all this is just too big of a coincidence, isn't it? The anomaly must originate from me!

I do love the idea of joining characters and franchises together in crossover events, even when it creates a godawful affront to god like that Pickle Rick skin. (I don't need to see that thing ever again, thank you very much) Where the stiff barriers that form our worlds of fiction broken down a bit more, I think it would make for a much more varied and inclusive eco-system where creators aren't forced to do wild things like steal a bunch of characters from other indie games under the knowledge that they'll never come after you because you're untouchable now. (I'm 90% the person who said that was joking when they did; but just in case they weren't I won't name them and let you look up for the quote for yourself.) However, I know that the sanctity of story telling and world building means that fictional worlds needs to contain some consistency to themselves, and so these crossovers must be rare and inconsistent. Unless it's this week, in which case they're freakin' everywhere.