A slightly unnoticed trend has started in gaming as of late. With the breakout success of the third game in the Witcher series, as well as other games from European developers becoming successful you have to wonder just what it is about these games pulling people in. The reason is not just that these games are both visually stunning and innovative in the game-play department. So what makes these games from underdog studios pop out?
Well, first we need to look at the influence most games have in their story elements. Most big games have a strong Asian or North American influence over them with the strongest of each being the influence of Japanese and American culture.
You see a lot of of those stories evolve around the principle of these two countries and this has been happening most of the lifetime of gaming at this point. Think about it, how many times in a game have you seen macho men with Ak-47s, or a story about family honor of some kind? These stories of course aren’t always bad and have created several award winning games, but the formula does get a little bit tired after a bit.
Fable and the Rise of Role-Playing Games (RPGs)
Let’s take Fable as our first specimen to prove our point here. Fable is an RPG, something that at the time it was released wasn’t very favorable with the general gaming audience in America. In complete ignorance of all of this however, Fable quickly became a smash hit in the gaming community helped the Halo franchise soar Microsoft to the top of the charts. Everyone loved Fable’s interesting story and humor. They thought it was a clever masterpiece, even to the point that they made Fable 2 to be regarded as a complete masterpiece in gaming history.
Screenshot from Fable III
After Fable we did see a rise in the popularity of western RPGs with a pause up until this year when even the much awaited and popular Fallout series got a lot of criticism because of the release of another game, Witcher 3. While the Witcher series always has a following, it had never became a mainstream gaming staple. So why now? Especially when Fallout 4 was one of the most anticipated games anyone could think of?
The answer is simply broken down into a few reasons:
- Struggle for innovation
- Failure to provide as many storylines
- Lack of direction
This is not saying Fallout 4 isn’t still an amazing game you can place a lot of time into, but it does show that there is a struggle to find a new hook for even the top companies like Bethesda.
Europe Takes The Reigns
So we know that Fable was a huge help in starting the RPG craze and Witcher 3 might have very well saved it by injecting new life into the genre. What could have made this happen? Well the Witcher had a lot going against it like its advanced crafting, tanky classic RPG controls, and an extremely long story. While these things are amazing and work well it generally shoos the average gamer away who likes to pick up a game and dive right in.
So what went right? The incredible story and side quests pulled it through. Thanks to the Europe-based roots that the Witcher has, especially coming from Polish Myths, it injected a new line of stories into the industry. The Witcher weaves dark tales inspired by European folklore with just the right amount of subtle to keep you on the hook. The stories see the player as intelligent and present their dialogue more towards an adult than the other cultures do.While this may exclude younger gamers, the game makes up for it by giving such a strong pull to the appropriate age range.
On top of that the humor in the game goes away from the wacky, perverted jokes we are used to, and more towards a path of satirical with intelligently placed jokes instead of Saints Row style screaming about completing a mission while nude. It was fresh, and it’s what we needed whether we knew it or not. On top of that it made everyone really love Geralt; the characters in The Witcher appeared more real with the choice of dialogue used among them.
Thanks to these combined interjections this game was in demand without even realizing it by the general market base. The extremely long story of Witcher was a hit as well thanks to the continually shrinking time frame of campaign stories in games combined with the lack of single player content. This all mixed together has created the perfect recipe for a successful game.
Room for Other Cultures?
I feel as though American and Japanese culture still have a huge role to play in the gaming world. There are a lot of stories still untapped that studios tend to stray away from like the Patriot era or Feudal era of japan. While these eras are presented a lot in other media formats they are quite lacking in a lot of games.
I believe if we started finding innovative ways to bring forth the over-shadowed bits of culture into the limelight we could make more engrossing games for players. There is always a way to breath life into a stale market it just takes the right creative minds to do it.
