As Amazon’s phenomenal TV adaptation of Fallout begins filming its second series, Fallout co-creator Tim Cain has opened up on why he thinks violence sells when it comes to AAA games, particularly RPGs.
Over the New Year, Cain posted a video to YouTube about “why so many AAA RPGs expect and often require the player to do combat” and discussed “whether or not games treat [violence] as the default”.
Acknowledging he’s had “pushback on similar answers in the past”, Cain then summarised his thoughts with: “The TL;DR of it is, companies make games – and, in general, products – that people will buy. That’s it”.
“It means games that sell the most – and I’m not even talking about review the best, just sell the most – will dictate future games.
“This is obvious. If you have a company and it’s trying to make money and there’s one game type that sells millions of copies and another one that sells a hundred thousand, which one are you going to do if they both take just as much time and money to develop? This is why I tell people to vote with their dollars,” he added.
And people who do choose to vote with their wallets won’t just be a “drop in the bucket”, Cain insisted. If enough people did the same, “those drops become a storm and companies will listen”.
“Action genres tend to sell very well, and by that I mean, action RPGs kinda outsell classic RPGs, even though both of them are violent,” he added. “It’s also easier to market those sorts of games. When you watch a trailer and you see people actually doing things – jumping, climbing, shooting, punching – it looks like: ‘Whoa! Look at all the things you can do in that game’ […] It’s hard to show the other things.
“How do we show that this game has a really good story? How do we show that it has fantastic dialogue? How do you do that in a trailer that may only be 15 or 30 seconds long?” Cain said (thanks, PC Gamer).
“You have to reduce this wonderful narrative, that’s super creative and nuanced that has a huge arc, down to a soundbite. And guess what? It’s because most people won’t watch more than a few seconds of something!”
As for that aforementioned Amazon Fallout show? Last month Walton Goggins slipped back into his Ghoulish guise to start filming the second season.