BulletPoints - Exclusionary Gaming

Being a Nintendo fan, people are under the assumption that I think exclusive games are all good and that exclusiveness is something all games should aspire to. Then I get labeled hypocritical when something like D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die is an exclusive and that’s the reason it’ll sell like shit. But I suppose it’s time to surprise everyone, I don’t think games exclusive to certain devices or regions or anything is inherently good. I don’t think it’s completely bad either, but now we need to get into the discussion. 

My stance, as with most things, is that gaming exclusiveness isn’t 100% good or bad. It really is more of a case-by-case basis when it comes to it being a good or bad deal. I can get on board with the idea that if no games were exclusive and I could play Mario, Halo, or Uncharted on any console, it would only serve to help the individual sales of each game and make each console more robust in their library. But I understand why Mario is exclusive to Nintendo, Halo is exclusive to Bill Gates, and Uncharted is exclusive to Sony. These are brands mostly developed in their respective houses. And each house wants to maintain control over their brands like how film studios refuse to share the X-Men because then you make all the money from X-Men and don’t have to share it with Disney, the same rule basically applies to gaming.

The other big issue is because each of these three houses have a console (SEGA technically had consoles too along with Atari, but they made mistakes and now make games for everyone, mostly). And in order to sell a console, it’s common practice to make things exclusive for that console in the hopes your console sells more because your games are more attractive than other games. And while all three houses manage to be irrelevant in the shadow of PC-Gaming without knowing it, consoles are still a large part of the gaming market and continue to fight for their scummy second place. God forbid we do away with consoles and just have one universal device for all the companies to make games for instead of requiring us to buy three to experience any game released… but I think we’re digressing here.

So, yes, I understand that certain games HAVE to be exclusive for these above reasons. I don’t like them, but that’s the nature of the games industry. If you have a house, you need to fill it with your family before you can start inviting the neighbors over for orgies (or something along those lines). But when there are 3^rd-party games that are exclusive… that’s where things really hit a grey-patch for me.

When you’re a third party (Sega, Capcom, Konami, RockStar, Volition, Valve, etc) in general, you are shopping your game around to these big houses (and PCs) to see which ones will take your game. In most cases, the answer is obviously, “Yes, we’d like that game on our console.” But sometimes there are extra rules or restrictions making these deals less than fun. Sometimes a company may ask for a specific timeframe in which the game is only available on their console (seeing that a lot lately). Sometimes a company will ask for exclusive content for the game (which is gross). And sometimes they just push for exclusiveness, no exceptions.

Along these lines, we’re going to discuss four games that fall into this spectrum: Bayonetta 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Batman Arkham Knight, and D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die. Won’t this be fun?

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-party game developed by Crystal Dynamics who work under SquareEnix and have no restrictions (for the most part) about which company they can make games for. Rise of the Tomb Raider (stupidest name ever, so I’m calling it Tomb Raider2) is going to be an XboxOne exclusive game (for a certain amount of time). However, in this arrangement, neither Microsoft nor SquareEnix have come out to say how long that duration is, or even if there’s an expiration to it. Furthermore, they have not mentioned any plans for a PC (which technically has OS’s from Microsoft) or Playstation 4.

I would suspect it will come to PS4 and the only reason it hasn’t been announced as to when is because Microsoft is hoping to scare sales of people, thinking it will only be on their one console. And while I liked Tomb Raider a bit, I don’t think it was good enough for me to warrant a purchase of an underpowered console when my PC or even my WiiU can push better graphics as well as better games. The arrangement, overall, is just gross. Timed exclusives are just companies forcing the hands of developers in hopes of making quick sales for their consoles. Now, I don’t mind it in the case where one version of the game gets completed before another and you don’t want to make that portion of the audience wait… but that’s almost never the case.

Batman: Arkham Knight is the next one on the chopping block. This game is being released for XboxOne, Playstation 4, and the PC. Not sure why they aren’t doing a WiiU port as I’m fairly certain it’s capable of running it just fine, but I won’t get on that. My issue is actually with exclusive content. According to articles on numerous gaming sites, Warner Bros and Rocksteady have said there will be exclusive DLC for the Playstation 4. And it will be DLC that prominently features the returning villain, Scarecrow. Which, as most of you know, is probably my favorite Batman (and possibly DC) villain…

But fuck Warner Bros and fuck Sony for this absolutely disgusting arrangement. I was already upset when they decided to bar off the DLC from Arkham Origins for the WiiU version of the game, meaning that there’s content I’m not allowed to play unless I buy on a console I don’t want to play it on. But now, for my PC version of the game, I can’t get all the content? If this is an attempt to get me to buy a PS4, sorry, no. I will not be supporting these gross business practices. I loved Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. But if you’re going to stoop to levels and hold content hostage for me to buy an overpriced underpowered PC, sorry, no. Unless a “Complete” edition is released for PC with this content, you have lost a sale of this game and that’s a shame because I fucking love Scarecrow.

D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die is another example of exclusive gaming done wrong. D4 is a game exclusive to the XboxOne. But here’s the kicker, the XboxOne is a console with a target audience in the west… mostly Americans. D4 is a very Japanese game made by a Japanese developer with a target audience of people who enjoy Japanese things like anime, manga, quirky Japanese games, and probably sushi. The normal target audience for games like this generally reside on the Playstation consoles (and sometimes Nintendo). Not only that, but the previous game made by Sweary (developer of D4) was Deadly Premonition, which was released for PS3 and eventually for PC. So not only do we have a target audience misfire, but we also have a formerly most-platform developer sticking to just one platform.

Pick the better console to put your game on and one that you know has your audience behind it. In general, the Xbox audience has almost always been fans of sports games and FPS games (with some obvious exceptions, but that’s the general buying audience for Xbox consoles). So an episodic Japanese-centric game that plays in a similar style to TellTale adventure games and will have a quirky Sweary plot is completely out-of-place on an Xbox. It will make some sales, but not as much as it could have made. If they want me to feel sorry for their bad sales or expected me to buy an Xbox for this one game, sorry, but again, no. I won’t say it was a gross decision, just a poorly made one.

This last brings me to Bayonettta 2. Oddly enough, similar to D4 it is a game that was formerly on more consoles in the previous installment. But now it’s only on one console and the previous installment (until very recently) wasn’t on a Nintendo Platform. And while I’d normally be against this kind of thing, as it should be for all consoles, the exclusiveness of this game has actually been backed by a reason. Platinum (the third-party developer) had shopped this game around to other publishers (Microsoft, Sony, etc) to get the game out the door. But none of them would take it. When proposed to Nintendo, they agreed and the game was greenlit as an exclusive game for Nintendo.

In this example, the publisher didn’t strong-arm the developer into making the game exclusive. The developer didn’t have other options available to them, but still wanted the game made. Not only did they make Bayonetta 2 for the WiiU, they re-made the original game Bayonetta for WiiU with additional content AND it was a bonus free game for those who supported and bought Bayonetta 2. So the developers not only made the best of a bad situation, they made sure any customers would get the most out of their experience and that’s just a sign of a good developer, whether your into these kinds of games or not. And, yes, it won’t sell as well on just the WiiU, but Platinum is a company that isn’t out to sell the most games. It’s a company that just makes good games and is happy to just make the sales to the fans who love them.

Conclusion, I think that exclusiveness in gaming SHOULD be done away with entirely at some point. I don’t think Japan-only titles should exist and that everyone should be able to access any game for any console. I don’t think there should be exclusives for specific consoles. I think the idea of multiplatform games having exclusive content to any one platform is the grossest business practice in the entire fucking industry at the moment (right along-side pre-order bonus content and season passes). I get some cases of exclusiveness happen for good reason. Exclusive games aren’t special in a positive way. They’re games that exclude large portions of the gaming community in favor of trying to make more sales in an isolated environment, when that doesn’t make any sense because the larger number of devices you can release on would allow you to sell more of the game. But these practice are unlikely to change anytime soon because, for now at least, it works for the publishers and the gamers don’t have enough balls to stand up against this nonsense and would rather fight amongst themselves for console superiority instead.

That’s all for my talk about exclusionary gaming. If you enjoyed this and want to see more content like it, please like, share, and subscribe. See ya next time!