trivard676Shadows of the Damned is like beer…or oysters – an acquired taste. Some gamers have fallen in love with the quirky, sometimes childish humour of the title while others were put-off by less than subtle dick jokes.
Either way, there’s a lot of talent behind Shadows of the Damned, and the fact that it’s not selling so well feels us a little sad (limp doesn’t apply here). Other reviewers cite the same thing, praising the title with high review scores that somehow just don’t seem to translate into sales.
Regardless, director Massimi Guarini stated during a sit-down with GameSpot that he never figured Shadows for a million-seller.
Quite frankly, I’ve never expected Shadows of the Damned to be a million-copies seller. We knew we were creating a niche title targeting a specific market. However, I definitely expected to see bigger figures than the ones I see now.
Guarini goes on to say that the game isn’t getting the proper attention it deserves due to a large number of factors.
Shadows of the Damned had a very long gestation. Before I joined Grasshopper, the game had already been in production for about 16 months. Original IPs developed with the traditional business model represent a huge risk and require big investments for appropriate promotion. Unfortunately, because of our excessively long development schedule, we couldn’t get a big enough promotion budget to reach out to players in an effective way. Too many people didn’t even know about the game’s existence, but when friends and word of mouth dragged them in, they simply loved it.
Ouch. We’ve seen this before, haven’t we? Each time it happens, it becomes more and more difficult to see new, fresh IPs go down the toilet while being great games. This at the same time in another genre the same game model and story can be used and re-used over and over again. But we promise, this is the last time we’ll bring Alan Wake into this. From now on, we’ll try Beyond Good and Evil for our go-to game.
But if you look at them…they’re kind of similar in plot, too. Except less Johnson…
Regardless of how dismal the sales of Shadows appears to be, the director still holds true his belief that the future of gaming lies in creating new IPs. Because quite frankly, the industry can’t survive off of the same stuff forever.
…can it?
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