Watch Dogs is now out; here’s our Watch Dogs review.
They say that the light that shines twice as bright only burns half as long. In gaming, this is true of those rare greats: single games with no prequels, sequels or reboots. Planescape: Torment and Grim Fandango. Shadow of the Colossus if you don’t mind admitting you dabbled with consoles once. They’re games we don’t mind that they never had a sequel, because they were – are – great on their own. Ubisoft doesn’t care for this approach. Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Tony Key has said that the company won’t even think of making a game unless they can evolve it into a franchise.
In a chat with [a]List Daily, Tony Key was quizzed about Watch Dogs becoming a full-on franchise. “That’s what all our games are about; we won’t even start if we don’t think we can build a franchise out of it. There’s no more fire and forget – it’s too expensive” said Key.
“We feel like we’re in a really good place with Watch_Dogs, but until we’re the biggest game of the year we’re not going to be satisfied. Last year we cleaned up at E3 because we were pretty much the only next-gen game around.
“Watch_Dogs for us is really a franchise because we’re tapping into something people really care about, never more than when the NSA PRISM scandal broke.”
Whilst Watch Dogs certainly looks like a game with a universe with plenty of mileage, is committing to a franchise before your first game is even out the door creatively healthy? Sure it means you can pump more money into the game and make that first release look even more special, but does no one want that one, single light that outshines all those other clusters of ten?
Say what? Oh right, indies.
Thanks, VG247.