Executive Meddling/Video Games: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Mega Man X]]'' had its share of Meddling. First, Keiji Inafune was forced to redesign the character of X because it was feared the drastic changes to the original Mega Man's looks would prevent fans from relating to him (the original concept would later evolve into Zero), and then the series was continued beyond ''X5'', which Mr. Inafune had intended to be the definitive end to the ''X'' series, causing a bunch of irreconcilable [[Plot Hole|Plot Holes]] as a result.

** The villain of the first ''[[Mega Man Zero|Zero]]'' game was supposed to be the real X. Meddling forced the change to {{spoiler|Copy-X.}} One of the rare examples of positive meddling.

** Zero 4 was writhe with meddling. Inafune intended for Zero 3 to be the finale, with every plot hole closed up but the execs demanded a fourth game, with a plot essentially being a [[Diablous Ex Machina]] in favor of Weil. In addition, the original fate of the Guardians was that they would be too busy fighting a three man war protecting the people of Neo Arcadia to be able to aid Zero. It was decided that they were to be killed off screen by Omega's blast despite having an obvious method of escaping safely.

* It is believed that the American branch of [[Sony]]'s videogame business had a policy of rejecting licenses for 2D-based titles on grounds of "low quality", as the head executive there wanted ''only'' 3D titles. This was, in fact, the case in the [[PS 1]] era, and is part of the reason that [[Capcom]] made ''[[Mega Man Legends]]''; Sony would only let them make the 2D ''Mega Man'' games they wanted if they made a 3D installment.

** Well, Sabre, the character Fox replaced, is a reference to Sabrewulf (so he's a wolf) and Krystal was originally an orphaned cat back then. It was also supposed to be a [[Nintendo 64]] game.

* The end result from ''[[Inherit the Earth]]'' was ''defined'' by Executive Meddling. Originally intended to be a mature game, the publishers saw that the main character was a fox and forced the developers to cater to the 8-12 market at every turn (Because every [[Funny Animal]] story is kid-friendly, [[What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?|right?]]). Then refused to let the developers create a sequel.

** And pretty well justified, since it would've been far [[Too Soon]].

* The story goes that one of the designers of ''[[Full Throttle]]'', a game about a biker who kicked the crap out of people and was investigating the brutal bludgeoning murder of an old man by a ruthless [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] who had also ordered the old man's daughter killed, and had further framed him and his gang for the foul deed, had an idea where the lead goes on a peyote-fueled quasi-dream sequence that took place inside his own head. The executives at [[LucasArts]] said no, as that would be inappropriate material. That designer nonetheless held onto the seed of the idea, and eventually created ''[[Psychonauts]]''.

* [[Master of Orion]] 3 was considered hit extremely hard by this trope. There was an interior clash between two developers, one who worked on the two highly-successful games, and a new developer. Eventually, the old face was worked out of the equation of development, resulting in his work being destroyed. The new changes were designed to create more realism in the game, however resulting in [[Game Breaking Bug|Game Breaking Bugs]] and [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|why you shouldn't design a game that at one point had over 100 GUIs]]. The development itself was best described as "doing taxes", but then things went downhill. [[DRM]] was introduced to combat piracy of the game, but was designed in such a manner than any CD drive that could burn CDs wouldn't read it, resulting in many legitimate users from not being able to play. Finally, the support for the game was bare bones, as most developers had moved on...resulting in bringing in employees with no knowledge of code to determine where bugs were occuring.

* [[Postal]] III was affected badly by this. When Running With Scissors partnered with Akella for development and production, Akella ''immediately'' began meddling, forcing a Russian release to take priority over western release, demanding that the much touted Free Roam mode be axed (only allowing it to be put back in via patch after a ''lot'' of back and forth), and cutting corners every chance they got, most infamously ''refusing to let the ESRB rate the game'', just to save money (this consequently meant they also refused to let it be sold via Steam). Running With Scissors has even ''apologized'' to the fans over this.

* Porsche had to be removed from ''[[Forza Motorsport]] 4''; in the middle of development, [[Electronic Arts]], who basically holds the rights to use Porsche in their games, told Turn 10 (the developers) that they couldn't use Porsche in ''Forza 4'', despite the cars being in ''Forza 3''. Surprise surprise, EA was coming out with yet another [[Need for Speed]] game, featuring Porsche. Instead of featuring Porsche, ''Forza 4'' uses Ruf cars, which are basically Porsches with bigger spoilers and some extra stuff bolted on to the engine; like what Saleen is to Ford's Mustangs. This resulted in the amount of Porsches effectively going down form a couple dozen down to a pathetic 3 cars, all of which are pretty much souped up 911 Turbos

* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]] II: The Sith Lords'' was meddled rather thoroughly by [[LucasArts]]. First they rushed the development to make a Christmas release date, meaning quite a lot of stuff (including 90% of the HK-50 story arc) got [[Dummied Out]] due to time constraints. Then it turned into straight-up [[Screwed by the Network]] when Obsidian offered to put together a patch to restore the missing content and [[LucasArts]] refused. Fortunately the modding community has managed to fix most of it.

* The third game of the ''Star Wars Battlefront'' series, developed by Free Radical Designs was pretty far into its development cycle. A leaked trailer showcased impressive features at the time such as being able to jump into a fighter and fly from a ground battle into space, all in real time. At some point during development, the management at [[LucasArts]] changed hands. The new CEO, Darrel Rodriguez, made it a point to cut costs as much as possible, and Battlefront 3 was costing money. This ended up being another kick in the [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-04-free-radical-vs-the-monsters long series of such events] that eventually led to Free Radical closing its doors.

** It can be argued that EA is the king of this trope. They constantly buy developers and then force them to make their games with a short development cycle. The result: [[Obvious Beta|almost all the games end up doing poorly because the developers had no time to work out glitches/the game was much shorter/the quality was generally lower than previous installments.]] To rub salt in the wound, EA tends to end the franchise by either firing developers or reassigning them to other projects. So effectively, EA kills games.

** So that's why it was a relief when EA decided to cancel its attempted hostile takeover of [[Take Two Interactive]].

 

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