Executive Meddling/Video Games: Difference between revisions

** Oh, let's not forget how Sega replaced the entire voice cast of the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' games with their ''[[Sonic X]]'' counterparts... ''without telling the original cast''. Reportedly, Sonic's original voice actor Ryan Drummond actually had to call Sega to find out when he needed to be back in for recording for ''[[Shadow the Hedgehog]]'' before he found out about the switch.

*** It was a bit more awkward for Shadow's original voice actor, David Humphrey, who actually flew to LA with the intention of recording the game, only to discover he had been replaced when he showed up at the studio!

** And then there's the ''[[NiGHTS Into Dreams]]'' sequel ''Journey of Dreams'', which Sonic Team originally wanted to develop on the [[Xbox 360]], until Sega came butting in and decided that the game would be shoehorned onto the [[Wii]] with its brand-new motion controls. And the results show too...

*** Not to mention it would've gone on Wii anyway if Yuji Naka was still at Sonic Team; he's gone on record saying that the Wii is the perfect platform for ''[[Ni GHTS]]''. The IR pointer would've been ''perfect'' had it not been implemented so bizarrely.

** In addition to the "3D titles only" rule, Sony also has a standing rule that requires all games released in the United States to have an English voice track. Because of this, many popular low-budget games like half the ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' franchise [[No Export for You|will never see the light of day in America]]. Sony seems to have lightened up on this recently though, with ''Yakuza 2'' being in Japanese with subtitles, and no English voice work in sight.

** Sony of America had this policy due to the antics of Bernie Stolar, a colossal jackass who refused to publish Japanese RPGs at all until ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' came out and made a lot of money. Then he was fired and went to Sega, and we know how well that turned out.

**** It's actually more of a 2.5D sidescroller.

* Developers for ''[[The Sims]] 2'' complained about how executives pressured the team to use more particle effects in the game so they could ''put that as a bullet point on the box''. So, we got people walking around with green smoke coming out of their arms when low on hygiene, green smoke coming out of food that had gone bad, and so forth. Unrealistic it may be, it at least came in handy as a visual aid.

** Ironically, many users find such effects "annoying" and there are multiple user-made hacks available to eliminate them.

* The Sony [[PlayStation]] game ''[[Spider-Man (2000 video game)|Spider-Man]] 2: Enter Electro'' had the final level originally take place [http://www.game-rave.com/psx/playstation_perfect_guide/features/feature_spiderman3/index.html on the top of the World Trade Center]. This is confirmed by the original level title, "Top Of The World", and dialogue spoken by Peter during the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUrXPnIDkC8 original cinematic] prior to the final level. After the events of September 11th, 2001, the game was pulled from shelves (It had been released in North America in late August) & delayed in territories where it hadn't been released, and the level designers placed a bridge between the two towers to make the comparison to its real-life counterpart less obvious. Given the fact that Activision and Vicarious Games feared the content might be "insensitive" for families after the event, their meddling was obvious.

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

* Whether it was a more executive decision or not is unknown, but apparently the 'Meat Flag' muliplayer game mode for ''[[Gears of War]] 2'' by [[Epic Games]] was renamed 'Submission' at the behest of the PR team at Microsoft.

* The notorious ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' and ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'' games on the Phillips CD-i system were a result of several years' worth of Executive Meddling. During the early nineties, just as Sega was coming out with the Sega CD/Mega CD, Nintendo decided to develop [[SNESCDROM|a CD-based add-on of their own for the Super Nintendo]] with Sony, one that would be able to play new, 32-bit CD-based games in addition to the original SNES library. A while into their co-operation, however, Nintendo realized that letting just anyone develop games for the CD add-on meant that Nintendo would lose their absolute control over the games released on their systems, so they decided to give Sony the cold shoulder and, completely by surprise, announced that they were going to work with Phillips on the CD add-on from there on. Nintendo's CD add-on never saw the light of day, and to compensate for their hard work, they gave Phillips the right to publish games based on four or five Nintendo characters. The worst part for Nintendo? Sony continued the project by themselves, creating the Sony [[PlayStation]], [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|which pushed Nintendo into a slump]] from which they didn't completely recover until the [[Wii]].

** Or the game of ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]],'' in which all of the achievements (worth 1000 gamepoints) can be completed in the first 15 minutes in the tutorial mission.

*** Some horribly cynical people have suggested that some developers put ridiculously easy achievements in games as a marketing tactic, as there's a small but obsessed group of gamers out there who will buy the game just for a quick boost to their gamerscore. If it's a crappy licensed game that'll sell like hot cakes with kids but otherwise hold no appeal to the "hardcore", then it might just be a worthwhile ploy.

** This is arguably for the better, as achievements give players "tangible" results for what they do, breathing new life into a game they'd have put down otherwise. Also, requirements for achievements sometimes reveal things that are rather clever/interesting that a player wouldn't have thought to do otherwise.

*** On the other side of the coin, most people do achievements just for the sake of getting them and then never play in the new style again or put the game back down.

* At some point after releasing ''[[Tales of Eternia]]'', Namco (and after the merge, Bandai Namco) decided not to localize any other 2D Tales game. For that reason, many great [[Tales (series)]] games never got to America (except for ''[[Tales of Phantasia]]'' due to special reasons), such as ''[[Tales of Destiny]] 2'', ''[[Tales of Rebirth]]'', and ''[[Tales of Hearts]]''. ''[[Tales of Eternia]]'' even got a PSP port in 2005, but despite the fact that said port was released in Europe no American version is in sight.

** Of course Europe has never seen 80% of ''Tales'' games, all they have had is ''Tales of Phantasia'' on the GBA (very slow compared to the [[PS 1]]), ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'', its sequel, ''[[Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World|Dawn of the New World]]'' and ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]''. Those "cameo" battles must leave a lot of people thinking "What the hell are they cameoing from?".

** Regarding ''[[Tales of Eternia]]'', there's actually a different reason for that -- It was originally changed to "Tales of Destiny II" because of potential copyright infringements with ''[[He-Man and the Masters of the Universe]]'' toy lines. Some have suspected this was the reason for the PSP port not getting an American release, but on the plus side, at least the PSP is region-free; and it's possible to get an English version.

* For a game that was ''born'' from [[Executive Meddling]], we have the ''[[Spyro the Dragon]]'' franchise in all its glory. In order to compete with the companies of [[Super Mario Bros.|Mario]] and [[Sonic the Hedgehog]], Sony realized that they needed to appeal to the "kids market" in gaming, considering most of the games in the late 90s for the [[PlayStation]] were [[Rated "M" for Money|teen and adult oriented]]. So with the aid of Universal Games and Insomniac, they created a game that was basically [[Recycled in Space|Sonic as a dragon]]. Funny thing is, Insomniac never had full rights to the franchise (and apparently, didn't want anything to do with it, as seen in ''Year Of the Dragon''), in which it was sold off to Universal only and it became a [[Franchise Zombie]]. Well, after the release of ''A Hero's Tail'', long runner [[Sierra]] bought the franchise, and gave it a severe [[Continuity Reboot]] (The whole Legend of Spyro series), which due to insufficient man power and funds, created a [[Your Mileage May Vary|controversy of the quality of the games]]. Needless to say, Activision bought out Sierra and let them keep the franchise in hopes "to have promising results," which of course, costs Sierra its better, older franchises like ''[[King's Quest]]'' and ''[[Space Quest]]''.

** In a straighter example of this, the [[Updated Rerelease]], ''Conker: Live And Reloaded'' heavily censored a significantly larger portion of the game's foul language (As mentioned above, combined with the gore, the foul language was the entire point of the game, [[Irony|though by this point it had actually become less taboo]]).

* Much like the ''[[Swat Kats]]'' [[Executive Meddling/Western Animation|example]], ''[[Thrill Kill]]'' was canceled after being bought out by EA, due to its violent content. To further twist the knife, EA refuses to even sell the rights to the game to another company, because of the violence, essentially invoking [[Moral Guardians|moral guardianship]] over the game itself. Fortunately, they did allow the developers to keep the engine, which was used to create ''[[Wu Tang Shaolin Style]]''.

* ''[[The Witcher]]'' video game, under the hands of publisher Atari was heavily meddled to the point of unacceptable (even developer CD Projekt Red thinks so). The US version got a [[Blind Idiot Translation]] script, removed adult content and a DRM scheme that CD Projekt Red never intended to put in. Not until the Enchanced Edition and 1.5 patch released by the original developer was things fixed, it reworked the entire script, removed the DRM scheme and many other fixes to make the game the way it was intended to be.

* Ever wonder why ''[[Toejam and Earl]]'' 1 & 2 were about [[Funk]] music while ''Toejam and Earl'' 3 was all about [[Hip Hop]]?

* The team that worked on ''[[Darkstalkers]]'' say that they'd love to make a ''Darkstalkers 4'', but [[Capcom]] doesn't want to work on anything that isn't a [[Cash Cow Franchise]] (eg. ''[[Street Fighter]]'').

** Though more recently, ''[[Street Fighter]]'' producer Yoshinori Ono has been trying to drum up interest in a ''Darkstalkers'' sequel in order to prove to Capcom that it would be worth making.

** From Rockstar's perspective, it worked out great as the game was a huge success & they retained the rights to the series, so they ended up with another [[Cash Cow Franchise]]. For Team Bondi, things didn't work out quite as well and the studio closed its doors mere months after the game was released.

* There has been a lot of speculation that this is likely the primary reason behind the "trio of horror-news about ''[[Diablo|Diablo III]]''" (as [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/01/diablo-iii-no-mods-online-only-cash-trades/ Rock, Paper, Shotgun called it]) on the part of [[Activision]].

* 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

* ''[[Solatorobo]]'' spent ten years in [[Development Hell]] due to [[Namco Bandi]] insisting that, if [[Cyber Connect 2]] wanted to release a [[Spiritual Sequel]] to ''[[Tail Concerto]]'' (which did not sell as well as they'd have liked), then they had to polish and refine the [[World Building|world]] and gameplay. Thankfully, [[Cyber Connect 2]] has a bit of a reputation for [[Doing It for the Art]], and [[Tropes Are Not Bad|the result truly shines, even if it is late]].

* ''[[Brutal Legend]]'' was affected by Executive Meddling quite badly. One of its publishers, Activision attempted to turn the game into a Guitar Hero sequel, among other things. ''Brutal Legend'' was treated so badly by Activision that Double Fine claimed that Activision was purposely sabotaging Brutal Legend in order to preserve its Guitar Hero franchise, which was on it's way out of popularity. As a result of this Tim Schafer estimated that the game was only one third as large as it was intended to be. Activision dropped Brutal Legend entirely, later being picked up by EA as publisher. EA didn't meddle with ''Brutal Legend'''s development at all, but they did only advertise the game's action elements, completely leaving out the RTS elements in advertising that make up the majority of the game, leading to some undeserved criticism regarding this.

* ''[[Superman 64]]'' is known for being extremely horrible and have glitches and bugs up the ass, but most of the problems didn't come from the developers themselves. The people that held the license, DC Comics and Warner Bros., kept interfering with the development on the game for "political reasons". They wouldn't allow Superman to have his powers naturally (making them have limited use instead of having it all the time and at will) nor did they allow Superman to attack people, so they limited his moves to just silly looking punches and granted invincibility to NPCs. The developers of the game were extremely frustrated by the higher ups meddling in their project and stated that the final product does not even come close to what they had originally envisioned the game to be.

 

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