Executive Meddling/Video Games: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Star Fox Adventures (Video Game)|Star Fox Adventures]]'' is the result of this trope. Originally, the game was to be called ''Dinosaur Planet'' and had no ties whatsoever with the ''Star Fox'' franchise. Krystal and a male fox were the main characters. But since Nintendo was behind schedule with a ''Star Fox'' sequel, they forced [[Rare]] into changing the plot and characters around. The male fox was axed, Krystal was aged up and became the [[Distressed Damsel]], and Fox McCloud became the hero of a game that had little to do with what he does best: flying around in space and blasting bad guys. Suffice to say many fans of the franchise still hate this game -- even though it's not a bad game per se.

** 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 Sony [[Play Station]] game ''[[Spider-Man (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]].

* 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 [[Lucas Arts]] said no, as that would be inappropriate material. That designer nonetheless held onto the seed of the idea, and eventually created ''[[Psychonauts (Video Game)|Psychonauts]]''.

* 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.

** Both this specific event and [[Executive Meddling]] in general have everything to do with [[Square]]'s falling out with Nintendo, as well. Square was a ''huge'' supporter of the CD peripheral, had plans to use it, and loudly criticized Nintendo deciding to drop the project. Nintendo punished Square for its vocal criticism by refusing to allow expanded memory carts from some of their ambitious projects late in the SFC's life cycle, like ''[[Bahamut Lagoon]]'' or ''[[Rudra no Hihou]].'' Further, the failure of the Sega CD and the inability of their own CD add-on to ever get off the ground convinced Nintendo that disc-based game systems were a dead end, leading to the cartridge-based N64 -- Square quickly realized the N64 and its cartridges weren't capable of running the games they wanted to make and went over to developing for Sony systems.

* ''[[Command and Conquer|Tiberium]]'' was to be the second FPS set in the C&C universe. It had a solid, original concept at its heart: you play as a GDI Forward Battle Commander, actively leading your AI-controlled troops from the front lines. It had a terrific art style; everything in the game world had a realistic, hard sci-fi look to it. It had the fans of the series salivating with anticipation... and then was suddenly canceled with no reasoning cited other than "failing to meet quality standards." Shortly after the game's cancellation, several disillusioned developers of the game [http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20462 began posting on Gamasutra], and from these testimonies comes a rather depressing tale. It seems that the project was doomed by its leadership, or lack thereof. According to the posters at Gamasutra, many of the lead producers (and there were apparently several) were less experienced than many of their subordinates and were only recently promoted to their positions. There was much jockeying for power, with each producer trying to outdo or replace the work done by their predecessors (including gutting the FPS/RTS mechanic at its core). At least one poster claims these managers were actively trying to sabotage the project and thus save face rather than have a broken game released with their names attached. Even if only half of it is true, it's a fact that this game was in development for a good 5 years, getting nowhere, and no one seemed to want to save it.

** From the same franchise, ''Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight'' was a huge victim of such meddling. The game originally started out as a multiplayer-only project, meant for quick, direct matches in cybercafes and for tournaments. It would be set in the tiberium universe, but the mechanics were revamped for its short-match multiplayer focus, and to be fair, they were good mechanics for the kind of gameplay they were going for. However, executives wanted them to shift the product and expand it into a full, story-integrated sequel to ''Tiberium Wars''. Its progression system was ill-balanced for campaign play, and its mechanics did not give players the kind of single-player mission experience consistant with earlier titles in the series. This ended up giving it a Metacritic score of 64, which under the [[Four Point Scale]] is one of the lowest a major game can expect to get. The average user review was ''[[Up to Eleven|several times worse]]'' than that.

** Interestingly, the game's director has said on occasion that he actually likes ''Indigo Prophecy'' better as a title, and wishes every region carried it (not to mention the fact that the game continuously uses ''centigrade'' to signify temperature). As for the sex scenes compared to the violence...well that's a case of [[Values Dissonance]].

** The apparent reason for the game's story taking a nosedive into [[Gainax Ending|Crazyland]] is that the developers ran out of time and money before the could finish it the way they wanted.

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[[Category:Video Games]]