The reasons why Enslaved: Journey to the West failed at retail

I've just finished playing Enslaved Journey to the West on PS3 (with the Power A Pro Elite Wireless Controller). It's a great game, original in execution if not in design (it is essentially a reskinned Uncharted but with more emphasis on platforming), with beautiful graphics, an intelligent story and script, likeable characters and great voice acting. It wouldn't have broken into my Top 5 of 2010 had a played it in the year it was released but it would certainly have got in the Top 10 if I'd bothered to write about that many games.

But it was reported last week  that, despite generally positive reviews (the PS3 version shows 80% on metacritic and the 360 version 82%) it sold under half a million copies worldwide (in comparison, Tom Clancy Splinter Cell Conviction, also released in 2010, sold 1.71m copies (source - VG Chartz) and sales behemoth Call of Duty Blacks Ops sold 7m worldwide on the day that it was released (source Wikipedia)). In the face of consumer apathy, Namco Bandai, the publisher, has been noncommittal about whether or not there will ever be a sequel commissioned.

Gamers often criticise publishers for only releasing sequels or yearly updates of games, with little or no original IP.  Publishers, however, are answerable to their shareholders, not core gamers and are inclined to be risk averse - if Brothers of Duty: World Ops 2011 is going to recoup its costs and then make a profit, it is more likely to get a green-light than a game based on 16th Century Chinese literature.

Some original IP does make an impact though, such as Uncharted (3.51m sales worldwide (VG Chartz), on PS3 only), so why did Enslaved fail?

You've got a purty mouth

Enslaved is set in a post-apocalyptic world (though the cause of that apocalypse is only hinted at) but it is quite a lot more 'post' apocalypse than one normally finds in such games. Accordingly, Mother Nature, as anyone that has watched the History Channel's 'Life after People' show (as the developer of the game, Ninja Theory, certainly seems to have done) could have guessed, has been back with a vengeance. The opening levels of the game take place in a ruined New York, choked with lush vegetation and they look gorgeous. However, they don't look like what can normally be expected from a post apocalyptic setting in a videogame, the drab browns of games like Gears of War, Fallout, Resistance, or even Advance Wars Days of Ruin.  I wonder if the different look and feel of the game deterred casual purchasers, more used to seeing wrecked buildings portrayed in a very muted palette.

A stalagmite of culture shock

Grand Central Station

Very pretty but can they fight?

The combat was one of the failings of Enslaved, being dull and monotonous and, when faced by multiple enemies, generally descended into button mashing. I kept playing the game until completion, as I was interested in the story but a friend (from whom I borrowed the game) gave up on it midway through, as she found the combat too dull.

Get your button-mashing fingers ready

It does what is says on the tin

I think that the box art for the game (and also the magazine ads that used the same artwork) is insipid and prevents the box from standing out on the shelf in a game store. To an uninitiated game shop browser, the case shows a funny looking bloke and a girl running away from a giant robot dog. Would this entice the average game buyer? Do you want to run from a giant robot dog or fight a giant robot dog (both of which happen in the game, incidentally)?  I'm no designer but it also seems a bit 'busy' to me and the title gets a little lost in the background.

Hollywood

This one isn't a reason for why I think the game failed (critically speaking, it's entirely the opposite) but it might conceivably be a reason why Namco Bandai decide not to publish a sequel. The game was part-scripted by Alex Garland, author of The Beach and scriptwriter of 28 Days Later (and, apparently, a gamer) and the main character was voiced by Andy Serkis, who also directed the game's excellent voice acting. The story and script were noticeably better than most videogame writing, some of it genuinely poignant. I was particularly impressed by the interactions between Monkey and Trip, the two main characters, which were sensitively handled. That made for a better game experience for the purchasers but did it entice gamers in the first place? I doubt that it did - you need to get the punters through the doors before they can start admiring your carpets.  But I think it might be an impediment to Namco Bandai commissioning a sequel -  I doubt Messrs Garland and Serkis would have come cheap, pushing the game further into the red.

It's Christmasssssss!

The game was released in the first week of October, just at the cusp of the retail run up to Christmas.  A lot of games are released (and bought, to be fair) at this time of year and to compete with the Calls of Duty and FIFAs (last year's iterations of which were released in the first week of November and 1 October, respectively) an original game has to stand out; unfortunately, few original games manage to do this (Beyond Good and Evil, another 'lost classic', was released in November 2003).

The punkiest monkey who ever popped

If you are of a certain age, you will recognise this heading as a line from the title song of the fantastic  Monkey TV series (Japanese, dubbed into English) that played on British TV in the late 70s/early 80s.  Enslaved has the same source material - 16th Century Chinese classic, Monkey: Journey to the West - but, clearly, updated and adapted.  I read the book when I was about ten, having been a fan of the TV series (all I can remember now is Monkey weeing on Buddha's fingers at the end of the universe) but, it being nearly thirty years since that TV series aired, I doubt that many of the game's target audience were familiar with the source material.  Did this matter?  I'm not sure - the source material, to some extent, explains Enslaved's  Monkey, Trip(itaka) and Pigsy but can the game be enjoyed without that knowledge?  I think it probably can and I think Namco Bandai actively played down the source material during the promotion of the game, for fear of 'scaring away' potential purchasers with the intellectualism that is implied with basing a game on a 400-year old story. Of course, as it turned out, they were scared away anyway.

Sleepy Monkey

Sequel

I think that it is a  combination of these issues, together with the fact that the game itself is not without its flaws, that led to the game's commercial failure.  Will this stop a sequel being made though? If there was a sequel, gamers could expect that the things that didn't quite work in this game (the poor camera, the dull combat) would be fixed. Unfortunately, the poor sales would probably mean that some of the things that I think made it an interesting game - the main characters, the beautiful graphics, intelligent story - would also be changed, following focus testing.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time  was another (and better) game that received a great critical reception but whose initial sales in the run up to a busy Christmas in 2003, coupled with a pre-2004 PS2 exclusivity deal with Sony, were less than expected. Its post-Christmas sales were good and overall it was a commercial success but the developers made many knee-jerk changes to the feel of the game for the sequel, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within . Gamers who loved the first game, myself included, criticised Ubisoft for succumbing to focus-group-led development and turning the franchise into something that they thought that a 14-year old boy would like (including awful rawk music and an emo Prince) and jettisoned much of what made the first game so good.

So, the city is rotting but a cloth flag still flies?

I fear that this could happen with an Enslaved sequel, were one to be commissioned. That the parts of the game that I liked - the beautiful graphics, the colourful palette, the complicated relationship between the two main characters - would be lost in an emo nightmare, Warrior Within fashion. So, while I would love a sequel that remained true to the spirit of Enslaved, I'm concerned that the performance of the first game would mean that this wouldn't be the sequel that I would get.  It may, then, be best to leave Enslaved as a sequel-free game and enjoy it for what it is, rather than have a misfiring sequel spoil its memory.