Pragmata and Saros give hope for the future of big budget video games

The two best games of the month have a surprising amount in common, including proving that not every new release has to be a sequel or licensed game.

Twin films is the phenomena where two movies are released at roughly the same time, with very similar premises, but from completely different companies. There’s no one reason as to why this happens, with contributing factors ranging from industrial espionage to responding to the same current events. It is really weird though, when you get Antz and A Bug’s Life or Deep Impact and Armageddon arriving right at the same time.

Pragmata and Saros are not nearly as similar as some of the more extreme twin film examples, but it is curious that April has played host to two brand new IPs (even if Saros does have a close relationship to Returnal) that are both sci-fi third person shooters with weak narratives but excellent combat.

Their similarities are not nearly as great as that makes it sound but what’s interesting is the other property they share: they are unashamed video games, whose number one priority is gameplay and offering an experience that cannot be replicated in other media. And it really has been a breath of fresh air to play them both.

Not only are most publishers terrified of creating new IPs (intellectual properties) but they’re usually just as afraid of requiring players to learn a new skill. This used to be one of the principal joys of video games but while modern big budget titles are happy to allow a certain level of difficulty what they’re not confident in doing, is assuming anyone has the patience to learn something new.

And yet Pragmata is entirely built around the premise that its control system is unique and unusual. And while Saros is a continuation of what was established in Returnal it adds a number of unusual rules and systems on top, that take some time to get the hang of.

Both games are still third person shooters, so it’s not as if they’re some wild leap into the unknown, but what’s so encouraging is that they they’re proud of being different and instead of apologising for it use it as their main selling point.

The best thing of all is that Pragmata has already been a sizeable hit, to the point where Capcom has raised its forecasts for the year. So while hoping it will encourage other publishers to create new IP requires a sizeable amount of optimism it will certainly convince Capcom that it was a worthwhile risk. That’ll inevitably mean a Pragmata 2 but hopefully also more entirely new franchises.

Publishers are infamously wary about making anything that isn’t a sequel or based on a well known property, but it’s curious that that aversion to risk disappears as soon as there’s a new trend to chase. Most publishers can go years, if not decades, without creating a new IP but apparently wasting hundreds of millions on an untested new franchise is fine as long as it’s a live service game.

That seems incredibly shortsighted but then Western publishers are increasingly only interested in ultra successful games and have little time for even modest big budget hits, let alone double-A games.

Activision has only been making one game for over a decade now, while the likes of Take-Two and EA are getting perilously close to the same situation (in fact, until EA Sports UFC 6 was announced on Tuesday, the company didn’t have a single game scheduled for this year or beyond, even though other sports games are obviously coming).

It’s sadly evident that Western publishers’ answer to the problem of what to do about rising development costs is to… just not make games anymore. Or at least not anything that isn’t a guaranteed mega hit.

There’s reason to worry that indie studios and Japanese publishers will slowly come to the same conclusion but for now at least that’s not the case. Although whether the PlayStation 6 will spur Sony into a new era of productivity, or convince them to follow the same, risk adverse path as Western publishers remains to be seen. Especially as while Sony are technically Japanese their games division is run from the US and increasingly acts like it.

They did at least greenlight Saros though, which they must’ve known would never be a major hit. Thankfully, though, their bean counters decided that its modest budget would yield an acceptable amount of profit. If that had been Activision or EA that wouldn’t have been the case, because the volume of revenue simply wouldn’t be worth the trouble, in their view.

It would be an absurd act of naivety to imagine that Capcom or Nintendo or any other Japanese publisher is following their business plans out of a burning desire to create great art, but they do at least seem to be happy that it is being created as a byproduct of their actions.

Pragmata and Saros aren’t retro in style or appearance, but there is something sadly old-fashioned in the fact that they’re linear experiences with a beginning and end, no multiplayer, and no microtransactions or other means to make money other than the price you pay to own them. You play them, you enjoy them, and you’re then free to move onto something else – which is exactly what live service games don’t want you to do.

Perhaps Pragmata will inspire other publishers but there’s no way it or anything like it can turn Western publishers away from their destructive all-or-nothing approach to game development. It isn’t going to be a turning point for the industry and the appearance of Saros at the same time is certainly nothing more than a coincidence.

But ultimately it doesn’t matter. Two great games, of a kind that is becoming vanishingly rare, have been released within a space of a few weeks, and that alone is reason to rejoice and renew at least a general sense of hope for the future.

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

Comments


Add as preferred source