Dead Space 3: EA's Marketing Team Should Be Sacked
All right everyone, time to let out your collective sighs and groans.
We were hearing feedback that they love the thriller game, but it was pretty scary, and the obvious next step was that they wanted to play with someone. So we introduced co-op into the game."All right, everyone let out your collective sighs and groans. I have never personally met Laura Miele, but she does not strike me as the gaming type. She is likely more comfortable in a conference room, throwing up sales figures and trends on a dry erase board than actually discussing the merits of a fully-upgraded plasma cutter versus the cost of the force gun. I understand her job is market statistics, and I am doing my best not to simply post the Bill Hicks bit on what to do if you find yourself in that line of work. That being said, for Miele to say the "obvious next step" is adding a second player to the core experience of Dead Space is ridiculous. Not since Metroid: Prime first took us inside the visor of Samus did a game so perfectly capture the sense of isolation and loneliness of a derelict space ship, and to add the element of the Necromorphs made it, yes, one of the scariest experiences in all of video games. Dead Space 2 managed to increase both the horror and action in perfect ratios; while you definitely fired more bullets, the types of horrible beings you would encounter were also greatly expanded. This has translated into a video game series that has sold over four million copies across the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 (failed potential of DS: Extraction on the Wii notwithstanding). Critics have praised the terror and fans heaped praise across the internet as well. What exactly is Electronic Arts thinking? In trying to appeal to more people who have not yet played a Dead Space game, they will end up doing two things: first, they will alienate a loyal - not the biggest, admittedly, but loyal - fanbase who has turned one nightmarish adventure through an abandoned mining ship into a multimedia franchise that includes games, animated films and comic books. These are the people who enjoy having the utter crap scared out of them, and with Resident Evil straying away from its horror roots, Dead Space was the perfect fill for that new void. Even Silent Hill has not enjoyed the praise it once had before its shift in developers. EA can say all they want about how co-op isn't going to take away from the "horror" aspect of the game; a brightly-lit, snowy planet that has you facing human soldiers, with or without a partner dropping in and out, does not strike me as terrifying.