Gareth Wilson, former design manager of Bizarre Creations, has said that the Liverpool studio's final game, futuristic racer Blur, was like having "bacon with cornflakes."
Wilson, who following Bizarre's closure in February joined Sheffield studio Sumo Digital as chief game designer, has a background in economics and his talk at Develop In Brighton earlier today drew on this knowledge to examine why quality games don't sell. He explains his bacon analogy using a fundamental principle of consumer theory: "You need to reduce people's fear of buying your product."
He explains that there are three consumer states: comfort, stretch and panic. A basic breakfast cereal like Rice Krispies or cornflakes is a comfortable proposition to a prospective customer. Chocolate cornflakes are something of a stretch, and involve an element of risk. "Fear is a bigger driver for consumers than desire," he says. "They're not going to buy something they haven't tried before, because it might be crap."
Presenting a consumer with cornflakes with bacon will induce panic, the fear of spending money on something they don't like, and said consumer will likely pass over the risky, new product in favour of the old, safe one.
Blur, which mixed licensed vehicles and a realistic look with Mario Kart-style weapons, fell under panic. "Licensing is a good way to go, but you have to be careful because licensing costs money," Wilson says. "You have to balance it. With Project Gotham Racing 3 we spent millions getting Ferrari but it worked. People saw that on the cover.
"But with Blur, the licensing maybe worked against us: real cars and weapons. Bacon with cornflakes."
Blur was the final nail in Bizarre Creations' coffin, its failure to meet sales expectations leading to parent company Activision trying and failing to offload the studio before closing its doors forever, after 18 years in the business.
Wilson's fascinating talk, Why Great Games Don't Always Sell, focused not solely on Blur but on the general struggle for new IP to break through in an increasingly risk-averse market. Our full report will be published later this week.
Comments
5I found Blur to be an excellent cart/combat game. Graphics are fantastic and it is extremly fun with friends on both couch coop and online. I hope somebody out there has the rights to it and can create an equally fun sequel.
Well in that case, Cornflakes with bacon is actually a pretty tasty meal.
I agree. Blur was the most refreshing arcade racer of the generation. As good as Burnout Paradise and the recent Hot Pursuit. In fact, I'd rather play Blur over either game.
The real reason Blur failed is simple. Too many consumers have no imagination, and buy the same cookie cutter games, month after month, year after year.
Blur failed for one very simple reason, and it was not the fault of 'unimaginative gamers' it was the baffling decison to release the game within the same month as the other very different Racer Split/Second. Both were very good games that took the stale racer format and span it a bit differently. Split/Second was arguably the better game.
It also didn't help that Blur's beta wasn't great where as the Split/Second demo was much better. I own and love both games but I,and I'm sure many other gamers, could only buy one when it first came out. If Blur had ben out 3-6 months later it would have sold more copies.
I think my fear was more to do with the utter hash they made of PG4 than anything inherently scary about Blur. 007: Blood Stone was about the most "comfy" proposition you could offer consumers and that sold 0.72m on console. 0.08m less than Blur did, so where does that fit into the fear theory? Perhaps the answer lies with the 62 on Metacritic more than consumer terror.