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Back in the days of the original PlayStation, it felt like Sony was constantly experimenting with new ideas and greenlighting weird and exciting projects.
From the paper-thin, hip-hop stylings of PaRappa the Rapper to the Dual Analogue-controlled antics of Ape Escape, the company clearly wasn't averse to taking risks, putting together projects that may not have screamed mass appeal but would fill a niche and ultimately develop passionate online fanbases.
What made these releases different from today's indie games was that they typically had the same kind of mainstream marketing support reserved for more conventional games, putting them in front of a large casual audience that most indie developers today could only dream of reaching.
As the industry has continued to implode around us in recent years, with more games being cancelled and shut down, it's clear that many larger studios are simply trying too hard to cater to what's already popular rather than setting out to innovate and surprise.
Because of this, Shawn Layden, the former president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, has expressed concern (in an hour-long interview with the YouTube channel PSI) that games like PaRappa the Rapper aren't being made at big studios today, and that too many mainstream titles simply look too much "like the game next to them" (h/t: Notebook Check),
"What we need to come back to is doing the hard work of creating new kinds of entertainment," Layden told PSI before sharing his experience at an industry event, where every game he saw previewed seemed to fit into the same few categories.
"I was at a Game Awards show a couple of years ago, and I was disappointed to see that all the games I saw at that presentation were either zombie apocalypse, some kind of space marines, or guys in medieval Europe with really big swords. That was so central to what everyone was building. There were so many games that looked like the game next to them and looked like the game next to them. I’m concerned that in today’s world, quirky games like PaRappa the Rapper don’t get made anymore."
Given his experience in the industry, Layden isn't a fool and understands why this is the case. In the interview, for instance, he attributes it to ballooning budgets and a lower cost-to-risk ratio, saying that while developers could deal with titles underperforming in the old days, games now have simply gotten too expensive to fail. This has unfortunately had a knock-on effect on the type of projects that receive funding.
“We had so many crazy games on the PS1 because the cost-risk was manageable," he told PSI. "You could literally throw away $6 or $7 million on a project that didn’t work and still say, ‘Well, at least we learned something.’ Now, if every throw of the dice is in the triple-digit millions, then risk tolerance goes to about zero.
"People talk about, 'Okay, is it a sequel? Is it an established IP? What's it like? It's like Fortnite meets Call of Duty in Zombieland. You have to come up with these stories like that to get people to finance them. But... nobody wants to take a risk on unicorn ballet in space. Nobody's going to give you any money to make that game, even if it's super exciting. I think as long as we judge games solely on revenue projections, then, again, your risk tolerance goes to zero.”
What do you think? Do you agree with Layden on this? Would you like to see larger studios developing smaller, more experimental projects? Let us know in the comments!