EA Killed Titanfall, But Why?

this is how a game dies but it doesn't die in the way you might think the craziest part about the TitanFall Brands Fading Into Obscurity is that you probably didn't even notice it but your brain did and the games industry would never be the same for it this is the story of Titanfall's tragic [Music] downfall before Titanfall spawned in 2014 Quake players in 1996 had figured out how to manipulate the physics parameters of player movement this little motion you see here tricked the game engine into letting the player alternate different strafe Keys propelling the model at rapid hopping speed but this was not an intended mechanic this was a discovered mechanic in 1998 star seege tribes would add an intended jetpacking and sliding mechanic to the FPS world and in 1999 Unreal Tournament added Dodge jumping and wall dodging when the only mechanics available to you at the time were move aim and left click just subtle changes like these were a big deal after all we just now started using 3D environments what concerned most people wasn't the mechanics it was immersion bunny hopping makes for great gameplay but it's super unintuitive for the average person and just looks kind of weird in a game about police and bomber guys questions crossed the minds of a couple of game developers what if we could really lean into the interactive aspect what if we could make a move movie like Saving Private Ryan feel real three guys would try to answer these questions in the year 2002 their names were Grant Collier Jason West and Vince Zella former game devs at 2015 Inc after paying their dues they wanted to start their own company and they called it Infinity Ward these guys had already cut their teeth on the World War II FPS genre while working for their previous employer they developed Medal of Honor Allied assault it was no worthy for depicting the Normandy Beach Landings and it would start a motif in subsequent World War II games but Call of Duty was a bit different there were more character models in the spaces themselves making the environments feel more realistic and immersive it had multiple perspectives too American British and Soviet however by 2007 World War II games were losing appeal Infinity Ward kicked it into high gear with Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare it quickly became a top firstperson shooter its release coinciding with the Zenith of the Allied deployments in Iraq reflecting current events with action movie immersive flare instead of reloading an stg44 he was reloading the banana mag on an AK-47 which the animators didn't forget about but we not there quite yet before we could put an AK-47 in space we had to figure out how to get to space and in 2008 somebody had the idea to do that by wall running this game is called Mirror's Edge developed by dice it was a firstperson game with no no particularly strong shooting mechanics but that wasn't the point Mirror's Edge was designed completely around its movement it places a big emphasis on consistent motion and the ability to chain acrobatic behaviors together but it also has an immersive levity to it all cuz it felt real it felt real because the game was directly inspired by a real phenomenon it's known that the idea came to dice with the groundbreaking start of the Daniel Craig James Bond era in the hit movie Casino Royale now Gamers and the general public knew what parkour was but the question was how do you implement it in a video game what happens if you want to shoot your gun too can you even do that to keep things focused Mirror's Edge didn't really give a lot of stock to the Gunplay you could grab a gun off of a cop and pop a couple rounds off before throwing it away but that was about it after all you needed your hands free to do all the climbing at this point in time the industry was still predominantly made up of modern military John gun guy games cuz there was an expectation that FPS games had to be modeled after what made plausible sense in reality a year after mirror edge wowed enthusiasts with its demonstration of what movement could look like from a firstperson perspective the boys had just released a sequel to Call of Duty 4 called Modern Warfare 2 and it would go on to become one of the best selling video games of all time but meanwhile back at the ranch the energy was at an alltime low Grant Collier one of the Three Musketeers who answered the call of duty had been serving as the president of Infinity Ward this whole time and decided to leave the company that same year details never really reached the Press but he would leave the video games industry for good at this point on March 1st 2010 Activision dismissed West and zampella according to Activision the two had breached their contract and had been insubordinate but one point in particular stood out more than those the publisher claimed that the devs were plotting something they said West and Zella were going to take key personnel and start a competing studio with a new publisher alt together the very next day West and Zella file a lawsuit against Activision for rful termination seeking over $36 million in royalties for Modern Warfare 2 and contractual rights to control future Modern Warfare titles Activision did have a reason to think something was fishy though because a month later West and Zella announced the creation of respawn entertainment signing with EA for distribution and capital throughout the year lots of people at Infinity Ward abandoned ship and set sail for new Waters at respawn Activision furious with this counter sued Zella and west but Activision was not completely innocent here at least supposedly they weren't Activision allegedly had made attempts to strongly control the creative direction of the Call of Duty franchise following its Blockbuster success the Infinity Ward guys had an artistic Vision they wanted to keep in mind and cited communication issues as well as heavy-handed management from Activision on that point one thing Activision focused on was a yearly release cycle using different Studios on a rotational system to keep output high without sacrificing time spent working on the project the thing is keeping the strict production schedule also meant less flexibility in terms of the creative approach once the licenses found their footing it was difficult for the games to transition from what got them popular Treyarch since Black Ops released in 2010 to this day has made four more follow-up games using the Black Ops brand and is due to release another Black Ops game supposedly this year the devs couldn't innovate anymore like they did back in the day everything had to support the brand Market strategy but there were Signs of Life in the modern military shooter space even in the 2010s in 2011 a little known blip on the radar showed up called Brink this was a class-based shooter game that placed a big emphasis on parkour mechanics the game had middling reviews from the Press but it did well commercially so clearly there was an alternative taste in the general public somebody just had to be the first person to offer it in 2013 just before the court case was supposed to go to trial Tri West and sella agreed to a settlement with Activision that was reportedly favorable to themselves it was time to open a new chapter in the FPS industry with a new company and the wind in their sales but before they hoisted the anchor Jason West left the company in March citing family reasons one man remained with the original vision of Call of Duty as it had been the ambitious and brand new Project's leadership was now completely and totally left to Captain Zella another game that pursues such ambitious levels is War Thunder the sponsor of this video and the most comprehensive vehicle combat game ever made available now for free on PC and consoles if you're worried about Hardware you don't need to be whether you have a battle station or potato PC War Thunder is very well optimized with the in-house deor engine 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by using our Link in the pinned comment or video description any new or returning players that haven't played in 6 months get a massive Bonus Pack for all platforms that provides premium Vehicles the exclusive vehicle decorator Eagle of Valor plus 100,000 silver lions and 7 Days of premium account available for a limited time only so act fast now we return to the ballad of Vince Zella a year later in the spring respawn released Titanfall there weren't a lot of games like Titanfall when it came out before this point people would have called you crazy for trying to put double jumping wall running no fall damage and giant robots you could call down on command all in a multiplayer environment on paper it looks like it's just too many moving Parts but when you played it it worked Titanfall put players in a broiling gritty Space Cowboy Rootin toot and shooting World set on the frontier of the Stars the dastardly Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation is in constant battle with the militia fighters of the world worlds deep in the cosmos A shooter game could have been forgiven for just doing this setting from the perspective of a typical boots on the ground guy and just be done with that but the game did something many were scared to do it asked the question we discussed earlier we know there are games where movement options are Justified because it's a video game but what if the player fantasized about this sort of involved fluid movement in a way that felt real enter the pilot this is a soldier you've never seen before Pilots aren't super soldiers they're average people who've gone through the most grueling training imaginable to use the most powerful military Tech the galaxy has to offer Titans Pilots use jump kits strapped to their waist to perform incredible Feats of alacrity much like Mirror's Edge this high octane physicality felt real and tangible from a firsters perspective the main idea was that if you wanted to keep moving and shooting you could the game had create a class like Call of Duty with a diverse array of weapons you'd typically find in an FPS game the Gunplay wasn't bloed but it also had novel weapons like the smart pistol which automatically locked onto enemies Titanfall envisioned a world where Exo Suit technology had developed to a widespread and practical level these suits had civilian applications like construction vehicles but this is an FPS game let's get to the shooty part the basic premise was to take the addictive gameplay Loop of an in-game reward like Call of Duty had but turn it into something more emergent and interactive pilot player characters had a meter that could charge and gain boosted charges by scoring points when the meter was full you could call in a Titan from orbit wherever you wanted and get inside of it you still played the Titan like a conventional FPS game but something was different this wasn't like Gundam where the giant robot was essentially a one toone replica of human Locomotion and it wasn't like Mech Warrior where the giant robot was more like a tank with legs this was somewhere in between it was a machine but it was also more than that it felt alive you could automate it like an escort or a Sentry its animations adjusted to wherever you approached it from it had a Beady glowing eye that looked around you could ride it like a beast it was viby it was a Vibe and it was $60 with no single player campaign and yet it sold relatively well Titanfall offered gameplay Loops that nobody else was doing while Battlefield was the king of large scale combat with the kinds of military Tech you were used to seeing in reality and Call of Duty was still on the ground Titanfall was leaps beyond what anybody else was doing in the market in terms of movement shooting for a mainstream audience it was a direct and deliberate effort to get the FPS industry to understand hey this is what these games could look like there's before Titanfall and there's after Titanfall there was just one problem a lot of people weren't happy with the $60 multiplayer only thing they said it was a money grab but the industry was paying attention to the mechanics so naturally a lot of people started copying Titanfall Call of Duty would take a shot at movement in the fall with Advanced Warfare Advanced Warfare was a lot more clunky and deliberate than other jetpacks Shooters but the more Titanfall esque game came about with Black Ops 3 the following year in 2015 this game was more floaty and it had smoother jet packing respawn still wanted to leverage what they could do with the TitanFall formula though but who was giving respawn the money to keep gambling on this new idea well the respawn team was working with Electronic Arts with [Music] you EA had been labeled by the consumer a publication owned by Consumer Reports as the worst company in America in 2012 and in 2013 back to back twice in a row Electronic Arts has a lawn and documented reputation of buying companies and canning them when their resources are depleted and while respawn was doing great with Titanfall now just a year prior four different companies under the EA flag have been shut down and that was just in 2013 in 2014 they shut down a a fifth one some of these companies have more Niche followings but some of them way back in the day included pandemic Studios famous for their work on the Star Wars Battlefront games they were bought by EA in 2007 and were shut down 2 years later shuttering 228 jobs right before blackbox entertainment the team responsible for the Need for Speed series was shut down EA stated they were moving towards high growth digital formats including online social gaming and free to play Activision was a sleazy company but EA was just downright evil it seemed like respawn was working in a Viper's Nest how could they ensure their own safety Vince realized that something needed to be done for the sequel to stand out and to do that he broke out all reliable one that was even better than the Call of Duty 1es the trick here was to leverage the game design so the dev team had brainstorming sessions about what the missions what the levels the place spaces looked like before they worked on the story Titanfall 2 would release in 2016 with one of the most critically acclaimed single player campaigns of all time this game was responsible for fleshing out specifics of the TitanFall Universe in a way that the previous game had not a daring Adventure on a strange World filled with exotic alien creatures and a battle for technology and resources at the brink of known science the story was told from the perspective of an Everyman one Jack Cooper an infantryman who in inherits a powerful Titan of his own after a brave Captain valiantly fights to a bitter fate I am BT 7274 a Vanguard class Titan of the militia SRS Marauder core you may call me BT BT got it Matthew Mercer voiced this lead and aside from being a great action flick the game heavily leaned into a buddy cop Vibe Jack Cooper is talky and expressive but BT is a giant robot calculating and monotone even in situations of duress but in a calming assuring way my analysis indicates a throw is our only option here trust me Titanfall 2 also had a lot of fun with the Sci-Fi setting by incorporating surreal level designs many missions danced on the knife edge of theoretical physics like the one titled effect and cause where the player instantly flips between two points in time with the Press of a button the player has to navigate different environments with unique enemies and ascertain whether parts of the building are traversible or not sometimes solving time puzzles on the Fly more than just a fun campaign Titanfall 2 was a work of art it was a novel step in the right direction for FPS game design both in terms of single player and multiplayer it pushed the boundaries and forced the hand of the industry to consider where it stood but there was just one problem the game was released in the fall right in between Call of Duty and Battlefield release [Music] dates EA faced criticism from industry observers for this move and in an earnings call of a Company CEO Andrew Wilson stated we believe that Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 while they have some overlap fulfill very different motivations in what a player is looking for surely EA knew exactly what kind of audience Titan could reach at this point they had data to track from a previous release and it did pretty well all things considered releasing in the spring with no single player so was it that players had different motivations or did EA have different motivations regardless of how Titanfall shook out EA had clear motivations with respawn and it was almost impossible for Vince senella to say no in November 2017 about a year after the release of the game EA acquired respawn for $150 million plus hundreds of millions of dollars in other cash incentives yeah making a Smash Hit project like Titanfall is one thing but at a certain point don't you get a little tired wouldn't you want to enjoy the money you got Vince won now all he had to do was cement his financial future Titanfall 2 was well received due to its player-friendly approach avoiding disliked industry Trends it featured free DLCs that included Maps modes and and new Titans fostering a strong Community around the game but the FPS industry was getting ready to change drastically player unknowns Battlegrounds was undergoing a meteoric rise to the top of the content creation and streaming Community Titanfall 2 while critically acclaimed was anchored to the older sales model which was showing signs of fatigue in contrast the evolving market dynamics underscored the potential of the free-to-play approach promising higher long-term returns despite the Hefty upfront investment in game quality and player engagement strategies while Titanfall fans were having fun with the new monarch Titan that just dropped respawn would start development on something new in 2017 Titanfall assets were used and in 2019 Apex Legends releases in February completely by surprise no prior marketing not even a word just one day hey there's a freetop playay battle royale made by the guys who did Titanfall this strategy was hugely successful 2.5 million players signed up within 24 hours and there were 25 million players on board by the end of the first week Apex took place many years after the events of Titanfall 2 with the menacing mercenary blisk making a return in writing only as the host of a grand New Blood Sport called the Apex games if you looked closely at it you could see the TitanFall oozing through the cracks the characters still retain the same sort of utilitarian sci-fi look that was appropriate for a license where computer shs were run by big analog sounding buttons that went beep and Boop and clickey Clack but one thing seemed to be missing the Titans actually a couple of things were missing the wall running was missing double jump was missing they kept sliding I kept that and zip lines all things considered it was clear about the people at respawn were eager to work on different things unrelated to Titanfall or at the very least Vince was happy to compartmentalize the company into different sections one unexpected breakout hit was Star Wars Jedi Fallen order which was probably enough to convince Disney to let EA retain the Star Wars video game license after the drama with loot boxes in Battlefront 2 respawn still had the ability to put out quality single player experiences so who cared if they had a little bit of fun with a multiplayer live service game well a lot of people [Music] cared in 2019 while Apex was cooking hackers and cheaters started to crop up in Titanfall 2 matches along with DOs attacks on servers cheating was starting to hit the entire FPS scene in general at this point but nobody could have predicted how bad it would get the problem made the game almost impossible to play without running into cheaters in 2020 at this point respawn added octane a talkative Speed Demon who had a big emphasis on moving and jumping by 2021 a hacker group staged a series of attacks that brought matchmaking and Titanfall to a halt why to get respawn to pay attention to the problem perhaps the most dramatic stage of this was when hackers put a message into the game lobbies of both Titanfall games which linked you to a site where the state of the game was criticized accusing respawn of neglect respawn said they were working on it but the games were old so it was going to be a tough thing to do and it would take time after biting their time respawn would add a character that could climb somewhat higher than other characters emphasizing the this script needs revisions the following year Titanfall the original one was removed from digital platforms for purchase in 2022 in a followup to this respawn announced wait her her dad is Viper dude that is so cool that is sick dude we're so back Titanfall 3 it's happening shortly after integrating more Titanfall lore respawn added ash oh my gosh no way oh my gosh this is crazy dude Titanfall's back guys I can feel it any second now uh what's happening uh guys hey is [Music] any Vince sella all right best game Direction Alan Wake too [Applause] Titanfall will probably go down in history as one of the most public noticeable documented and obvious examples of ghosting an audience and I don't say ghosting like leaving someone unre it's more like leaving millions of people Onre for years and years and years years in 2021 Vince sella stated on Twitter there's nothing currently in development but it's always there you see the universe we're still pulling stuff out for it artists know that they're in the riskiest business you could possibly imagine they don't do it because it's easy they do it because they want to as it stands Titanfall 3 has not once been uttered from the mouth of a PR professional at respawn or EA it's safe to say that Titanfall 3 is isn't happening anytime soon and any smart businessman knows that trying to engage with the situation in any other way than just strategic ambiguity is going to generate a huge amount of push back so it's probably just not worth it to tweet anything it's better to just pretend like nothing has happened Titanfall 2 is still playable the skill ceiling is so high that it maintains a passionate and involved community that respawn made whether respawn likes it or not they made something people love and the license obviously had enough room to breathe and become Apex Legends but does that mean it has to die what if Titanfall 3 didn't make as much money would it be okay would that be allowed Vince sella has had a tremendously successful run FPS games wouldn't be the same without him but since Titanfall 2 there haven't been a lot of movement Shooters quite like it that have ever hit the main stream is it cuz the audience isn't there the devs don't want to make it or both I think it's for the same reason a lot of artistic properties don't just keep exploding sometimes you just want to retire early but the love for giant robots and fastpaced movement is still there maybe someday somebody will hit that Niche again until then respawn will likely remains silent on the topic but the legacy of Titanfall will endure in BT 7274 for's final words BT what are you doing trust me BT we once again want to thank Warf Thunder for sponsoring this video don't miss out on the chance to try War Thunder for free on PC Playstation or Xbox use our Link in the pinned comment or video description to sign up if you're new or haven't played in 6 months you'll score a huge bonus pack with premium Vehicles in-game currency and more on all platforms see you

Channel: Couch Co-Op

Views: 93,153

Keywords: Titanfall, Titan Fall, Titanfall2, Titan fall 2

Id: BF5oEh5U0VQ

Length: 27min 34sec (1654 seconds)

Published: Tue May 14 2024