Riot Canceled Their Own Smash Bros. Game

you see sometimes you have to get out there to get some news but sometimes the news happen to find you and only a few days ago a really interesting piece of news surfaced about a game which Riot has worked on for a while and then they decided to cancel it and the reason why this is really interesting is because it reflects on how RI is functioning these days the news was originally Broken Out by miky clov who is responsible for covering some G news for Washington Post meaning that we are likely dealing with a credible source with the core of the news being a cancelled Riot game now before we dive into the specifics of that it would be a good idea to talk about how Riot is handling its titles at this point it's no secret that for about 10 years Riot games was Meed to be riots game because for those initial 10 years they have only ever had League of Legends then they set separated TF from League of Legends to be its own game and then of course the anniversary happened where they announced Legends of Runa valent project L and project F which we haven't heard about in a while and then we got Riot Forge announced which started pumping out indie games and here we need to talk about why R announced the games they did simply said RI is really good at taking game genres and polishing the crap out of of them the moment they smell an opening in a market they are confident they can take a piece of that pie Legends of Runa got into a sketchy spot because they were planning to release the game just as Hearthstone was originally released but they didn't want to compete so they delayed it and then they were just fighting with Time Project L now known as 2x KO is trying to make a dent in the fighting scene where companies are notorious for refusing to evolve the game genre project f well we still have no idea what's happening there TFT was such a big success that they are so far ahead that not only did they dominate the entire game genre but other companies don't even try to compete with them and then most importantly there is valerent which is R's biggest success where they took the former glory of the original Counterstrike games and they gave them a new Spin and what's cool about this is that these days valerent may be considered Riot's biggest game it actually managed to overtake league in almost half of the world with its growth still being bigger than leagues and again all of this stems from Riot looking at the biggest Trends in gaming and trying to evolve them into something better that is also why R is trying to do something with the MMO they know the potential is there but they don't want to copy what already exists that's really why the entire project was reset and after they shut down RI Forge they immediately confirmed that they are making their own single player games because those are rising in popularity again and to top all of this off we know that R is constantly working on new games in the background because from the job listings we know that there are at least two separate R&D projects and yesterday we got the news that one such project was was cancelled so let's have a look at what it was as the post on reader graev says Riot games cancelled work on a prototype platform fighter Coden named pool party in late May according to current and former Riot games employees familiar with the decision approximately 70 to 80 employees were working on the game when it was shattered so from this we learned that the code name for the game was pool party and that the theme was decently big having 70 to 80 employees working on a game is no joke when the big layoffs happened ride let go of 530 employees and at that time that was about 11% of their Workforce so here we are talking about the size of a team that could push out a big success just like valerant but then the post continues sources familiar with the project described the original pitch for pool party as a platform f fighter in the veins of Super Smash Bros Millie set in the League of Legends Universe Ride game Saw an opportunity to build and support the game's Esports scene unlike Nintendo which is notoriously hands-off and even hostile towards the smash competitive ecosystem this is honestly nuts but the more you dig into this the more it makes sense it makes sense for right to try and make a hit with this game genre because if they focus on Esports here they debble into something that has little to no competition but for that reason specifically it also makes sense why they cancelled it from all the recent news we know that Esports are simply not as profitable as they once used to be league is a good example of this we constantly hear about budget cuts and reconstructing and yes even the $500 AR skin was technically there to help with the costs that's why it is a essentially an Esports skin so depending on how long this game has been in the works it is possible that Riot saw a shift in the Esports scene and they realized they don't want to have another live service competitive PVP game on their hands and the other big reason why they likely cancel this game is because it's really hard to make a mega hit using this game genre if you look around the only truly viral game here is Smash Bros a lot of other companies tried but it's simply really hard to make this game good from scratch with really good balancing of the character roster with Hyper responsive gameplay and most importantly with a good character lineup although that specifically might be the reason why R considered this game in the first place it is possible they realized their character lineup is really good considering the fact that they would be using the League of Legends universe but alas this game genre simply doesn't have a great history I mean look at braw Hala multiverses Nickelodeon Allstars Rivals of ether and even my favorite which didn't make it that far the PlayStation Allstars Battle Royale which isn't a battle royale this game came out in 2012 that name was way ahead of what the title would eventually become anyway while some of these became good games on their own a lot of these had to be eventually shut down and re worked because the interest in this genre as it is went down and that's why I believe R made a good decision in pulling the cord here which is also interesting because the fighting game genre is also extremely volatile so maybe R just wanted to focus on one fighting game at a time anyway the post then continues a source familiar with the Staffing decisions at Riot said that approximately half of the team had received an offer to be reassigned with within the studio While others were in the process of seeking new positions throughout the company's internal job board 10 people had not received an offer and were not in the process of applying internally presumably those workers were either laid off or left the company this honestly makes sense because of what I just mentioned if RI is trying to spin up two fighting games at the same time it makes sense for one of them to take a step back and for the other one to use the talent that was working there that's why a lot of the workforce was likely moved around the company and then we got a line that plays precisely into what we talked about with the other games pool party cancellation was precipated in part by a reassessment of consumer appetite for a smash competitor according to sources familiar with the Project's development Executives at Riot were spooked by what they perceived as the failure of multiverses a free-to-play fighting game starring characters from franchises owned by Warner Bros on hly I would be spooked too you see the reason why these party Fighters worked so well in the past is because they were mainly party Fighters their main demographic is kids sharing controllers around the same console so they can play together it was all within a friendly competition people played the older Smash games for fun with their friends to a big degree when Smash Bros ultimate came out that was the players who bought the game but there it started having a little bit of a downturn because the moment you introduced internet play and matchmaking and I know that ultimate wasn't the first one to do this well now the game is perceived to be a lot more competitive and I'm not saying that adding in matchmaking is a bad decision but it would be foolish to not accept that this also shifted a bit of the audience so the post then continues about this issue specifically originally envisioned as a hardcore fighting game the pitch for pool party changed over the course of the development shifting to include party game elements and Casual friendly mechanics the change in scope and vision frustrated some staff on the project the crazy thing here is that I believe R was on the right path again the original vision of Smash Bros was throwing around Pokeballs and smashing your friends with the Home Run bat no not one-on-one Fox battles on Final Destination the Casual audience which definitely makes over 99% of your player base here doesn't care about that it is a cool spectacle when pros play this game but casuals don't want to play that and it seems like some people at Riot realized this and they started making the right decisions but the devs who liked the hardcore fighting didn't like that which makes sense if you are passionate about the game genre but the success of Riot's games is serving the broader audience so the post then continues pool party Bears no relation to the other fighting game under development at Riot games the 2v2 team based fighter 2x KO the developer is still working on the letter title which is slatest to release in 2025 I mean we just learned about Braum coming to the game so the post then finishes coincidentally on Tuesday the head organizer of the big house Smash Bros tournament series announced that the event regarded by the fans as one of the Marquee annual events in the smash competitive scene was going on in definite Hiatus the organizer Robin harn cited a number of personal issues as well as broader logistical and Industry related challenges in his decision to put a pause on hosting the event and there you have it it seems like the party Fighter game genre is not having the best time and it seems like there were multiple reasons why Riot's version of such game was cancelled I mean looking around again it makes sense many different Studios tried to succeed on this battlefield and every single one of them failed or at least they failed to go viral because success can be also seen on a smaller scale I mean look at Rivals of ether they announced that they are working on a sequel simply titled Rivals 2 and as far as I know that game is being published by L Wick's publishing studio so that's a game that is still trying to break through but on the other side some other games failed even after attaching some big names to them and the crazy part about all of this is that when you take a step back and you look at the King of the Hill Super Smash Bros ultimate which is the latest installment in the series also became the highest selling fighting game of all times so you know what maybe R missed out on a really big game

Channel: Necrit

Views: 73,241

Keywords: Lore, Story, Necrit, Necrit94, Narrated, Explained, League of Legends, LOL, TFT, Teamfight tactics, legends of runeterra

Id: DGbh0YDVpuY

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 13 2024