Written by Jonathan Lee, May 25, 2018, 10:00 PM. Tweet to: @Writerscube
It is always a sad thing when a game studio must close its doors. People lose their jobs. Players can no longer look forward to the studio’s next gaming title. And the global gaming community suffers a loss of creative energy and innovative potential. That is unfortunately what has happened, on May 14 of 2018, and the victim’s name is… Boss Key Productions, a studio helmed by Cliff Bleszinski, or Cliffy B.
The costs of producing a game back in the days of Jazz Jackrabbit are nothing like they are in these days of big AAA titles. Whether it’s coding, animation, or even voice acting, every key component of a video game is costly. It can range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. That makes the success of the video game all the more important. The challenge of just breaking can be incredibly daunting.
After Boss Key Production’s high-action arena shooter Lawbreakers fell to underwhelming sales, the studio attempted to tap into the Battle Royale genre with the colorful Radical Heights. While the game received generally positive feedback, it was unfortunately too late for the studio and Cliff Bleszinski announced on his twitter that Boss Key Productions was going to have to close down.
https://twitter.com/therealcliffyb/status/996092708971274245
An Overwhelming Struggle
Several factors likely contributed to Boss Key’s downfall, despite the fact that Lawbreakers and Radical Heights were both seen as having fun gameplay. Lawbreakers provided an exhilarating experience that gave the arena shooter genre a few new twists. Both of Boss Key’s games entered genres that were not necessarily over-saturated (as in the number of games that were actively hogging the scene), but the main base of players for those genres were already heavily-invested in existing titles. With the likes of both Overwatch and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, it’s easy to see that a lot of players were very preoccupied.
There were ways to overcome this that unfortunately were unreachable, such as returning to a free-to-play model (if Boss Key Productions had desired to) due to the publisher Nexon deciding on not providing any future support for Lawbreakers, declaring that they would ”not be accruing any other impairment loss pertaining to LawBreakers in the future” in a Q3 2017 Earnings Conference Call.
What Could’ve Been?
Some games have proven able to gain a larger player base amidst a saturated market. One great example is the multiplayer third-person shooter Warframe. It’s free-to-play, with a bunch of paid content that players can pay for if-and-when they want. With the game’s great gameplay features and being free-to-play, players were all right with paying some here and there for paid content. As a result, Warframe grew, slowly but surely. Lawbreakers was originally meant to be free-to-play, but was moved to a premium model. This would’ve been fine if game sales were not below expectations.
Could It Be The End?
I, along with many others, do hope that Cliffy B. isn’t leaving the gaming industry forever. At present, he sounds relieved to be free from being a CEO. However, perhaps one day, he’ll get bored enough to come back and gift us with some more awesome ideas—awesome ideas that’ll get the attention they deserve. He returned once. As a fan of his works since I was just a little kid gamer, I sure hope he’ll return again.
https://twitter.com/therealcliffyb/status/998296743480578048
https://twitter.com/therealcliffyb/status/998435563811241985