Activision and Tale of Tales

Tale of Tales


Tale of Tales is a Belgian developer of art and screensaver games founded in 2002. It consists of only 2 permanent members of staff. They mostly offer small titles to download such as 'The Endless Forest' and full titles to buy such as 'The Path'

'The Endless Forest' is a screensaver game available for free download from the Tale of Tales website. In it the player is a deer with a human face and can interact with other players through actions only. There is no real explanation of what to do or even that the player has goals to fulfill. The environment appears to have no boundaries or restrictions and players can explore whatever they please. When I started to play I realised that other people's deers looked different and discovered when sleeping in certain areas my deer gained extra characteristics. You learn how the game works by playing it which I think is a really interesting way to play. Normally when playing a game you are very much guided through it, with markers or visual clues or even the game simply directing you where to go and what to do next, so it was nice to experience a game that didn't give you any hints at all.

'The Path' is a full game which you can download from the website but it is not free to play like 'The Endless Forest', however you can play the trial version for free. It is based on the fairy tale Red Riding Hood. The player is in control of a small girl on her way to her grandmothers house. When the game starts the game tells you to go to your grandmother's house and makes it very clear that you're not to leave the pathway that runs down the middle of the forest. If you follow the rules and simply walk down the path you arrive safely and see the girl's grandmother and the game is over. What is interesting is that the game only becomes interesting and fulfilling when you ignore what the game tells you to do and do the opposite. If you leave the path the game then really starts.
This is a very original and innovative use of gameplay and rules. Normally rules are there to dictate how the game is played and one has to follow the rules in order to play the game successfully. 'The Path' turns this idea on its head and encourages the player to break the rules of the game in order to play it properly.



Activision


'Activision' was founded in 1979 and was the worlds first independent developer and distributer of video games for consoles. Since then the company has become the largest third party games publishers in the world. A lot of the most popular gaming titles in recent years have been published by 'Activision' including major franchises such as 'Tony Hawks', 'Guitar Hero' and 'Call of Duty' plus a lot of major movie tie in games such as 'Transformers; War for Cybertron' and 'Spiderman'.

The type of games 'Activision' make are definitely aimed at the masses. Unlike 'Tale of Tales' who aim at the minority audience and try to provide something out of the ordinary, 'Activision' are providing the ordinary to a wide market, they produce the titles that everybody likes. Also unlike 'Tale of Tales' who try and make the player think and engage with the game intellectually most 'Activision' games are the type of games that hold your hand and guide you through game play in a very obvious way, you don't really have to think outside the box.

Comparison of Games.

Costume Quest

Developers: Double Fine Productions

Producers: THQ

Genre: Role Playing

Platform: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade)

                  PS3 (PSN Network)

Costume Quest is an adventure/role playing game available for download from Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network. It was developed by Double Fine Productions, a relatively small developer based in San Fransisco. Double Fine was started by ex Lucas Arts employee Tim Schafer. Costume Quest was created as a result of what Schafer called "Amnesia Fortnights" during the production of Brutal Legend. During "Amnesia Fortnights" the Brutal Legend team would be split into smaller teams and they would come up with ideas for potential future games. Double Fine believed that EA had licensed a sequel to Brutal Legend, however when they found out they hadn't Tim Schafer went back to the ideas provided in the Amnesia Fortnights for their next release. Two ideas were chosen ; 'Costume Quest' and 'Stacking'

Compared to Double Fine's previous games that had four to five years production time, Costume Quest had only one year. The short time frame and small team size were down to Tim Schafer and his previous experience on titles such as 'The Secret of Monkey Island'  he was quoted as saying that "the limited time scale was beneficial to the development process"

Costume quest has a quirky feel to it and I think you can definitely tell that a small team worked on it, it feels more like an intimate game between player and developer rather than the big titles that are made by huge teams. This was possible because the game was sold as a small downloadable game so therefore was possible to be made by smaller teams.

Call of Duty; Black Ops

Developers: Treyarch

Publishers: Activision

Genre: First Person Shooter

Platform: Xbox360, PS3, PC

Call of Duty: Black Ops is the latest in the Call of Duty series which began in 2003. It was developed by Treyarch which was the studio responsible for other games in the Call of Duty series, Call of Duty 3, Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Reflex. Black Ops is the 7th game to be released from the Call of Duty franchise. As it is part of a best selling franchise the budget for the game would have been   much higher than that of games like Costume Quest because they know that the game is going to create a high revenue as it already has a dedicated fanbase from the previous games they can justify spending more money on development. Within 24 hours of going on sale Black Ops had sold more than 7 million copies, 5.6 million in the U.S and 1.4 million in the U.K which broke the record of the previous Call of Duty release, Modern Warfare 2.

Unlike for previous games during the making of  Black Ops Treyarch focused entirely on this game alone and didn't work on anything else. It had different teams working on the various modes of the game. As with previous Call of Duty games and a lot of other titles there is a large focus on successful online play so Treyarch invested a lot of time and money into this aspect of the game. They also really tried to make the game look really impressive, using motion capture technology similar to that in James Cameron's Avatar which allowed for more accurate facial expression. You can see when playing the game that a lot of effort has been put into the cut scenes, it almost feels like it's trying to be a Hollywood action movie. 

The differences between the two styles of developing a game are obvious here. One is a multi million selling title and the other is a small downloadable game. Black Ops focuses on delivering a very flashy and exciting game play experience based on a tried and tested formula created by previous Call of Duty titles. Because of the huge success of Modern Warfare 2 people were already interested and mostly convinced to buy Black Ops long before it had even been released. This means Treyarch had to spend less effort getting players to play their game. It also meant they could justify spending a lot of money to create a very impressive looking game.

Costume Quest on the other hand is a stand alone title, it's not part of a series so it doesn't have a fanbase already. It relies on getting the player interested enough to play. I think they have done this by trying to create a game which is quirky and different to get people interested in it. The artwork and style of the game is very simple but appealing and the idea behind the game, while simple, is also interesting and refreshingly different from other games. As Double Fine could not be sure of the success of the game they obviously had a lower budget for it, this is why the game is very simple in design and art style, however I think they make it work.