Stacking up against the competition

(KnollDark) #1

Just wanted to see y’all’s feedback on if you think that Brink will dethrone CoD or that Brand name will prevail over innovation. Also how it will compare to other shooters of 2011 like Homefront and Rage (both great titles if you haven’t heard anything about them)

(Conq) #2

No, I think Brink will do great in sales and earn enough money to build Brink 2 but sci-fi games can’t really break into the modern and classic warfare audiences CoD and BF control. Halo has done alright but even it isn’t as main stream and Battlefield’s big budget attempt into the post-apocalyptic theme with BF2142 ended horrifically.

I think Brink will just be the next TF2, which isn’t a bad thing.

(LyndonL) #3

Yeah unfortunately I don’t see it dethroning since its style of gameplay requires more intelligence than point and shoot. There are a lot of 'tards out there that can’t grasp the concept of that.

(Gogeku) #4

I fear that Brink will share the faith of Quake Wars and die out quickly, simply because it’s to demanding and to complicated for the average gamer to cope with it. However I have heard a lot of competitive players in both cod, bf and tf2 mention Brink as a possible followup for them.

(DarkangelUK) #5

I’m hoping Brink will wake up the brains of the generic mindless gamer of today and make them realise that working towards a goal and putting some effort in is far more rewarding than run, gun and spawn.

(Kinjal) #6

All depends on PR Company, look at black ops, it’s already brought more than 1 billion dollars to its creators and publishers, why? Strong story line in singleplayer? Great graphics? Well balanced? Or may be multiplayer innovation comparing to MW2? I don’t think so. May be “Brink Parkour Tour” is not a good idea, coz I didn’t seen CoD creators “Vietnam tour” or something like that. Yes Black ops have a big Brand name, but it’s just a basis for game success , C&C series have a brand name to, but it didn’t work for Tiberium twilight.

(Humate) #7

It needs to make a name for itself, before it can even dethrone mario kart.
But as far as, whether I believe it will eventually compete with the CODs and the BFs of the world - it comes down to whether Brink feels like Brink… and not a combination of multiple titles.

(Conq) #8

I don’t know why people keep throwing up Mark Kart as a negative label, have you people even played the Rainbow track on max difficulty? While drunk? Or wasted? It doesn’t get more hardcore.

(Vaporman) #9

I think it’s unreasonable to discount the possibility of BRINK becoming a hit title, whether by reviews or sales. Who here has played the actual finished product? Who anywhere? I once read an article on the 2011 titles most likely to become “dark horses”, which included BRINK among them. I for one believe it’s very possible that BRINK will be just that. Dethrone the likes of CoD? Perhaps not, but let’s not be so quick to judge it as basically doomed to fail because it’s demographic is too dumb to appreciate a challenge.

(Diablo85) #10

New franchises these days don’t really do that good anymore. The mindless casual gaming horde only wants to play more of the same every year in the terms of sequels. That’s why it’s very unlikely that BRINK will dethrone Call of Duty. Hope it will be succesfull enough to have a sequel though.

(xTriXxy) #11

latest call of duty was pure fail. thousands of PC COD fans returned back to older releases. but console players like it. Its very hard to predict if brink dethrone cod or not, but for PC, Brink have very high chances to dethrone it.

its up to publisher and his budget how he will promote brink.
Bethesda is good publisher. Just check their other titles (doom, elders scrolls, fallout, quake, rage, wet…)
all are n1 games.

(H0RSE) #12

COD will still remain king, because a vast majority of it’s fanbase enjoy mindless shooting. Even the mention of “objectives” and “teamwork” make them cringe.

(xTriXxy) #13

thats true, but even cod fans are getting older and older, and mindless movie shooting will be out of their interest. maybe they had record sales, but from almost every cod forum we may see only complainings.

(EnderWiggin.DA.) #14

In short, I think if Brink is an interesting, fun game that generates areas of good drama and conflict while rewarding players in terms of skill and/or teamwork, then the game will do reasonably well. That may sound obvious, but then why do so many games miss the mark? To be a phenomenal seller it will have to do all that with great art and smooth play. This may be a challenge since Brink is built on id tech 4 although I am very interested to see what improvements have been made since ETQW. I find it unlikely that Brink will get anywhere near CoD sales.

SD also faces some stiff competition like the OP suggested assuming a March release date. Spring 2011 is the new Christmas with potentially Homefront, Portal 2, Max Payne 3, Brink, Dragon Age 2, Fear 3, Killzone 3, Deus Ex:HR, and Bulletstorm all hitting the shelves. Yikes!

I think there is a lot of industry buzz around Brink, but I still think there is a gap between some players and being aware of Brink. I was playing with some old ET friends last night and they hadn’t heard of the Brink, but they knew the Splash Damage name and were able to associate with the game that way. Most of my PC friends mainly pay attention to what is on Steam and what Steam advertises but that excludes the console market.

I do hope that SD is able to support the game better than DICE supported BC2. I am aware that DICE released a lot of patches, but they often broke the balance of different weapons while fixing other weapons damages. Additionally, new content was slow in appearing. I understand why, but it made the game stale. To be fair, I was really impressed with how SD supported ETQW. Not only did they QA the 1.5 patch with their own money (iirc), but they also spent a good deal of time on the SDK wiki.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. Can’t wait…

(SockDog) #15

Brink as a franchise is entirely capable of surpassing CoD over time. The biggest question is whether Bethesda wants Brink to just be a profitable franchise or a CoD level mass consumer franchise. I’d guess it’s going to take 2-3 versions of Brink before they make that kind of decision.

(3Suns) #16

I need to play Brink first.

I find SD’s vision flawless and Brink is my most anticipated title of 2011. I need to see the light class in action, however, and I need to spend some extended time playing the game myself.

2010 is Year of the Game in my opinion, and 2011 looks to be even (impossibly) better. The competition for our dollars and our game hours is fierce.

Merry Christmas to everyone here and to all of Splash Damage. Have a safe and enriching holiday!

(Atavax) #17

Brink is too different from COD to dethrone COD. when i hear COD fans talking about why they prefer COD to other shooters, generally they say the feel of combat. They like the satisfaction of the OHK… Brink might appeal to a maturing COD audience, but it is clearly not a substitute for COD.

(SockDog) #18

CoD fans by and large swallow whatever the marketing money creates a buzz around. You know, like how they slam Treyarch for being terrible and swear off buying their games and yet BLOPS is absolutely massive.

Brink is admittedly a different game but I don’t think that would be a major factor in seeing it reach or surpass CoD levels of success. Factors such as being accessible (which SD have pretty much put at the top of their list), fun!, offering ongoing stimulation with XP, ranks etc, content such as map packs and dlc, constant marketing to keep the name buzzing long after release and SD giving it lots of post release support.

My biggest concern for Brink is its single gametype. We’ve argued over this before so I won’t say more than it’s a massive gamble IMO if you’re looking to build a wildly popular franchise.

(Humate) #19

I actually think offering something different, is the very thing that will make it compete with other FPSes out there. SD has already made it accessible, by not introducing packs and incorporating a context unibutton. Seriously, if that doesnt make it accessible for the players who struggle with a bank system - they should unplug their pc and throw it out the window.
I know, its not a nice thing to say. :c

The second thing are the objective modes they are competing against. Domination, CTF, S&D and HQ - not exactly the most innovative modes, but the same could be said about Stopwatch.
The problem with stopwatch is ragequitting completely ****s the game up, and from a public server point of view its almost inevitable. Having bots replace players, is not going to cut it imo.
So this probably needs to be revamped, if it wants to compete.

Or they could introduce a server setting that allows admins to set up 3 map campaigns without any stories interrupting it, without the need to be of certain rank and without autokicking players who lose

But i digress :c

(Atavax) #20

[QUOTE=SockDog;252953]
My biggest concern for Brink is its single gametype. We’ve argued over this before so I won’t say more than it’s a massive gamble IMO if you’re looking to build a wildly popular franchise.[/QUOTE]

i think having a single gametype is largely detrimental to having a widly popular franchise, but thats one of the reasons why i’m attracted to this game. In this era of gaming, most well done games have no souls, they have near infinite budgets and time and they include everything any of their fans could possibly want; its just a blob of crap. But brink is the game they want to make, not the game that will appeal to the masses. Girls in the game? nah. more then 1 gametype? nah. yeah, we might alienate some people, but we’re going to make a good game.