One reader says there will not be Elden Ring clones of major publishers, but that it could help inspire them not to chase trends.
Elden Ring is now officially one year old. Somehow they managed to make their DLC announcement three days after the anniversary, but that seems to be the norm lately, due to how lax the way publishers are handling their announcements. However, I’m not here to talk about the loss of “showmanship” in video game reveals, but about Elden Ring itself, whose unexpected success has led to… nothing at all.
It’s only been a year, but so far there’s no indication that any publisher saw Elden Ring’s success and thought they should copy it. Within months of Fortnite becoming a runaway hit, it was clear that every publisher under the sun would take a shot at making their own battle royale. They soon learned it wasn’t that easy, but their efforts to clone its success helped cement Fortnite’s position as a classic game.
However, with Elden Ring there has been no attempt to do such a thing and I’m going to predict that it never will. I’ll use as my point of comparison The Legend Of Zelda, a franchise that has been running for 37 years and includes at least three games considered the greatest of all time, yet has had almost no impact on the wider gaming world either.
You could say it’s too early to expect Elden Ring clones, or even the announcement of them. But how many Zelda clones are there to get along with after four decades? A handfull. And how many have been major critical or commercial hits? No. Breath Of The Wild has had the most impact, in that it’s clear that the creators of recent open-world games have at least played it, but none of the games they’ve made have taken anything but the broadest inspiration from it fetched.
I suspect it will be the same for Elden Ring and for the same reason: these games are hard to make. They’re so far outside the video game norm that they exist in a kind of classic bubble that exists outside the rest of the gaming industry. There are others in a similar position. The Last Of Us, for example, is another game that gets non-stop acclaim and high sales and yet there is almost nothing comparable to it.
The fairly cheap A Plague Tale games are the only relatively similar games and the former was fairly successful, but even that didn’t convince other publishers that they could or would do the same.
The video game industry is both more plagiarized than you think and less. Yes, there are endless rows of open world games, online shooters, and free-to-play junk, but that’s because they’re either cheap to make or such a well-known product that you can guarantee sales to some degree. If you throw out enough, the wisdom goes, at least a few will be hits. That’s basically Ubisoft’s entire business plan for the past 10+ years.
It’s not just that making Elden Ring takes a lot of time and money, it’s also that the people available to make it are few and far between. Dark Souls has already made it more acceptable for games to be more difficult than they used to be, but since Elden Ring is slightly easier, that’s not something that will really affect anyone in the future.
I’m not saying this with any real criticism it’s not like EA or Activision can just call a recruiting firm and hire a dozen Hidetaka Miyazaki replacements in a heartbeat but what I think it underscores is that every company should be wanting to do one or two things really well, rather than just chasing trends and only being third or fourth best at it.
You actually see this in the top games from major publishers: EA has FIFA, Activision has Call Of Duty and Take-Two has GTA. No one does these games as well as they do and they have rightly dominated that market, even though personally I would never put them in the classic bubble with Elden Ring and The Last Of Us. However, they never seem to realize that they should be pursuing the same idea with everything they make.
Being the best at whatever you do may be harder and require more experimentation to begin with, but the biggest games are almost always the most innovative as well. Call Of Duty may not seem like it now, but it was when it first came out, and the same for GTA and the rest.
Elden Ring won’t make a big impact on games simply because it’s too hard to copy, but if it inspires publishers to also carve out their own niche rather than copying someone else’s then maybe it will have a much more positive impact then you. I would imagine.
By reader Crombie
The reader post does not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
You can submit your own 500 to 600 word reading at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Please contact us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk or use our Submit Stuff page and no need to email.
MORE : Elden Ring DLC Shadow Of The Erdree Officially Announced – Appears To Be A Prequel
MORE : Elden Ring has sold 20 million copies as Bandai Namco drops new DLC hint
MORE : Elden Ring’s first anniversary event reignites DLC hopes
Follow Metro Gaming Twitter and e-mail us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk
To extra simply submit Inbox Letters and Reader’s Options, with out having to ship an e-mail, use our Submit Stuff web page right here.
For extra tales like this, try our Gaming web page.
