14 DAY TRIAL // Titanfall, the new shooter from developer Respawn Entertainment and publisher Electronic Arts, was the biggest launch of the previous week on both the Xbox One and the PC and the pre-release hype coming from both companies suggested that this was an experience that would be able to change the entire genre as we knew it.
Gamers have had a chance to play the title and see everything it has to offer and the mainstream opinion seems to be that while it offers a very solid and enjoyable experience, it does not actually revolutionize the shooter space.
Titanfall does do very clever things with the interplay between pilots and the mechs and understands the way mobility can increase the tactical options as long as maps are well developed and balanced.
I liked the few matches I played and my shooter-focused friends loved it even more, but there’s every chance that the title from Respawn will become just one more multiplayer experience that has a solid niche, but never manages to gather the same community as frontrunner Battlefield or Call of Duty.
The role of hype in gaming
Regardless of the ultimate fate of Titanfall, its launch is a good moment to take a look at the way hype influences the world of gaming and how certain gamers might be persuaded to believe that a title is more important than it initially seems.
Advertising is a necessary element of all businesses and I would not dream of asking publishers and platform holders to simply allow their potential customers to hear about a coming title via word of mouth.
But for Titanfall, Microsoft, which seems to have taken most marketing duties over from Electronic Arts, has created the sort of hype that’s usually reserved for summer movie blockbusters.
There were adds for the title on all major sites, a special live action series about it is being teased, plenty of money were invested in the Life Is Better with a Titan concept and old classics like Missile Command were re-launched, featuring a mech.
At the same time, developers were giving out info about the title and explaining how the core mechanics worked to those who were interested in picking the game out on launch.
Even the beta stage felt less like a moment to test the experience and more as a publicity exercise.
Advertising itself is normal and necessary, but there are moments when Titanfall felt like it would be a larger launch than that of Call of Duty, the most important franchise of the gaming world at the moment.
Shooters will stay largely the same
I am not a regular shooter player, although I spent tens of hours with both Mass Effect 3, in the cooperative mode, and with Halo and Unreal Tournament.
Titanfall is a different experience and has managed to introduce a few mechanics, like the increased mobility for the pilots, which might become standard for the genre in a few years.
But this is not a revolution in any way, it’s just an evolution of the mechanics that fans know and love.
The industry is at the moment too big and a big launch needs a lot of sales to make a profit and that means that major changes to a familiar genre are not high on the priority list of developers and publishers.
Titanfall is a good game, but a revolution in the genre shooter will probably come from a three-man team that delivers a game on Steam.
And, unfortunately, they might never have the advertising power to make sure that gamers know about their title and try it out.