14 DAY TRIAL // The new Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, which mixes a video game and actual real world toys, has been very successful since being introduced last year mainly because it is family friendly and targeted a large audience but at one point the franchise was reaching for a darker, mature tone.
Alex Ness, who is a representative for Toys for Bob, which worked with Activision Blizzard on the game, told GamesIndustry that, “It was going to be for an older audience, a darker take on it for the next-gen systems.
“We worked on some concepts there, but we wanted to go in a different direction and do something more for a younger audience that really rebooted the franchise.”
Some of the ideas that the two companies prototyped were pretty far from the final product, including at least one which included the use of hats.
Ness added, “But the one that we gravitated towards the most was the one that involved toys. The emotional connection that we have to toys and the representation of our childhoods – it just seemed like the perfect fit.”
Initially, Toys for Bob was unwilling to pitch the toy idea to Activision, mainly because they had seen how the Guitar Hero franchise was sunk by peripherals.
The publisher quickly understood the appeal of the new idea for Skylanders and devoted resources to get the toys to market as quickly as possible, resulting in sales of more than 20 million toys since they were launched.
Activision has recently announced that during the fall the Skylanders range will be extended with a new range called Giants, which will include new characters that will be twice the size of the original toys.
It’s not clear whether the expansion will also introduce a whole new range of video game adventures for the Skylanders or will use the already existing ones.