Gaming Industry Unfair to Werewolves ?

[king2wolves]

It seems unfair that only time you get to play as a werewolf is in MMORPG's, like "World of Warcraft" and "Champions Online", instead of console games. And, its quite obvious that the gaming industry can be creative and innovative with werewolf games but it seems that they only reserve that creativity and innovativation for werewolves in MMORPGS.

[Wingman]

To my mind, this unfairness stems from the fact that many game creators haven't seemed to grasp the concept of a single player game with alternate characters and storylines combined with the niche element of werewolves. What I'm trying to say that that they'll attach one, or maybe two labels and themes onto the game and then design around that idea. I understand why, but I feel that it unnecessarily restricts the content of games.

"Werewolf" has a lot more history and baggage than something more generic, such as "Soldier", or "Mutant", or "Alien" combined with "Horror" or "Shooter" or "Survival". If you have to stop and clarify, I'd imagine that significantly reduces your chances of marketing your game concept or getting funding for it. It's rare indeed to see a game that allows for alternate elements and storylines other than the four word summary. As such, I'd guess that when most people are thinking of game ideas when werewolf comes up, if it comes up at all, they're going to say "Nah, that doesn't work, this is a shooter." or "No, this isn't a horror game.", or even "What is a werewolf doing on Endor?".

Another contributing factor would be that a lot of the "best", or even "decent" werewolf IPs belong to someone other than the people in the videogame industry. I'd guess that in most cases acquiring those rights would be rather costly and chew up a lot of time, coupled with a limited target market if you do try to adapt pre-existing material. If you do it right you should be able to market just about any game to just about any person, but the problem with this is that one wrong step and you might alienate the entire target fanbase.

I have seen some games lately that I could easily see working as werewolf games with minor modifications, such as Prototype or The Darkness. Though, yeah, I cannot name a single memorable werewolf game that I've ever played. On the few games I've played with werewolves, the werewolf is basically just a different appearance and an alternate attack.

Give me a few years and I'll do my best to make a good werewolf game. Or, more accurately, the game I make will have werewolves in it, more than one kind and with more than one storyline.

I may or may not have flown off in several directions with this post, if so I apologize.

[Aki]

Werewolves in video games suffer from the same problems as those in film.

- Werewolves are a niche target market. Compare to two other big horror monsters - vampires and zombies - who have an increasingly larger market (lots of people like vampires, and tons of people love shooting zombies in the face).

- Werewolves in games, like their film counterparts, are much much harder to do correctly. A vampire? Same human character model, paler with fangs. Done. Maybe add some new animations for vampire powers or a neck bite or such. Zombie? Easy as cake! You don't even need a good animator, being as zombies are stiff and whatnot! Werewolf? Need an entirely new model with new textures, sounds, animations, etc.

- Public perception is still, well, Werewolves = monsters. So the most werewolfy goodness you see is as cannon fodder. A werewolf protagonist is, understandably, a hard sell.

Etc.

[Shadow Wulf]

Don't forget Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness was pretty good considering you played as a werewolf for the entire game, unfortunately it didn't sell to well, but it was the best 3D Castlevania for a while prior to it's release.

Werewolves playing as a main role of a good guy is a lot more complicated to execute than any horror creature out there. With zombies as the main character you just had to make them silly and there has been a couple of games released where you control as a zombie who is the main character. Then you have the vampires who are just really popular among teens and women and like Aki said all you have to do is get a human model, slap some fangs and your good to go. If they are attractive then it's a guarantee success, because you know how much teen girls love attractive guys sucking on their neck and staying young forever.

Besides the fan base you have to please, you also have to worry about idiotic people who will somehow label it something that isn't such as a furry game. This kind of happen with Champions Online, where some people complained that the game pleases furries cause you can create bestial characters and there is a role play area in the game where a lot of the bestial super heroes hang out at.

[Chris]

Besides the fan base you have to please, you also have to worry about idiotic people who will somehow label it something that isn't such as a furry game.

I think people just need to ignore them. When the Daggerfall came out, players could contract lycanthropy and be a werewolf (and wereboar; though there weren't any specific quests associated with them, except for the optional cure quest) and nobody decried it for being "furry". It's 2003 sequel, Morrowind, had the Bloodmoon expansion which added playable werewolves to that game (and did have specific quests for it, as they were part of the main storyline), nobody complained it was a "furry" expansion or anything. It was very well received, and is probably one of the best games where you can play a werewolf. Unfortunately Morrowind's sequel, Oblivion, didn't include werewolves (according to the devs, because they didn't have time to add in the necessary gameplay mechanics, which is understandable). However, there have been a lot of requests to bring them back for the next Elder Scrolls game.. and I'd be damned if I didn't see people complaining that it would make it "furry" (though the overall opinion is that, yes, more people ask for them to be in than complain about it or ask for them to be left out).

People would do well to just ignore if something would make a game "furry" or not. The only reason people complain about furry is because it's one of the latest "cool" things to do. Label something as furry, and it's suddenly cool to hate it.

[Morkulv]

I would love to see a werewolf-themed game on say, Unreal Engine 3.

[Shadow Wulf]

I would love to see a werewolf-themed game on say, Unreal Engine 3.

I want it on the cryengine 2 with all the lush outdoor open world where you can have several ways to tackle an objective and blend in with the environment and climb trees and ready to strike. Unreal Engine 3 isn't real good at creating outdoor levels, it mostly has to be urban or small scale outdoor with limited vegetation.

[Aki]

I would love to see a werewolf-themed game on say, Unreal Engine 3.

I want it on the cryengine 2 with all the lush outdoor open world where you can have several ways to tackle an objective and blend in with the environment and climb trees and ready to strike. Unreal Engine 3 isn't real good at creating outdoor levels, it mostly has to be urban or small scale outdoor with limited vegetation.

Urban or small scale outdoor could work though. It'd make for a nice city based werewolf game.

[Shadow Wulf]

Yes it would but the cryengine can make a pretty good urban setting too I imagine, I would just prefer to see a mystical looking expansive forest, the developers just need to take the time to make use of the engine for urban settings. Unreal Engine 3 is especially good at that, but the outdoors is really the weakest, the two engines have exact opposite purposes it seems, and I seen unreal engine 3 try to be somewhat of outdoors type and it's just no where near as good or realistic as cryengine 2.

[Berserker]

An extremely popular and mainstream video game for console had a werewolf as the protagonist. It came out for the Wii. Remember it? That little Zelda title?

[Aki]

An extremely popular and mainstream video game for console had a werewolf as the protagonist. It came out for the Wii. Remember it? That little Zelda title?

Yes, but see, that's a title from an extremely established and popular series known for good gameplay. The wolf thing was something new and neat and interesting to be sure - but the majority of people bought it because it was a Zelda title, not because it had a werewolf protagonist.

[Morkulv]

I would love to see a werewolf-themed game on say, Unreal Engine 3.

I want it on the cryengine 2 with all the lush outdoor open world where you can have several ways to tackle an objective and blend in with the environment and climb trees and ready to strike. Unreal Engine 3 isn't real good at creating outdoor levels, it mostly has to be urban or small scale outdoor with limited vegetation.

Both would be awesome IMO. If that game would at least be released on Xbox 360 or anything, since I use my PC strictly for editing, and my laptop for games and my laptop isn't exactly great.

[alphanubilus]

An extremely popular and mainstream video game for console had a werewolf as the protagonist. It came out for the Wii. Remember it? That little Zelda title?

Yes, but see, that's a title from an extremely established and popular series known for good gameplay. The wolf thing was something new and neat and interesting to be sure - but the majority of people bought it because it was a Zelda title, not because it had a werewolf protagonist.

True, however with any game, most people buy games because of gameplay and high fun value... or at least, that is WHY people SHOULD buy games. As a big gamer, even IF there was a werewolf game out there, if it isn't good, I'm not going to buy it. It takes more than going on all fours to make me purchase a game.

On that note... BioWare is coming out with a new action game called, "DragonAge: Origins". While I doubt you will be able to play as a werewolf, there is a pretty big segment in the game where you get to choose to aid werewolves or slaughter them. If you choose to aid them, you learn that they are your allies and will actually help you later on. The segments that I've seen thus far, are quite fantastic...

[MattSullivan]

There;s no such things as being "unfair" to werewolves or to fans wholike playing htem. it's because werewolf fans, by and large, are a minority. Yes that's right, A MINORITY. Werewolves are monsters, relegated to creatures of legend. That's not to say that there couldn't BE a good werewolf based console game, but try and remember that people who like animals and monsters ( I've chosen to name them "critterfans" as opposed to "furry" )are in the minority when it comes to all things fandom. There just aren't ENOUGH die hard fans out there to inspire some game company. And IF they DID make a game that appealed to most werewolf fans, i would argue it wouldn't be very fun. ( That is to ay if all it did was focis on "all things werewolf" like the constantly re-hashed discussions on this website.

[MattSullivan]

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[MattSullivan]

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[Figarou]

It seems unfair that only time you get to play as a werewolf is in MMORPG's, like "World of Warcraft" and "Champions Online", instead of console games. And, its quite obvious that the gaming industry can be creative and innovative with werewolf games but it seems that they only reserve that creativity and innovativation for werewolves in MMORPGS.

There are some fighting games where you can play as a werewolf. Jon Talbain in Darkstalkers is a playable werewolf. It 1st hit the arcades. But it found it's way to the consoles.

Then there is the werewolf in Killer Instinct.

One of my favorite fighting game is Bloody Roar. All the playable characters has a "beast" form.

[Terastas]

Besides the fan base you have to please, you also have to worry about idiotic people who will somehow label it something that isn't such as a furry game. This kind of happen with Champions Online, where some people complained that the game pleases furries cause you can create bestial characters and there is a role play area in the game where a lot of the bestial super heroes hang out at.

*nods* This is definitely a part of it. There are two things that never fail to surprise me:

1) How petty, juvenile and anal some people can be.
2) How many people like that are on the Internet.

Most of the people that hate furries also hate pretty much everything else in the world, but hating furries is fashionable and they can still bulls**t their way into a legitimate beef with the fandom over reasons other people in the media are more than happy to support them in (CSI anyone?).

So since the great majority of all furry-haters are just begging for somebody to give them an outlet for their otherwise completely undirected hatred, if they can bash a game, movie, book etc. for being furry, they will. Even Sonic the Hedgehog, who has been around for eighteen years, is routinely bashed for being a "furry game."

See, the problem is that these angry buttholes who refuse to play anything furry, anime or otherwise "gay" in any way, shape or form are also the people that made FPSs like Counterstrike and Halo so successful. Most gamers probably don't care if the game has potentially furry aspects or not, but the ratio of furries and/or werewolf fans to angry pricks still tips in favor of the latter.

These angry anal kids are, unfortunately, also the most reliable of consumers. You and I both know 19/20 of these idiots are still collecting weekly allowances.

It is sort of a double-standard when you consider how much crap has come out and is coming out with their counterparts, vampires as the protagonists (Castlevania, Legacy of Kain, Bloodrayne, etc.), but there's two simple explanations for this. First, vampires are, as others have said, basically just human beings with fangs in basic form, so they're a lot easier for developers to envision and animate. The other part is that vampires in games are often ridiculously overpowered. It's the angry prick's wet dream to be so powerful they can just mow through an entire legion of enemies with only half a thought, which is what a lot of these games ultimately allow players to do.

And best of all, the only drawback to being a vampire that ever makes its way into the games is the loss of one's soul, which is no big deal to the angry pricks; they probably never had souls to begin with.

Werewolves, on the other hand, have never been depicted as being anything close to a god. So if the game won't indulge rampant slaughter fantasies and will get panned for "being furry faggotry," that's a huuuuuuge chunk taken out of what would have otherwise been a very reliable consumer base. Sad but true, gaming companies are more interested in pleasing the masses than anyone with half a brain enough to ignore the "furry" stuff (they probably don't think of smart people as being gamers anyway).

[Chris]

See, the problem is that these angry buttholes who refuse to play anything furry, anime or otherwise "gay" in any way, shape or form are also the people that made FPSs like Counterstrike and Halo so successful. Most gamers probably don't care if the game has potentially furry aspects or not, but the ratio of furries and/or werewolf fans to angry pricks still tips in favor of the latter.

These angry anal kids are, unfortunately, also the most reliable of consumers. You and I both know 19/20 of these idiots are still collecting weekly allowances.

I would contend that the majority of people that get all butt-hurt over something having "furry" elements will get and play the games anyway, as long as they otherwise still have appeal (just being Yet Another FPS, but with furries!, won't cut it; the FPS market is saturated, and if all your game has for a hook is having furries, then your game will logically appeal to only furries). I'd also say that a number of people that bash on furry, are furries themselves.

After all, it's not like games with overtly furry elements and themes can't be popular. Just look at the likes of Donkey Kong, Sonic, Starfox, Usagi Yojimbo, Crash Bandicoot, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, etc. These aren't simply kids games, but they still do good when the quality of the game is up to par.

[Berserker]

Werewolves, on the other hand, have never been depicted as being anything close to a god.

*points to the werewolf in Altered Beast*

[Wselfwulf]

There've been plenty of games featuring werewolves and werewolves characters, including a few popular ones as have been mentioned. Hell, I just lost my werewolf in DII to iron maiden in the chaos sanctury. It's just a bit niche, so it hasn't been mined for all it's potential as a few of you have suggested. In terms of being harder to model than a single character, I do not think that is a huge issue. It's not really a problem modelling say, two different characters. Many games also involve transformation, like the Suffering. A few 2D fighters I can remember had werewolf characters, Seiken Densestu was a pretty good game where you could play as one.

So they're around but they probably could benifit from alot more attention and detail.

[Silent Hunter]

[Shadow Wulf]

Yes, but we aren't talking about movies are we? We are talking about games where ideas and imagination flows more freely than anything you see in Hollywood. While the cause for their not being a developed werewolf character in games is the same as that in movies. At least in games has more potential, and as stated above you can easily just make a character in human form as the standard and simply able to transform in-game or in cut scenes. The Suffering was a great example that Wselfwulf mentioned.

[Terastas]

Also I think the whole "people who hate furries also bring down werewolves in the industry" argument weak. Furries are barley known.

Jay Leno made a passing reference to them on his show recently. The problem is that furries are not unknown anymore, there's only so little known about them. The average person just brushes them off without a thought, but when asked can only recall what little they'd originally heard. . . Which usually comes by way of an unreliable source.

But you're right: the "werewolf = furry" reason is pretty pathetic. . . As are the people that resort to it. See, the problem isn't the legitimacy of such a claim, it's just the fact that people are making it anyway.

See, all too often the problem is that people do not differentiate between what they believe and what they just want to believe. . . Or in this case, what they want you to think they believe.

If a game like, say, Halo were coming out with added features that had furry elements to them. . . Chances are all those idiots that had played the first three would play the next one too. . . But they'd claim to be pissed off and threaten to boycott it. But the people at Microsoft and Bungie wouldn't be able to tell the honest complainers from the bull****ers, and they probably wouldn't bother to find out either.

I would contend that the majority of people that get all butt-hurt over something having "furry" elements will get and play the games anyway, as long as they otherwise still have appeal (just being Yet Another FPS, but with furries!, won't cut it; the FPS market is saturated, and if all your game has for a hook is having furries, then your game will logically appeal to only furries). I'd also say that a number of people that bash on furry, are furries themselves.

No. . . No, probably not. As I said, most (if not all) people that get butt-hurt over anything being furry actually have a long list of things they hate. They might claim to hate furry games, but really I suspect they're all just too stupid to have any appreciation for any game with gameplay mechanics that cannot be downgraded to either "mash buttons" or "point and shoot."

Really, remember my older brother who I used to rant about all the time? Even Fight Night and Tekken were too complex for him. If he couldn't mash buttons or auto-aim all the way to victory, the game was "f**-****" and he wanted nothing to do with it.

I have nothing against FPSs in general, but that (and Guitar Hero) is about as simplified as a gameplay experience can get, which is why you run into so many more buttholes (and nine-year-olds) online playing those games than any other.

There are a million other things those idiots look down on as being "faggotry." Furry only takes a special interest because it's something they think they can feign having a legitimate beef with it (emphasis on the word "think").

So there aren't that many people who would refuse to play a werewolf game simply because it strikes them as being furry. . . But there are millions upon millions who will claim that's why they refuse to play it. And since the game developers are looking at the market at large from a distance and have no real way of knowing how much of what we are saying is true or not, the sheer volume of those BS claims is usually enough to deter them.

[Aki]

It's not really a problem modelling say, two different characters.

It is when it's for a niche market. Especially when both those models need to have nice, fluid animations. And both those models are for the same character.

Meaning your art team is doing the twice the work for a cast of werewolves than they would for a cast of anything else.

Many games also involve transformation, like the Suffering. A few 2D fighters I can remember had werewolf characters, Seiken Densestu was a pretty good game where you could play as one.

So they're around but they probably could benifit from alot more attention and detail.

In both those examples the transformation is a big part of either the game (Suffering) or the character (fighting games). It's their gimmick. And Suffering doesn't have the trouble of being niche - it's a horror game. Not a werewolf one. It also only has one transforming character, not a pack or more's worth.

Likewise, fighting games don't sell their copies based on characters like, say, Jon Talbain or Sabre from KI. They don't hurt, but FGs focus mostly on their gameplay - being a werewolf is simply one character's unique gimmicks.