Days Gone creator blames ratings, gamers and game sales at launch for canceling sequel
Days Gone creative director and writer John Garvin said people should buy games at full price if they like them, rather than wait for discounts or giveaways on subscriptions like PlayStation Plus. “Don’t complain about the lack of a sequel if you didn’t support the first part at the start,” he added. Earlier, Bloomberg reported that Sony Interactive Entertainment had abandoned the continuation of Days Gone.
Garvin expressed his opinion in an interview with game designer David Jaffe. The latter asked the Days Gone writer if he’d heard anything about the game’s “significant uptick” since it was added to the PlayStation Plus collection for the PlayStation 5.
Then Garvin mentioned God of War – apparently because its sequel will take place, unlike Days Gone: “God of War has millions of sales at launch, but Days Gone does not. I’m just talking from the developer’s side. I do not work in the Sony; I do not know what the figures “.
He also blamed widespread piracy for the failure of Siphon Filter: Dark Mirror, which Bend Studio released on the PlayStation Portable. According to Garvin, Sony Interactive Entertainment did not understand how the issue was affecting sales. “And we showed them torrents, 200,000 copies of Dark Mirror were downloaded from the torrent site if I remember correctly. The numbers may be wrong, but I was angry about it then; I thought, “This is money from my pocket.” Therefore, I think that the increase in engagement in the game is not as significant as the question of whether you bought the game at full price? Because if yes, then this is direct support from developers, ” he added.
Besides, Garvin said Sony Interactive Entertainment is extremely interested in the Metacritic score and suggested that the low Days Gone rating was the reason for his firing and the cancellation of Days Gone 2.
“It’s just a Sony reality,” he said. – Metacritic rating is everything. If you’re the creative director of a franchise and your game is approaching 70, you won’t be the creative director of the franchise for very long . ”
Later, in a four-hour interview, Jaffe tried to clarify the reason for Garvin’s departure from Bend Studio: “I, reading between the lines, I assume that you were fired from Bend because you were a disruptive person, and it worked with a small team and a mid-sized team, but when budgets and the stakes got higher, and the number of people who had to work in a team increased, this person – at least in the opinion of this company – was no longer suitable, do you agree with that? “
“Definitely,” Garvin replied.
Days Gone was released on PlayStation 4 in April 2019. A month later, on May 18, it will go on sale on PC.
