Survival games are the Future

Every so often the industry decides a genre is worth investing billions of dollars in and creating millions of sequels based around a flagship IP in this genre. First Person Shooters are always popular, but the military shooter is a creation of resent which has spawned a billion dollar market for these type games. So what will be the next game which starts the genre fuse which explodes the market? I believe it is Survival, and the game to start this fuse has already happened, it was Minecraft.

Minecraft was released a few years ago, the game having an amazing aspect to it that it could be anything the player wanted it to be. Essentially an amazing video game LEGO world. However it did have a strong survival theme to it, which I believe started developers and publishers alike thinking “gamers want this”.

Since this fuse was lit, we have started to see more games with survival based aspects in them. While many of the games are not directly survival games, it shows the diversity of the games in which the genres principles could be applied to.

For me however, I’ve always liked survival based games. One of my favourite series been Konami’s Lost in Blue (Survival Kids). The handheld based series which has appeared on Nintendo platforms giving while giving a nice solid approach to the genre. The only down side has been that the later games, specifically the DS games have felt like experiments as the developers learn the new device and start to think how they could adapt the game to the device in general. This effect clearly been seen across the market, as the games didn’t do well and has resulted in Konami once again abandoning the series. I believe simular games are to come at some point, as the survival direction is explored by developers and I believe Konami shelving the series again will affect them, especially considering the series has a solid devote amount of fans and brand recognition.

We are already starting to see these survival influences starting to push out more serious survival games. From I Am Alive and Deadlight which both released on Xbox Live to even games like DayZ. These influences are starting to shine through and show there is a market for these games. The only downside is these games are created quite poorly, which in return will leave gamers hungry for a series survival game, and sour to the IPs already established.

While DayZ is quite messy right now, I believe it will kick start another flame which burns for the survival genre in video games. Once the standalone version is out, I believe it will be taken much more series by gamers and designers alike. Which means more eyes on the survival genre, and more survival ideas injected into other series.

There are so many ideas which could be explored survival wise, from simple basic lost on an island survival which Lost in Blue offers, to post-apocalyptic starving for supply style games like I am Alive and even games like DayZ which injects Zombies into the formula. There are even other ideas which are not really shown in modern games, maybe survival from a point of view of an animal. The amount of diversity in the survival genre which can happen, should happen. It isn’t about why, it’s more about when.