To be or not to be: crossovers

Crossovers in games (well, this is when heroes from one gaming universe and personages from another fight together for greater good/mass killing, or just tear each other apart) is something long known in the industry. Such projects were released on different platforms. For example, good old 'Aliens vs. Predator'. Yes, it should be noted that initially crossover was done in comics, and only afterwards was turned into a game. But anyway, such move was both brilliant and risky for the developers, and this should be acknowledged. And though this game cannot be considered a hit, it has for sure conquered popularity among fans of extraterrestrial hunters and 'worshipers' of xenomorphs.

Gaming industry has even released crossovers with games, which have originated from the games, and have never been or just barely described in comics, books, movies or other sources of entertainment. One of the most interesting projects of this nature is 'Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe' (yes, I do know about 'Tekken vs. Street Fighter', but it was too unbalanced IMO), in which superheroes of well-known universe united against extraterrestrial threat coming from reality that is native for Sub-Zore, Lio-Kang and other famous fighters. But disregarding the eye-candy quality, project was more a fail than a success. 'Mortal Kombat' fans had not enough trash, blood and gore, while superheroes followers could not forgive such moments as Raiden beating Superman.

One more interesting type of cross-overs can be considered appearance of personages from several previous franchise series in a new one all together. From recently released games in that style everyone should have noted 'Resident Evil 6', in which heroes from previous part are placed in one game, where they meet from time to time as story telling goes further. In addition, gameplay style in the project changed depending what heroes player is currently controlling.

Still, the idea of crossover between totally different games is deep in players minds and hearts: lots of art, fan-fiction stories, amateur videos are done on that theme... But player see practically no such games on their monitors, aside of arcades and fighting with different degree of success. Many even think that good crossover is barely possible, since genres may vary a lot from game to game.

But 'Expendables' movie idea also was there for a long time. And almost everybody considered that a nonsense. But good old Silvester has proven the contrary. Film was that successful that currently the third part is being shot. And more and more motion heroes would like to take part in the project. 

Game development industry is much younger than film industry on the entertainment market. But, and you will most probably agree with me, it learns the best 'moves' from the elder sister. Graphics are more and more realistic, games use more and more Holywood tricks, and soon the game picture will be able to compete with modern block-busters. Check out 'RYSE Son of Rome' trailer:

Developers have spent a lot of time on learning and adapting all features, which are used by CGI Hollywood specialists. The head of the company has even dedicated his whole speech on D.I.C.E. (Design. Innovate. Communicate. Entertain) summit, where business titans share their ideas and show off with new things they've added to the industry during last year.

But the gaming industry still has yet to learn benefits of cooperation between studious in order to create one big awesome project. Instead, unfortunately, they are currently constantly arguing and fighting each other for copyrights and small bits of advertisement. Some games are requested to be changed just for tiny reproduction of other company content, like protected by patent model or special effect. Otherwise jurists can even close the whole project.

Film studios, on contrary, have long ago came to conclusion that cooperation is not only important, but brings a lot of profits to everyone. For example, currently during creation of new movie companies from Holland, Brazil, US, Russia, China and even more countries can be involved in creating one film simultaneously. Cooperation, probably, is not ideally tuned, but it's set up well enough to provide stable work on the project.

Gaming studios, again, barely cooperate with each other on one project even if they are owned by the same company. Usually one project is given to one separate office, and not that many tasks for the project are performed by other studios (and normally it's more connected to publishing and promotion, but not the development). Unfortunately, quite few giants in the industry may honestly state that they have clear hierarchy and tuned processed on banking systems quality level, what allows to work together in one direction and without any failures. Until quantity of such developers increases, we cannot even speak about any global cooperation between big companies. 

What crossovers can be made? It's obvious that Grey Warden from 'Dragon Age' would barely sustain neighborhood of Duke Nuken within one pixel surface. Heroes should be placed in game of, probably, not the similar to their origin game universes, but should at least be partly of the same genre game and have something in common. In this way players will be able to not only enjoy the quality of the game itself, but new story of their long loved personages. A good example of a game, where contrary was done, is a new project from 'World of Warcraft' creators. 

Blizzard Entertainment have gathered all heroes from their games and plan to put them on the same battlefield at recently announced 'Heroes of the Storm'. Basically, the game will follow concept of famous 'DotA' (and, btw, it will also be Free-to-Play). There are plenty of such products on the market by now. But developers from Blizzard insist that they will be able to make it different. Well, the time will show. Anyway, the game will be a unique crossover... Though it's probably won't be done in the way ideal crossover is imagined.

Ideally, it would be better not to mash up panda and zergs (well, unless it's Warhammer 40k), but create a bit different game. It would be interesting to see FPS game with Marcus Phoenix (Gears of War), Master Chief (HALO) and commander Shepard (Mass Effect) who have united to struggle with alien threat in the distant future, while current times are protected by Duke Nukken, Nomad (Crysis) and Gordon Freeman (Half-Life). Would not that be epic? Yes, it would be just awesomely epic. And, disregarding the first poster, I would prefer Dante (Devil May Cry) partying with Kratos (God of War) and Bayonette in a slahing mash up!

But this will become reality only in future. Currently, except some cases, companies are too alienated between each other. Though something could have been done even now. For example, what do you think about Nerevarine (TES III: Morrowind) and Dovakin (TES V: Skyrim) in a mad co-op game mode? But these are only my thoughts. What do you think?

P.S. Below you may find some funny pictures about crossovers I've found, while have been preparing this post.