One Hit Wonders

I've been putting together a list of great computer gaming programmers, as a sort of new feature for the site. But as I look at the list, I realize, there are 2 gentelmen that may not belong on the list, as with further review, their looking more like One-hit-wonders. The accused are Chris Taylor and American McGee.

Chris Taylor, really had his moment with the game Total Annihilation. This game introduced a large amount of units on the field, with continuous new downloadable material. His other big title games were Hardball 2, Dungeon Siege, and Supreme Commander. But the rub is this, at this years GDC, Chris tore into pirates, as being the number one reason PC games sales are so low. I would have to agree with him, pirated games are indeed hurting the PC gaming industry, although nobody has any real numbers to apply to that. Unfortunately, he then jumps on a soap box and points out that's the reason Crysis did so poorly. Now there lies the problem. Crysis has sold over a million copies over the last 4 months! In addition, the game had mediocre reviews, and was competing directly against other AAA FPS titles, like Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, and Half-Life Orange Box. So the whole Crysis example was pretty lame. He also mentioned that piracy on consoles doesn't exist, but a simple Google search showed me that isn't exactly true.

Where Chris fails in, is originality. Dungeon Siege was just a clone of Diablo, Dungeon Siege 2 was a clone of Dungeon Siege 1 which was a clone of Diablo, and SupCom is just a remake of TA. Well, except SupCom is a resource hog (aka poor programming), and has crappy AI (aka poor programming). Just looking at his upcoming games, Demigod is based on a Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients. Then theirs Space Siege, which looks like...yep Diablo in space. Come on Chris...how about something new worth buying.

Then there's American McGee. He had the most wonderful game Alice back in 2000. Creepy, original, mind boggling it was good. But his other releases have seen poorer reviews such as Scrapeland and Bad Day in LA. In fact his games are getting worse. He also had a movie called Oz, that never seen light. McGee has one last chance... a Grimm chance. He's putting out episodic content exclusively on Gametap, that is based on the Grimm Fairytales. Looks like he's getting back to his Alice roots. This game will make or break the name American McGee.