{"id":57,"date":"2005-02-21T14:34:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-21T18:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=57"},"modified":"2006-08-20T12:57:27","modified_gmt":"2006-08-20T16:57:27","slug":"settlers-v-and-the-costs-of-franchising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2005\/02\/21\/settlers-v-and-the-costs-of-franchising\/","title":{"rendered":"Settlers V and the costs of franchising"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Settlers: Heritage of Kings<\/i><\/a> has just been released. Since it is a Settlers <\/i>game, you can count on it selling millions copies no matter what, right?<\/p>\n

Well, maybe not. This is the most realistic looking Settlers<\/i> yet, and that may not be a good thing. Whatever limited charm the early games had, a lot of it was rooted in the idea that you were building a sim-Smurf village. Your denizens were cartoonish and your city would develop around them as they went about their work. Most veteran Settlers<\/i> players won’t even recognize it.<\/p>\n

As I download the demo and look at the screenshots and unit descriptions it becomes evident that this is not your older brother’s Settlers<\/i>. They’ve tacked on a sort of plot, included hero units and added buildings straight out of a fantasy setting.<\/p>\n

None of this is to say that Heritage of Kings<\/i> will be a bad game. Like many people on this side of the pond, I never got the appeal of the original games all that much. This might actually be an improvement. But is it Settlers<\/i>?<\/p>\n

In an industry that has become increasingly reliant on franchises and series, it’s kind of disheartening to see a popular franchise title hijacked to buttress the prospects of what is, by all appearances, a completely different city-building game. There seems to be a lot more emphasis on the combat and conquest stuff (always important, but understated) plus the inclusion of magic and heroes on a much larger scale.<\/p>\n

So, you have to ask yourself how the Settlers name even got attached to this project. Even when there was a legal battle over who owned the rights to the name Civilization<\/i>, the games involved all looked like Civilization. (<\/i>Well, not Advanced Civilization<\/i>, oddly enough.) Calling this a Settlers game is like making a new Monkey’s Island<\/i> game that didn’t have any pirates or jokes in it.<\/p>\n

The thing is, most of the designers and developers have a history at Blue Byte Software and are familiar with (or even worked on) the Settlers games. Still, they decided to go a completely different route – one not lined with cartoon characters toddling along but one with realistic avatars and dark magics.<\/p>\n

It’s their franchise, of course, and they have every right to take it in whatever direction they choose. But you have to wonder what the value of a franchise name is if it just gets attached to a game with only a passing resemblance to what went on before. Settlers<\/i> is cartoony; that’s what it always has been and always will be for me. Heritage of Kings<\/i> looks to be another game altogether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Settlers: Heritage of Kings has just been released. Since it is a Settlers game, you can count on it selling millions copies no matter what, right? Well, maybe not. This is the most realistic looking Settlers yet, and that may not be a good thing. Whatever limited charm the early games had, a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-V","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}