Watch Dogs Dev Admits Games Are Dumbed Down To Make More Money

Watch Dogs has been in the spotlight a lot leading up to its release. It's become quite apparent that the game no longer has an unbridled hold of hype over the gaming audience the way it originally did when it was set to release last October for old-gen consoles and new-gen consoles. It's true that the game's luster has faded somewhat following controversial graphical downgrade news and lots of worry about whether or not the Wii U version was canned.

Creative director Jason Morin candidly revealed in an EDGE interview [via Worlds Factory] that...

“I feel like games are dumbed down because we want to make money, and sometimes we underestimate what players can do.”

Well, no duh.

The biggest problem is that games feel like forced entertainment experiences jettisoned through a lifeless railway. It's just so cold and distant.

A lot of times the AAA titles spend about half of the entire campaign teaching players how to play -cough-Assassin's Creed-cough- and by the time you get to the meat of the game, you're prepping to watch a half hour of credits to roll. In fact, you're likely to spend more time (and get an achievement) for watching the credits than actually spending that time enjoying yourself and enjoying the play-experience.

Morin, however, at least wants to break that trend. He and the hundreds of other developers who have been slaving away at the game for the past couple of years want to introduce players into something that doesn't feel like the typical annual cash-in that we've all come to expect from AAA titles...

“I hope Watch Dogs can show everyone that it’s possible to do online games without being intimidated by a lobby, that it’s possible to see another player without being scared it’s going to be a 12-year-old shouting a bunch of insults, and that it’s possible to make a game where you can test the systems and push at the edges without feeling like you’re working. I hope it can do all that, and if it could be a game that helps players have a bigger conversation about our relationship with technology, that would be awesome too.”

Watch Dogs may not have the same level of hype as it did last year, but it's still on the top of the list for most gamers' must-have title of 2014 (along with Destiny).

However, Watch Dogs was delayed from its initial release window to fix up some key areas of the game, most notably with the hacking. According to an interview with Polygon, the team doesn't just want a pre-canned, boring hacking experience... they want it to feel organic, saying...

“[The game] started to feel repetitive. The fantasy doesn’t make the AI feel alive. We knew some things needed to be upgraded, improved and polished; we weren’t happy with that.“Let’s say there’s a 30 percent chance that there’s one. Well, you’re an unlucky guy and you get four missions with no AI that can be hacked. That’s not cool. For you as the player, that experience is not what we want, so we changed the math. We said, ‘OK, we want a guarantee.’”

So long as the world feels alive, the shooting isn't five minutes of whack-a-mole with no variety or aggressive AI, and the hacking feels like a good way to explore a very dynamic world, then I think the game will be okay.

Watch Dogs is set for release on May 27th for old gen consoles, new gen consoles and PC.