The Game That Killed Itself - The Tragedy of Agents of Mayhem
186,855
Published 2022-04-03
Use code MS7C3SV8DMZH (valid March 30th – May 10th) to get 60 Primogems and 5 Adventurer's Experience.
Carving out a niche in an oversaturated market has never been easy, yet developer Volition managed to do so with its open-world series Saints Row, even while in direct competition with the juggernaut that is Grand Theft Auto. The success of Saints Row very much counts as an underdog story, one wherein the power of unique branding proved instrumental to a product’s ability to defeat the odds. Though the franchise’s last few outings made it seem as though the 3rd Street Saints regularly battled identity crises, that level of chaos, which in turn fostered variety, is what endeared fans the most. Unfortunately, whatever identity crisis beset Agents of Mayhem did it absolutely no favors.
Billed as a departure from Saints Row, despite overt references to that very IP, Agents of Mayhem served as another example of Volition’s attempt to craft its own niche. Leveraging its expertise with open-world adventures, the studio incorporated elements from hero-based titles into its repertoire. Still, the promise of novel gameplay ideas did little to intrigue potential customers, many of whom already had their fill of hero shooters by the time Agents of Mayhem arrived. And Saints Row fans longing for a fifth installment were left confused by a marketing campaign that targeted them, yet failed to illustrate what the Agents of Mayhem experience actually entailed.
But it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Not every game succeeds, and not every studio hits the mark with each new release, even if its past output seems nothing short of stellar. Missteps happen. Volition just so happened to stumble during a pivotal season of change.
This is the tragedy of Agents of Mayhem.
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All Comments (21)
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It sounds like they have a huge market research problem. The idea that players aren't massively supportive of creating and customizing their own Boss is a complete miss.
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I loved Saints Row FOR its character creator, people who cosplay the npc characters are doing that because its really hard to be the boss because its a naked zombie.
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...and everyone cried "We want a new mainline Saints Row game!" and a finger on the monkey paw curled
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Who in their right mind hated their custom boss? Its YOUR character for chris sakes.
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I've played all the Saints Row games. I've never even heard of Agents of Mayhem until now.
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I loved the character customization. Switching voices between normal, cockney, and (literally) Nolan North was hilarious. SR4 was a great self-insert superhero sandbox power fantasy. Personally, I cared more about how ridiculous my MC looks and sounds in cutscenes rather than the NPCs or Johnny Gat.
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The new Saint's Row looks nothing like fans wanted, and the developer response to that has been abysmal. Seems like they haven't learned their lesson.
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I'm convinced that Volition just does what Volition wants to do. They keep making up these imaginary fans that want all these things that the franchise never was, and then telling real fans that we're the ones that are wrong. It's a level of hubris that's not uncommon among the EAs, Ubisofts, and Rockstars, but weird to see from a Volition. I think SR2 is a masterpiece, but they don't have the empire and prestige that those companies have to fall back on, so it makes how out of touch they are even more bizarre.
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In a world full of Soulsbornes, Metroidvanias and Roguelikes we need more GTA-esque open-world sandbox games. Due to Rockstar being the most consistent with this format they have been pulling some shady shenanigans over the past few years.
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Damn, if they thought one of the main reasons for AoM failure was because the Saints Row fanbase felt spurned. Volition must have said "hold my beer" and showed AoM was a love letter to the fans in comparison to what they were gonna do next. SR Reboot shafted their hardcore fans 10 worse than AoM could have even dreamt of doing.
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Looks like this 'identity crisis' is gonna be continuing with the new Saints Row game too.
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The fact that they did online research and completely missed the mark is astounding and kinda sad to me. It’s been known for a long time now that saints fans primarily dont want a new ‘over the top’ style game anymore and just want to go back to the ‘gangster’ era of saints 2 and partly 3. Seems like such a weird decision honestly. This game was doomes from the start. Fearing the same for saints 5 too… which honestly (looking at the trailer and marketing) is making the EXACT same mistakes as this game.
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Looking forward to the "The rise and fall of Battlefield" after this Bf2042 fiasco and the direction they're going in.
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I remember the game being OK. I think the problem for me was how repetitive the mission structure was and how uninteresting the city was. While there were some cool ideas, it felt like there were also a list of partially completed ones, as well.
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It's pretty gutting that after surviving through the ordeal of AoM, they seem to be following a similar path with the Saints Row reboot. So far there's only really been one main trailer and it's already managed to alienate a good portion of existing fans with confusing/misleading marketing and a game that seems to go against several of the main things they'd previously concluded people like about Saints Row, the characters and the tone of the world. That being said, I'd love to be proven wrong with the end product...
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Can't wait for the sequel to this: A Saints Row Identity Crisis - The Tragedy of Saints Row Reboot
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12:46 Saints Row 2022 Reboot in a nutshell
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Classic tale of a studio ignoring what their fans are clearly asking for, yet seem blindsided when they fail.
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Just seems like a lot of decisions based entirely on very poor conjecture. "Players don't want to cosplay their custom characters and instead preestablished ones, so therefore, they don't want custom characters." Or, perhaps, it's a little easier to cosplay preestablished characters since they'd be more easily recognizable in public? And them saying they axed co op in favor of focusing on developing better single player gameplay is just entirely silly when really Agents of Mayhem has a nearly identical gameplay loop as the already established Saints Row games just with some hero shooter abilities. Seriously, the teams already had experience in making their games co op for at least 5 other titles before this, what did they really hope to improve with making it single player only? I always figured it was a matter of time before the series died. I thought Saints Row 2 and 3 were nearly the perfect blend of being completely over the top and crazy while also still being...mostly grounded in a hollywood kind of way. But then 4 comes out and feels more like a Saints Row fever dream than a sequel, and makes the already kind of meh visuals worse by setting it's identical open world exclusively at night. And made cars and their customization useless compared to the super powers. Felt like it could have literally been a DLC campaign for 3, but they wanted to charge a $60 price tag for it.
