Monolith Productions
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was released with an interesting mechanic, which was born out of desperation, and the former VP of Warner Bros. Games’ Seattle studio, Laura Fryer, is here to tell this story.
When Rocksteady released Arkham Asylum in 2009, it was selling fine at first, but then sales suddenly dropped. Analysts found out that “more people were playing than were paying” because they likely finished the game and then returned the disc to a retailer, who would resell it.
‘It was great for GameStop because then they sold that used game for a discount, and they pocketed the money. For game developers, though, it was a disaster because they weren’t getting paid for every game, they were only getting paid for the first copy sold. They lost millions of dollars. With Shadow, we faced the same problem: how do we create a single-player game that is so compelling that people keep the disc in their library forever?”
The developer Monolith Productions couldn’t make an open world like in GTA and wasn’t interested in multiplayer, so the team eventually created the Nemesis system, “arguably one of the most creative and cool game features in recent memory,” in Fryer’s opinion.
If you’re not familiar with it, the system made enemies smarter, they remembered you and what you’d done to them and reacted accordingly.
The Nemesis system was supposed to be used in Monolith’s Wonder Woman game, but the idea was shelved, the title was canceled, and the studio was shut down. WB has a patent for the technology, which will end in 2036, and after Monolith’s end, it’s a mystery when we will see the feature again.
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