One of the big surprise hit stories of this holiday season is the PlayStation 4 exclusive horror game, Until Dawn. The game, which plays like an interactive drama, actively shifting the course of the narrative in response to the player’s choices, has found a healthy uptake on the market, selling enough to chart on the monthly NPD for USA last month, getting great review scores, and generally finding a life thanks to social media and streaming services.
Apparently, none of this was actually expected by Sony.
“We’re super happy with the reactions from people, especially people who are streaming or posting videos on YouTube,” Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida said in an interview with Eurogamer. “It’s super fun to watch other people play, even after you’ve finished the game, because other people make different choices.”
“I’m very happy with how the game was received. I think everybody was caught by surprise by the positive reaction. That’s a really great thing for the future of the interactive drama genre. We’re a big fan of this genre. These games can talk to a broader audience. You don’t have to be good at playing games. You can even just watch your friend play the game.
“We believe this interactive drama genre can help expand the audience for console games.”
Of course, Sony was probably right to not expect much from this game- earlier this year, they released The Order 1886, throwing a massive marketing budget behind it too. The game got met with highly negative reviews, and bombed at retail. Sony probably expected the same from Until Dawn.
Thankfully, that is not what happened, and we got a great game instead.