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Why no new zoo building games?
Topic Started: Mar 6 2017, 03:22 PM (1,090 Views)
Megraptor
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Does anyone have any ideas why there hasn't been a new zoo building game made in the last like... 10 years? I'm not talking Zoo Tycoon itself- I know Blue Fang is long gone. I'm talking about a game like Zoo Tycoon. I mean City Skylines took over the city building genera, so another game could take over the zoo building genera.

Is it because building/tycoon games aren't all that popular anymore? They were HUGE when I was a kid- late 90s, early 2000s.

Or is it because of zoo controversies? Some people really hate zoos and captive animals. Perhaps a game studio doesn't want to risk the backlash of this. I would like to doubt this is the case, but there's been outrage over less...

Or is it because the last Zoo Tycoon sucked so bad and was limited to consoles, which limits modding big time?
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Imperator Furiosa
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Chaos Theory

Honestly I think it's just a lack of time/interest from bigger game studios and a lack of resources for smaller game studios. Plus a lot of indie developers will take years to actually develop a working product. I seriously doubt that the "zoo controversy" and one bad game are the causes of it.
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Furka
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Our world is going crazy every day, but I doubt we have reached the point where it is fine to have games like GTA, CoD and such but no zoo games because of the captivity controversy.
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Animales
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Lack of interest I suppose.

Outside of Lions and Tigers and Bears, most people don't seem all that intrigued with the world of zoology.

There's a reason why ZT2 was targeted for a younger audience than the original ZT.
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Megraptor
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Animal rights people aren't against attacking video games for having their characters wear fur. Seriously, Warhammer got slammed for this.

I know it sounds crazy, but a new zoo game, especially from a smaller company, might attracted the ire of animal rights people. COD and GTA don't have animals die (besides dogs...maybe? They did in their older games.) For whatever reason, people react more to an animal dying than a human. It probably wouldn't really affect them in the long run, unless it really got out of hand and it was a tiny company. Though I never know what the animal rights people will attack- I'm surprised they haven't gone after ARK yet.

Seriously, I kinda figured it was the fact that tycoon games just aren't happening anymore. They aren't popular for whatever reason.
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magpiealamode
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No good hero is a one-trick phony.

I would love to see a zoo game made with today's gaming capabilities. Aren't there a couple Jurassic Park-type games in the works?

I think maybe a lot of people don't feel that animals are really relevant to them. Cities are much more immediate to us and most people are interested in some aspect of the city. They are central to many people's existence, whereas animals are only a single aspect of their lives. As has been said, you say animal, and most people will think of a dog or a cat, maybe an elephant. Not a mountain tapir, and most certainly nothing like a polychaete worm or a rotifer.

We should totally have rotifers in ZT2.
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Imperator Furiosa
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Chaos Theory

I seriously don't see the ire of PETA or ALF shutting down the production of a game. They can protest all they want but unless it's a small developer that's sensitive to baseless accusations like that I can't see anyone in game development backing down from a job. My boyfriend is going into game design and he's told me many times that he and a lot of other people he knows will take any job they can get because the market is so unstable. Obviously I can't speak for all people in the game industry but the people I know have a pretty thick skin.

I think a big obstacle was that simulators and tycoon games were considered a gamble after ZT2 and RCT 3 became obsolete. Their successors, along with the most recent SimCity, weren't big hits critically or financially. But now you have games like Cities: Skylines, Planet Coaster, and Prison Architect showing that tycoon/sim games can be very successful. And hopefully Prehistoric Kingdom and (eventually) Planet Safari will show there is a market for a zoo tycoon game.
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Galliwasp
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There is a way out. Just not for you.

Yeah, it's mostly been Tycoon games falling out of favor. They were a bit of a casual-gaming fad that lost steam by the end of the 2000s.

I think it also owes itself to changes in gaming as a whole and how games are marketed. "Gamers" are a much more definable demographic than they were a decade ago, largely thanks to social gaming platforms like Steam, and it's easier to make games tailored specifically to what they want. In the past, the marketing process for games was less precise. You generally had to decide whether "kids" or "teens" were going to play your game, and "girl games" and "boy games" were a much bigger thing then, so putting out a game was more of a shot in the dark. And so far, more niche genres (like simulation games) haven't gotten much traction because gamers don't want them nearly as badly as they want, say, Fallout.

That's my hypothesis.
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Renee
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I saw some footage of Planet Coaster and I was smitten. It's everything I want of a Tycoon game in terms of customizability. Being a fan of the original RollerCoaster Tycoon games helps too.

Zoo Tycoon is closest to my heart though, and I'd love a new one that focuses more on customizability but also some degree of realism, kinda like Planet Coaster did for RCT.

Games are weird, indeed. Trends happen, they come and go, and it's hard to determine what blows up and what doesn't. PETA and the like will probably only get in on it if it becomes sufficiently popular -- they took their sweet time in making fun of Pokémon about fifteen years after the original games came out. So it's a gamble! But in general, I don't really see any potential zoo game running into trouble.
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