Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure has been a smash hit, being the top selling kid-oriented videogame in the past couple of months. However, the game was originally intended to be an adult re-imagining of Insomniac Games’ original vision, taking the license to a darker and edgier place.
“It was going to be for an older audience, a darker take on it for the next-gen systems,” said developer Toys for Bob’s Alex Ness in an interview. “We worked on some concepts there, but we wanted to go in a different direction and do something more for a younger audience that really rebooted the franchise.”
That’s not to say the route the developer took wasn’t risky. The history of kids games making heavy use of peripherals was not a good one - and Activision was dealing with the crash of Guitar Hero.
“But the one that we gravitated towards the most was the one that involved toys. The emotional connection that we have to toys and the representation of our childhoods – it just seemed like the perfect fit,” Ness said.
“We were in love with the idea, but at first we were a little skeptical. Activision has never made toys before, and we’re asking them to make millions of these little toys that will work with the game. We thought they would just shoot it down.”
Fortunately for Spyro fans, Activision went with Toys for Bob’s suggestion, and over 20M toys have been sold through Skylanders: Spyo’s Adventure.
