The riskiest game franchises that players agree were worth the gamble

Without risk, there is no success—especially in the video game world. There are franchises, such as Elder Scrolls, GTA, Warcraft, and Zelda that took some huge risks, which ultimately paid off and changed the video game world as we know it.

In a Reddit thread dated Oct. 8, players reminisced about the franchises that were on the verge of failure but became industry giants thanks to the risks they took.

We all love a good success story. The video game world is no different, and we have witnessed stories and examples of franchises that attempted to change the norms and set new trends on several occasions, and experienced unprecedented levels of success.

One way to take a risk is changing your video game’s genre. Warcraft did exactly this when Blizzard switched from RTS to MMO. Mind you, Warcraft was popular as an RTS strategy as well, but changing to MMO took it to a whole other level. Blizzard is lucky to have developers that are never satisfied, and always hungry for more, which was ultimately rewarded.

When your back is against the wall, you come up with solutions and ideas you wouldn’t have thought of before. This happened with the Elder Scrolls developers. As the studio was headed towards bankruptcy, they released Morrowind as one last-ditch attempt at success. It paid off, saving Bethesda from bankruptcy and paving the way for later Elder Scrolls releases such as Oblivion and Skyrim.

Sometimes changing your perspective is all that is needed to solve a problem, and GTA did exactly this. Changing perspective from top-down to third person made all the difference in the world. Combine that with huge maps for its time, and the GTA franchise was set up for success. With later installments expanding on the proven formula, the franchise only grew bigger.

Imagine reshaping your game not once, not twice, but three times. Well, Zelda did this. With Ocarina of Time, Zelda switched from 2D to 3D. The second release Wind Waker implemented cartoony cell-shaded graphics. And then Breath of the Wild went back to Zelda’s roots in terms of exploration and the open world.

Sometimes all it takes is to take a gamble and ask “What if?” There are numerous cases in history where the world was changed by asking this question and seeking the answer. The video game industry only follows suit, and with time, new brave studios will break the norm and set completely new trends.