How GameStop And Used Games Inspired Shadow Of Mordor's Nemesis System

Earlier this year, Warner Bros. closed down Monolith, the developer behind 2014's Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its 2017 sequel, Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Those LOTR games were beloved by fans in part because of Monolith's innovative Nemesis system, an AI procedural program that allowed NPCs to remember their previous encounters with the players' character and evolve accordingly. And according to former Warner Bros. Games vice president Laura Fryer, the development of the Nemesis system was inspired in part by falling sales for Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Fryer recently shared a video on her YouTube channel [via PC Gamer] where she went into detail about her relationship with Monolith while she was employed by Warner Bros. Games. As Fryer recalls, WB was alarmed by the way sales fell from Arkham Asylum's peak, and company executives believed that millions in sales were lost when used copies of the game were sold on the secondary market including stores like GameStop.

"It all started when Rocksteady shipped Arkham Asylum in 2009," said Fryer. "It was selling great. Then suddenly sales dropped off. They could see this because the data from their game analytics revealed that more people were playing than were paying. The theory was that people would play through the game and then return the game disc to a retailer and get paid, which was very common at the time. This was great for gamers because they could buy the game and then sell it back to a company like GameStop and buy something else. 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."

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