Sega bigwig Mike Hayes tells CVG in an interview that has designs on “sequelising” many of its recent hits and some of its expected hits. That includes titles like Platinum Games’ Bayonetta, a series already identified by its creators as having sequel and spin-off potential.

“We’ve got our shooter with [Aliens Vs Predator] and our RPG with Alpha Protocol – we really want to make that into a franchise. That’s the area where we need some success, to sequel-ise that,” Hayes says. “If you think about it, we can sequel-ise Bayonetta, AVP, Alpha Protocol – if we can make a hit of something like Vanquish – then you add that to Football Manager and Virtua Tennis – we actually have a broad portfolio.”

Maybe not the type of sequels longtime Sega fans have been clamouring for, at least the kind raised on Alex Kidd, Space Harrier, Shinobi, Panzer Dragoon and Jet Set Radio. Those series don’t seem to get as much attention from Sega these days, at least not on par with Sonic the Hedgehog and Phantasy Star.

Hayes also gives the impression that Creative Assembly’s Total War strategy series is ripe for expanding.

“There is still a lot more we can do in the pure historic field,” he tells CVG. “But we also think we can take things in another direction [with Total War] – obviously I can’t give you any more there. But we want to branch into different areas.”

Sega’s Mike Hayes Pt. 2 [CVG]

Dammit, we want you to tell us stuff! Stuff like what your favourite game ad is.

This isn’t some marketing survey or whatever. It’s an emotional investment in you. Yes, we’re interesting in knowing you, Kotaku reader person. You probably know enough about us — more than you even want to, we’re sure. But, hey, we’d like to know about you, too.

Anyway, here’s today’s question…

A recent study of 1,000 gamers who play more than 7 hours a week found that game ads aren’t reaching the hardcore market (mainly due to lack of gameplay shown). What makes an effective game ad? What’s your favourite? On the flipside, what ads didn’t interest you at all?

Certainly this Gears of War ad ranks high on our list, and SEGA UK put together an interesting dubstep ad for Bayonetta.

But the Playstation 2 went through a phase of not showing games at all. And of course, you can’t go past the infamous “John Romero’s gunna make you his…”

Some of our best-loved gaming experiences, from God Hand to Psychonauts, earn adoration for the strength of their ideas even when the execution isn’t exactly pitch-perfect. Even this year, when Grasshopper Manufacture rolled out No More Heroes 2 with an extra coat of polish and a streamlined design, many fans opined they preferred the “character” of the first game, flaws and all.

Yet other times, gamers are ready to grab the pitchforks and torches just for a couple frame rate drops, for cutscenes that are a few minutes too long, or over minor problems with controls. What gives? What determines the flaws we’ll tolerate and those we won’t?

Surely, to some it’s just personal taste. For example, if you like J-Pop remixes, you’ll like Bayonetta’s soundtrack; if you don’t, you won’t. Some people care if a game has a bad story, others couldn’t care less. But when it comes to whether or not a flaw is a dealbreaker – or, game-breaker, if you prefer – it helps to look at why people play a particular game and whether or not a flaw interferes with the player’s motive.

A player’s motivation is more complex than “to have fun.” Think on it closely and you’ll agree – everyone plays to scratch a particular itch, and some games serve some itches better than others. While plenty of the details are complex and subjective, it’s possible to divide play motivations into four different groups.

To Feel Powerful

Games like: Crackdown, God Of War, Call of Duty, Devil May Cry

You’re stepping into the shoes of someone much bigger and stronger than you, commanding a massive arsenal of weapons, or enjoying a stable of incredible vehicles. Games like these put players at the helm of a power fantasy, where the enjoyment of the game comes from being able to impact its world (or the faces of the enemies that live in it).

If you get your fun out of feeling powerful, the flaws that get in the way will be those that distance the player from the action. Of course, the controls need to be immediately responsive and the physics need to work correctly – how powerful can you feel when your character doesn’t react correctly, or an object he throws bounces like a piece of plastic when it ought to break? Music and sound stand out, too: crescendos create emotional peaks, and combat sound effects create a sense of impact.

In this motivation group, artistic elements may be less important: You can have fun even with rough-edged polygons, ugly characters or a boring story, as long as there’s a satisfying crunch when your fist connects.

To Have Control

Games like: Harvest Moon, Civilization, The Sims, Pokemon, FarmVille, Wii Fit

Game worlds can sometimes behave in complicated ways. That’s why it can be so much fun to get them neatly-managed. Whether that’s building a well-defended city in a real-time strategy game, building a finely-furnished dream mansion in a life simulator, or raising the perfect Pokemon, with every stat the best it can possibly be, having control is immensely satisfying.

For players to get that sense of control, the game must behave in an understandable way, where actions produce predictable results. Bugs that interfere with completion percentages are not OK (but bugs that let players accidentally max out funds or resources are, of course!). And because control games often depend on using the same interface over and over, that interface must be clean, streamlined and easy to access and navigate.

In games like these, the flaws most likely to ruin a player’s experience are those related to the stability of the game world and the way it behaves. Since it’s so tough for the control-motivated player to get the right balance of challenge and satisfaction, if you give them a very good gameplay system, there are often quite a few other flaws, from bad music to bad translation, that they’ll be willing to tolerate.

To Break Rules

Games Like: BioShock, Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, Prototype

There’s one type of player who, as soon as they get control of their character, starts swinging weapons, jumping or climbing just to find out what the game world will and won’t let them do. Does this glass break? Can these crates be smashed or stood upon? This player loves the simulated environments that game worlds can provide, and they play to test – and break – its rules.

The primary draw for a player motivated by rule-bending and breaking is the joy of experimentation. Therefore, they’re most likely to be bugged by a game world that doesn’t give them a lot to do. Doors that don’t open, or too many objects that are simply non-reactive chipset, feel like flaws. For this player, too, the world must behave in a responsive, believable way, since they need to be able to see the impact of the choices they make. Bad AI’s a major experience-killer here – what’s the fun of breaking the law if the cops, or the guards on duty, don’t notice all the havoc you’re sowing, only to chase you full-force for a much smaller misstep? Story may be important to this player, too, as it gives life to the game world.

Smaller bugs tend to be forgivable, though, especially when they cause funny behaviour. A rule-breaking kind of player tends to mind less if the controls are less than perfect – chaos is what they love, and they can work around minor impediments.

To Explore A Story

Games like: Final Fantasy, Heavy Rain, Silent Hill

The story-driven player loves a game that makes them feel immersed in a new world, that lets them fill the role of a fantasy character on a journey. To them, the most important part of a gaming experience is a sense of place and character – they play to see what happens in the big picture, and to resolve a narrative.

It’s not surprising, then, that elements like graphics, music and voice acting need to be spot-on – players find it hard to believe in character models that look bizarre, behave stiffly or sound stilted. Because players motivated by story exploration need to feel grounded in the game world, it needs to look rich and real, even when it’s a fantasy. Of course, the story needs to be good. Empty stretches where “nothing happens,” or a plot that leaves gaping holes, make the game feel broken.

This player will tolerate things like cut scenes or quick-time events more than other players will; they’re more willing to be patient with technical problems like long loading screens or flawed combat as long as the emotional payoff is good.

Of course, these are just some loosely-structured theories of play motivation, but it does help illustrate how whether a flaw is a deal-breaker or not depends on the type of game and why its intended audience enjoys it. And there’s some overlap, too – plenty of people play BioShock to feel plasmid-ripped and powerful, for example, while others play it to get lost in the world of Rapture and the story of its mad citizenry. Some will play a Final Fantasy game for its fantasy narrative and beautiful characters, while others are drawn to the stat management and journey of power it takes to get an RPG party ready for the final boss. Still others want to complete every side quest and collect every weapon for that spot-on sense of control over the game.

That one game can attract different kinds of players for different reasons might often explain why sometimes reviews are so mixed, or why a game can attract a strong constituency of fans even when it’s critically-panned or disfavored by popular opinion.

Which motivation type most closely resembles you? What flaws will you forgive in a game and which will ruin your experience?

[ Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, author of the Sexy Videogameland blog, and freelances reviews and criticism to a variety of outlets. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with cultural issues surrounding games and gamers. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.]

“I sculpted these figures using Super Sculpey and finished them with acrylic paint, gold leaf, and assorted craft store finds,” he writes. More on his Flickr page in the link below.

Bayonetta – a set on Flickr [Flickr!]

Gamasutra’s monthly, more in-depth and less instant analysis of the month’s bestselling games shows that two of January’s bigger names, Sega’s Bayonetta and Sony’s MAG, managed to find a place near the top of the charts, but did not perform well enough for top ten bragging rights.

Bayonetta managed to score somewhere above 100,000 sales on the Xbox 360, with the PlayStation 3 version not charting, moving less than 100,000. Whether that’s good or bad is up to Sega and PlatinumGames, but we were hoping for better for the game, given its three weeks worth of sales.

MAG managed to outsell Bayonetta with only five days on the market, potentially good news for Zipper Interactive and fans of the PS3 shooter. Not as good as Mass Effect 2, which released the same day in the U.S., but not a bad start.

There’s more to all this NPD data analysing than just focusing on individual games that succeeded to varying degrees, which you can read at Gamasutra.

NPD: Behind the Numbers, January 2010 [Gamasutra]

Late last month, Osaka-based developer SNK Playmore, best known for The King of Fighters series, released a vertical KOF shooting game called KOF Sky Stage. The title features fighting characters like Kyo and Mai Shiranui in a total new game mechanic.

This game, however odd it seems, is an interesting move on SNK’s part. Shooting games offer a totally new take on an established title. Don’t believe me?

Imagine that SEGA’s Bayonetta was turned into a shooting game – there has been no confirmation whatsoever that this could happen, but humour us, and imagine.

Anyone who has played Bayonetta is familiar with the character designs, the 3D world, the works. But what if it was a top-down shooter? Then it could very well look like this artist’s rendition of the title.

So many other franchises seem ripe for bullet hell shooters. But there has to be more. Many more.

During the first three months of this financial year, net sales were down 7.7 per cent compared with the same period last year.

“In the home video game software industry, the demand was generally weak in the US and European markets due to the headwind like sluggish personal consumption,” stated SEGA. “Further penetration of the current generation of game platforms with price revision and market revitalisation in accordance therewith are expected in the future.”

The big bring spot in SEGA’s home console business during the past three quarters was Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, which moved 5.67 million copies in the US and Europe.

The other strong seller was action title BAYONETTA, which has sold 1.1 million copies worldwide. Football Manager 2010 sold 740,000 copies for the PC and PSP in US and Europe, while PSP game Phantasy Star Portable 2 sold 540,000 copies in Japan. Bravo! SEGA appreciates your business.

The 138MB download brings Bayonetta for the PS3 to version 1.01, offering an option to install the game to the console’s hard disk. That 15-minute-long installation procedure will result in approximately 4.5GB worth of disk space being absorbed by Bayonetta game data. It’s worth the wait and the extra sandwiches made during that wait.

Load times between chapters are noticeably shorter, but it’s the load times elsewhere, when Bayonetta picks up items or the player attempts to skip cut scenes, that make the install worthwhile.

Unfortunately, the update to 1.01 doesn’t address some of our other concerns with the PlayStation 3 version, like the weaker frame rate and texture quality.

One complaint from PS3 players have been that Bayonetta has long loading times. This upload will offer the option to install the game directly on the PS3’s hard drive. The update will include an “Install” option in the game’s menu screen.

It is possible to install Bayonetta, as with every Xbox 360 title, directly onto the Xbox 360’s HDD. However, the Xbox 360 version of Bayonetta does not offer players this option directly through the game’s menu screen.
The update will be available starting January 28.

While the Xbox 360 version of Bayonetta received better reviews, the PS3 version outsold the Xbox 360 version in Japan.

The first glimpses of Bayonetta gave the impression that the game would be an immature sex-fest for the average young male gamer to play while locked in his room. For a while, I couldn’t visit a gaming website without seeing Bayonetta’s face, butt, or both, and practically developed migraines from my constant eye-rolling at every mention of the one-handed “Very Easy” mode. It was the epitome of lazy marketing: Using blatant T&A to sell a game.

Since I’ve learned not to judge a game by its trailer (which should be the new expression), I gave the busty witch a chance. The result both pleasantly surprised me and triggered more migraines.

Bayonetta, a character I initially despised for being such an in-your-face depiction of hypersexualisation, proved to me that her sexuality works in context. A ridiculous action game deserves a ridiculous hero, and the long-legged, sass-talking Bayonetta certainly delivers. When surrounded by magical guillotines, 3m long chainsaws, and weapons that double as stripper poles, the caricature that is Bayonetta fits in perfectly.

A popular topic of discussion is whether Bayonetta’s flagrant sexuality is demeaning or appealing to female gamers. Well, I must admit that the idea of “The bigger the move, the fewer the clothes” is a truly stupid excuse to get a character naked. Plus, come on, the camera didn’t need to zoom that close to her nude… ahem, pelvic area. But even the things I dislike about Bayonetta don’t offend me in the least as a female gamer.

Not only did Bayonetta grow on me, she appeals to me. The way she works her curvaceous, ba-donka-donk butt actually makes me feel better about my own booty, plus she rides motorcycles, clearly sharing my obsession for two-wheeled speed. Bayonetta’s elegance with her elongated limbs is also to die for. From tearing apart enemies (to what I assume is upbeat Japanese elevator music) to her développé of the leg when pulling levers, everything she does is graceful. As a dancer, I can”t get enough of it.

That being said, my approval of Bayonetta in context doesn’t mean the game is without flaws that take away from how hilarious the character could be. While it’s easy to wrap up Bayonetta’s body, power moves, weapons and dialogue into a neat little package of nonsense, there’s one major weakness that detracts from this cohesion: the storyline. The game’s gaping plot holes and poor storytelling are what truly make it worthy of the term “mind-numbingly absurd”.

Bayonetta seems to be another case of a game not entirely knowing what it wants to be. Is it a tongue-in-cheek comedy with a horrible, confusing storyline? Or is it complex, intelligent fiction with a preposterous heroine? The plot ends up taking itself a bit too seriously, and this hinders what could be hilarious satire. When you allow your main character to be flattened Looney Tunes-style by a falling object, you’ve just obliterated any hope of being taken seriously.

Take the “machine gun leg” in Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. It was hysterical because the story surrounding it was completely over-the-top; nothing needed to be explained. But Bayonetta’s cast spends a painfully long time trying to explain the mystical prophecy of the “Left Eye”, and it still never quite makes sense. With such a weighty storyline, Bayonetta at least needed more character development. She has solely two dimensions: magical ability and forced sexuality. It’s disheartening that, in a world where video games are considered art, we’re still getting shafted with shallow characters that would be rejected in any other medium.

But if “shallow” is truly the game’s intent, then Bayonetta’s sex appeal is no more outrageous than Marcus Fenix’s beefiness. Surprisingly, most males I’ve discussed the game with don’t find Bayonetta arousing, but do agree that the game is gorgeous and fun as hell. Using sex to sell games is nothing new, and thankfully, Bayonetta offers something more than just “hot chick with guns”. Overall, I respect the boldness of Bayonetta’s character, but wish the creators had pushed the envelope of comic relief even further.

…And seriously, I hope Frank Sinatra’s undead zombie eats the brains of whoever is responsible for that “Fly Me to the Moon” remake. Sheesh.

Lisa Foiles is best known as the former star of Nickelodeon’s award-winning comedy show, All That. She currently works as a graphic designer and writes for her game site, Save Point. For more info, visit Lisa’s official website.