Game Studios That Are One-Trick Ponies

Sometimes, a studio creates a rich universe that lends itself to further installments. In other cases, a developer can build one online, persistent game and maintain it for years. Some studios land somewhere else, where the mechanics among all their unrelated games are familiar, if not formulaic. Regardless, there are many ways for studios to find their calling and exploit it. If they do that and not much else, they can be considered one-trick ponies.

The term "one-trick pony" often comes off as derogatory or insulting. It implies that someone is only good at one thing. But when it comes to game studios, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, these developers are in the market to make money, and if they find a niche they can skillfully exploit, then it's their right to do so. After all, iteration can produce a more refined product.

However, this practice could get problematic for consumers when the studio runs out of ideas. At some point, the market will demand something new, fresh, and exciting. If the studio can't deliver, it might lose clout. Worst case scenario, the studio may never regain the reputation it once had.

We've gathered a list of one-trick game studios, all of which fit the bill in different ways. They've all reached varying levels of success with their games, but we can agree on one thing: these developers all have at least one thing they're good at.

Rev your engines and get ready for a marathon of Forza games. Since it was founded in 2001, Turn 10 Studios has been the powerhouse behind Xbox's premiere racing franchise. Starting with Forza Motorsport in 2005 on the original Xbox, the studio would eventually be responsible for six more Motorsport titles. In these games, players would pick a car from a list of real-world motor vehicles and race them on various tracks. You can customize each car to a shocking degree, enough to satisfy any budding gearhead.

But it doesn't stop there. Turn 10 also teamed up with Playground Games to produce the Forza Horizon series. There are four of these games to date, and each one takes you to a sandbox full of races and challenges. All the cars are still true to life, coming from manufacturers like Honda, Lamborghini, and Alfa Romeo. Horizon plays similarly to Motorsport, but the open world gives players more freedom to explore with their car of choice.

If you aren't that into racing sims, your eyes might have glossed over a bit. And really, that's a testament to Turn 10's identity. Clearly, the studio can produce competent, successful racing games. But that's all they do. Perhaps the most unexpected game in their repertoire is Forza Street. It's still a racing game, but it's on mobile instead of consoles. We're still wondering if Turn 10 plans to ever shift gears in the future.

In 1997, Omega Force developed a game called Dynasty Warriors for the original PlayStation. It was a one-on-one fighting game set in a 3D arena, and its aesthetic was inspired by the Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Some readers might be scratching their heads at the notion. A Dynasty Warriors game with only two characters on screen? That's practically unheard of nowadays.

Since Dynasty Warriors 2 dropped in 2000, the franchise has been all about the historical-fiction power fantasy. You play as one character, and you slaughter armies of enemies with wide-reaching, absurd attacks. We're up to Dynasty Warriors 9 now, and the only major difference is the addition of an open world — and that was just added in the most recent iteration.

But the studio has made other games as well. Samurai Warriors features the same musou-style gameplay but with samurai instead of Chinese soldiers. One Piece: Pirate Warriors is similar but with One Piece characters. Hyrule Warriors, unsurprisingly, brings the musou formula to The Legend of Zelda universe. At this point, we're sure you can guess what Fire Emblem Warriors is all about.

There are far more Warriors games under Omega Force's belt, all covering a variety of other licenses. Frankly, their formula remains the same across the board. The studio recently announced its collaboration with Atlus, which will give us Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers. Even turn-based RPGs aren't safe from the musou.

In many ways, the modern first-person shooter genre owes its existence to id Software. Based in the Dallas-Fort Worth region in Texas, the studio found its calling when it released Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. The game busted the door wide open for first-person shooters, and it set up id for years of success down the line. Iconic franchises like Doom and Quake came from the studio, the latter of which solidified the WASD control scheme that's widely used today on PC games.

When you look through id's catalog of games, you'll notice those three names pop up frequently. Occasionally, you'll find other titles, like Commander Keen or Rescue Rover. Nonetheless, no one can deny that everyone knows the studio for its FPS chops. Even its newest IP, Rage, carries over many similar game mechanics.

In fact, id is so wrapped up in its shooters that it recently returned to its roots for 2016's Doom. Clearly, the studio has that gameplay genre nailed down, as it's almost exclusively what it has worked on in its lifetime.

Have you played a Bethesda game recently? More specifically, one developed by Bethesda Game Studios? There's a lot about them that feels eerily familiar, despite having different settings. Their list of games include all the mainline Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind as well as Fallout 3, 4, and 76 (yikes). Essentially, we're talking about games that Todd Howard has worked on.

When you think about Fallout and Elder Scrolls, in theory, they're wildly different games. A post-apocalypse running on an economy of bottle caps sounds far removed from the fantasy realm of Tamriel. But when you play these games, things are more similar than you'd think. The way you move and interact with the world and its NPCs feel identical, and a lot of the physics work the same.

A lot of this familiarity can be attributed to the Gamebryo and Creation engines. Gamebryo was used for many of Bethesda Game Studios' early projects, from Morrowind up to Fallout 3. For Skyrim, the studio debuted the Creation Engine, which is just an upgraded version of Gamebryo. Both of these engines were used interchangeably among all their major releases, making them feel the same, regardless of setting.

Few studios have taken the term "interactive storytelling" to heart as much as Telltale Games did. From The Walking Dead to Tales from the Borderlands, from The Wolf Among Us to even more Walking Dead, this studio brought many stories to life. At some point, they even obtained the rights to make games based on Batman and Game of Thrones. Essentially, if you had any interest in geek culture, Telltale had a game with your name on it.

Since 2012, the studio produced 13 seasons of various games before its sudden closure in 2018. If you play any of those games, though, you'll notice they all follow a similar formula. They feature light point-and-click elements that simulate exploration, while QTE sequences take care of any high-speed action. Every game features multiple dialogue options at every turn. Even the phrase "They will remember that" shows up in various forms across all of the studio's works.

In many ways, a lot of Telltale's games play similarly out of necessity. After all, they couldn't reinvent the wheel between every season while maintaining their release schedule. In a recent Noclip video that detailed Telltale's closure, cinematics artist Kent Mudle all but confirmed that the studio was creatively suffocated, forced into formulaic concepts by executives. While the circumstances are unfortunate, Telltale fits the bill as a one-trick pony.