The Outlast series has been providing horror fans with some of the most grotesque and outrageous scenes for 13 years, and to over 50 million players. The most surprising thing about all of that, though, isn't how it's able to keep players terrified, it's that no one else has tried to capitalise on its success.
Sure, there've been games which have had their fair share of gore involved, Resident Evil 7, Harvester, or Agony are just a few that come to mind. But none of them have either managed to top the gore seen in Outlast and also achieve its continued success.
I decided that no one else would be better to ask about this strange phenomenon than Red Barrels' co-founder Philippe Morin, but he seems just as confused as I am that Outlast hasn't had any imitators: "Honestly, I don't know. Sometimes I ask myself the same thing, but I'm glad that we're still different from other games because it can be so hard. There's thousands games coming out on Steam every year. So that's a lot of other games people can decide to spend time with."
But that doesn't mean the Red Barrels team doesn't get a scare every now and then. "Sometimes there's a game coming up, and we're like, 'alright, this one is probably gonna be the next Outlast'," Morin says. "But so far [nothing's come of them]. It's maybe a combination of different things. The fact that there is no combat or the gore [is lacking]."
My working theory as to why no one has attempted to ride the coattails of Outlast is simply because it's so hard to find the edge of what's acceptable in those kinds of games. Red Barrels has always managed to walk the razor thin line of outrageous horror while managing not to tip over into gratuity that's no longer fun to watch or be a part of. It's a hard task, and one that a mainstream game may not want to gamble with, or a newer studio may not get right the first time around.
Red Barrels has managed to find itself in an incredible circumstance of being experienced enough to truly understand how to push gore to its limits while also being a small enough studio that it doesn't need to break into a mainstream market.
"We're happy to be part of a niche and be successful within that niche," Morin adds. "We don't try to, or I should say, it's not part of our internal dialog that we need to make this more mass market or we need to reach a wider audience. Obviously, we want as many people as possible to play the game, but we don't want to let that dilute or become something that takes our focus away from what makes an Outlast game. If we ever decide that we need to be more mass market, then we'll just come up with a different IP or call it something else."
