A new Age of terror thanks to Frictional?

[Skaruts]

I don't think the bigger companies will follow it so easily. There are some factors at stake here:
Frictional Games is a small team, with small budgets and with all the time in the world to make their projects come true (unless they sign some contract that limits them). I don't know about their everyday lives, but I wouldn't be surprised if they said that some team members have day jobs to pay their rent, even if their games bring enough profit to rest easy without it.

So in other words, they can risk it, they can do whatever they feel it's right. They can make a game the way they'd like to play it. And people will be the judges of the outcome (and of the income ).

In large companies, this is their day (and night) job. If the game doesn't sell, it will be a financial disaster, people will get fired, upcoming budgets will be smaller or riskier, and they'll have to pray and hope the next title compensates the Tsunami of debts from that bad-idea-project.

So, large companies can't risk so much. They have to follow a monster called Trends, a demon called Profits, and Satan's Executives that don't know jack about games will demand and make sure that work is done in time and within budget, people will work after-hours, gameplay elements will be discarded due to not enough time/money, and whatever comes out, comes out.
They are forced to follow these studied market trends, and trends demand shooting, trends demand gore, trends demand clichés after clichés, and trends demand recycling gameplays and gameplay styles, and trends demand HDR and hi-poli models, and trends demands a new computer from everyone, bla bla bla...

So, since FG isn't following any trends, they are instead seeking the path to the core of Fear itself (one of Stephen King's objectives in his writtings, and mine for that matter), I don't think large companies will pick this up so fast.

The "Stealthy" or "Avoider" types of gameplay aren't new to the gaming industry. They were present in 1998 in Thief The Dark Project, they were present in Alone in the Dark and Sillent Hill (forgive me if I'm wrong, I hardly played SH ), and they were present in a few others, including FG's games that came out many years ago already, and did they helped the mainstream industry evolve? Nah. Trends did. Or should have...