Dinosaur-themed video games were everywhere for a period. The games spanned a wide array of genres and systems. In the modern-day, video games centered on the prehistoric creatures have all but gone extinct. But why? Revered and classic franchises such as Dino Crisis and Turok have utterly vanished from the industry. The appeal of dinosaurs is absolutely undeniable, just look at the Jurassic Park film franchise for proof. In fact, Jurassic Park is the perfect place to start discussing this paradigm.
The original Jurassic Park changed both cinema and pop culture forever. The film was highly profitable and catapulted dinosaurs into the mainstream in a way that had never happened before. The creatures were everywhere. Action figures, cartoons, comic books and lunch boxes were adorned with the beasts. It is no surprise then that they soon found their way into video games also. Jurassic Park received several tie-in games, and the series went on to expand into many other unrelated titles, such as the fighting game Warpath: Jurassic Park. Dinosaurs were hot, and other publishers had taken notice.
In 1997, the Turok series made its way to consoles as a popular, fast-paced first-person shooter. 1999 saw the release of the original Dino Crisis, an inspired survival horror adventure from mastermind Shinji Mikami. Alongside these, the PC was loaded with too many dino games to count, ranging from kid-friendly and educational to violent action romps. Perhaps one of the best-known examples is 2001's Zoo Tycoon, which would go on to receive a dedicated dinosaur-themed expansion the following year, allowing players to build their own Jurassic Park. The franchise in question would release its own park simulator in 2003 with the beloved Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. It seemed that the dinosaur gaming trend was here to stay.
During the 2000s though, dinosaur games started to vanish. Dino Crisis came to a close in 2003 with the disastrous Dino Crisis 3, and Turok's last main release would be in 2008 with a controversial reboot. Jurassic Park-themed titles would endure, though they became sparser and predominantly mobile releases. Had the bubble burst? If it had, fans couldn't tell. After all, dinosaurs remained an enduring part of the cultural zeitgeist and seemingly never lost popularity. Dinosaur-themed video games are still desired by fans. The only notable examples of dinosaur games since Turok left the industry are 2015's Ark: Survival Evolved, 2018's Jurassic World: Evolution and 2020's Second Extinction.
It seems that publishers simply moved on to the next big thing, which just so happened to be zombie games. The late 2000s was flooded with games featuring the undead such as Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty's Nazi Zombies and Dead Rising. In the modern industry, the zombie trend has died down somewhat, but new games featuring shambling corpses pop up very frequently. The question is if zombie games can still endure and sell well, why can't dinosaur games? Both are forever cemented in pop culture, and both should be swarming gaming consoles.
In reality, the answer to that question is that they can, and they still do. Jurassic World: Evolution sold millions of copies and became developer Frontier's best-selling title. This could be attributed solely to the Jurassic World name, but the success of Ark: Survival Evolved cannot. That title has sold even more units than Evolution without an established IP attached. Dinosaur games still sell well, and the drought of quality titles has led to a gap in the market that publishers would do well to fill. The recent Resident Evil remakes have been immensely successful, and a Dino Crisis remake with that same treatment would surely sell gangbusters.
The real reason for the decline in dinosaur games is unknown. Perhaps it is due to the slightly waning popularity that the Jurassic Park films have faced. The movies gave the genre its popularity and could very well be responsible for taking it away. In all likelihood, publishers just moved on to genres that they perceived as more profitable such as military shooters and the aforementioned zombie romps. The time is right for a revival of the dinosaur game, whether that be a new survival horror adventure in the vein of Dino Crisis or a first-person shooter like Turok, gamers are starving for more titles with the prehistoric monsters.