The Fight for Original Games

PC.IGN is running a piece by Douglass Perry on the Fight for Original Games. In the article, the author examines the trends that have led to a slew of sequels, franchises, and movie industry tie-ins in the gaming industry of late. From the article: "...depending on who you speak with, the videogame industry is either reaching the most impressive convergence of its entire 30-plus year old existence, or it's falling into a never-ending death spiral of sequel-heavy, rehashed, franchise dominated blocks of stinking cheese."

Comments

TV

[martin]

Same for TV - getting and original idea out there if quite difficult. Star trek x 3, CSI x 3, Big brother, clean/decorate my house.

500 channels all showing similar stuff...

Third opinion

[yotto]

Isn't it possible that the gaming industry is going through a normal swing of the pendulum where crappy games come out all in the same genre(s) until the market gets massively oversaturated? And that soon it will swing back as consumers stop buying the junk and become more picky?

I mean, it's been 30 (according to the OP) years, haven't we seen this before?

A gripe about originality

[centauri]

Yeah, that's something new.

Another article

[dsyu]

Related article on Gamespy from Tim Schafer's recent presentation. My favorite quote:

What disturbed him the most was this actual quote from an executive at a large publisher: "This is really great. This is creative. It's too bad people aren't going for creative stuff right now."

Looking for something that works

[stpitner]

You would think that these companies do something like this because they know it's a proven winner title that a lot of people will buy. ie. Final Fantasy. Keep making more as long as people keep buying it and enjoying it. It's the closest thing to a guaranteed sale that the company is going to get.

You take risks when you go for original titles because it could be the next fantastic series or the next absolute bust. It's also harder to keep making games from scratch when you can take your previous version, redo only certain parts of the game engine, and get another money maker game out on the market in a year to keep the customer happy and paychecks flowing for the employees.

As a consumer of video games, as much as I would like to see original titles, I love buying the latest Final Fantasy or Gran Turismo. I want to see, bigger, better versions of those games. I want to play the latest baseball game with the latest team rosters and new ways to play the game. I don't need original titles in order to have fun.

The point where I draw the line is when a company makes a sequel that has barely any change or new innovation (which can be hard in sports games) and just feels like the same game that came out last year. That can get boring quick.

Cost?

[MBCook]

Well, the reason that I've heard before is that it is so expensive and time consuming to make new games. As a consequence of that (and the fact that as consoles get better, you need more and higher quality art to keep the game looking reasonably good). So because of this, studios are less and less likely to try new games and instead focus on sequels (where you have previous fans likely to buy, some art and much design is already complete, there is an engine to use, etc.).

Now this hasn't stopped new games from comming out. In the past few years we have had very innovative games (Full Spectrum Warrior, Sly Cooper, Pikmin, Katamari Damaci, Viewtiful Joe, and many many other). But it SEEMS like we are drowning in sequels (and to a degree we are) because for ever Katamari Damaci or FSW that comes out, we have *insert_sport_here* 200X, Generic Platformer 3: Now More Extreme, and about 6 other sequels.

This is not to say that sequels don't innovate. Some sequels really do innovate on their predicessor and make great games. But most don't. Most are a forumalic continuation (which can be good (not great) to aweful (why didn't they FIX THAT?)).

Frankly, I blame marketing (that's always fun). When every game out there is supposed to be made more "XTreme" and "Urban", is it any wonder that there are very few Katamari Damacis out there? We even see this ruining perfectly good games. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was a fantastic game. Great story, movie like presentation, clean and safe for kids. So they decided to make a sequel. Great! I couldn't wait. Then I saw it. Everything is dark and evil. The girl is now wearing cinnamon dental-floss for clothes. The whole atmosphere of the first game is gone replacced with a dark, extreme game. I won't buy it. I probably won't even rent it to play it. If they hadn't done that, I would have bought it.

Or Tony Hawk. Ever since playing THPS2 I've been hooked. The last one I bought (THUG) was a great game. I loved the story in it, it made it more fun to play for me because it wasn't just "random" stuff as much. At the same time, they didn't ruin the game. It was great. So then the sequel came out. I was going to buy it. But guess what, MARKETING got into the mix. So instead of the same (relativly) clean game, we get somemthing that's full of "hip" and "Urban" stuff. There are tons of low-brow jokes, an psycho kid in a wheelchair, and all sorts of other stuff that makes the game look like it came from "Blue Collar TV". Sorry Activision. No cash for you.

And what do we get when there actually IS a great game? Katamari Damachi I only know about because I read many gaming sites. I don't think I've seen any ads in magazines for it. I certanly haven't seen TV ads or flash ads on gaming sites. I only knew it existed because it was an odd little game that got some press for being origional. It wasn't marketed here in the US. Ico was the same. That was a FANTASTIC game, and real art. But it didn't do that well. A few TV commercials might help. Instead we get TV commercials for GTA:SA and THUG2. These little gems hardly ever seem to get any coverage, except as a single review and maybe a number on a top-10 list at the end of the year. In the mean time, stupid sequel 17 to pure formulaic game type 3 from some "me too" company runs tons of ads. I'll put Shenmue in there too. Some people didn't like it, I thought Shenmue 1 and 2 were the closest to movies or life-stories that games have gotten. Those too were pure art. But they got little press. The third (and final) installment is nowhere to be seen (and probably never will be). I'll give Sega credit for trying to keep things going with Shenmue 2 when 1 didn't sell that well, but they won't even finish out the series.

Hard to start new franchises due to cost, stupid marketing execs (witness: BMX: XXX existing), and underpromotion. That's why we get so many sequels and rip-offs.

My 0.02, not spent on crappy games.

The reason is...

[ibullard]

The game industry is funded and run by people who don't play games. At all. They read reviews and have focus groups with people off the street that play games and then make decisions based off of that data.

Once you know that, the rest makes sense in a strange and depressing way.