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More Products From the Sequel Factory
Both the New York Times and Electronic Gaming Monthly have commented recently on the ongoing trend of sequel production in gaming. The NYT specifically cites EA's recent trends regarding endless rehashing of titles, while EGM talks more broadly about the role of sequels in the industry. While most reviewers lament the current state of the sequel factory, those within the industry rely on new versions of old titles for their bread and butter. From the EGM article: "Let's assume the publisher's position that sequels are a necessary evil, and the blockbuster videogame industry we have today cannot exist without sequels to support its often great financial burdens for research and development, marketing, distribution, etc. So, what are sequels doing for the gamer who's not interested in keeping up with the sequel treadmill?"
So, what are sequels doing for the gamer who's not interested in keeping up with the sequel treadmill?"
hmmm... maybe not buying them?
however, while some gamers might not venture into the sequel of their favorite game, there must be enough followers to keep the gaming industry making sequels after sequels.
it's similar to spams, while most people just ignore them, some of them ended up buying from the spammers, and this is what keeps the spamming industry going and even growing.
creating a different genre or trying something new is a big risk that most companies can't afford to take, this is especially true if each new game costs few millions to produce. that's why we saw a lot of interesting, exciting and ground-breaking games in the '80s because the cost was so low, people were more willing to take risk and create different games.
i have created a game almost to the words as described here (Point 2 Paragraph 2) and discussed here.
but let me tell you, it's been very difficult to get people playing it or even understanding it, because everybody's so used to the grinding.
everyday, i have to answer questions from players who want to know how to grind their stats to the top, because grinding is what defines game at the moment.
Play Found: Desert Island
Ars has a good comment up already here. Basically saying that there's nothing wrong with sequels per say (ie. Half-Life 2), but series like Madden where things seem to be changed just for the sake of changing them from year to year.
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I read today that Hollywood will produce 40 movies this year that are derived from old TV shows. And that doesn't count movie sequels.
you won't play the same Madden commentary sound files on every fifth play. "Whoa, he looked like he was hit by a truck! A five-ton truck hauling a trailer!" Yes, you'll hear that one six motherslapping times in one game of Madden '05. YOU HAVE A HARD DRIVE NOW, taking data from a 9 GB DVD. You have NO excuse to keep recycling the same mindless observations over and over and over again until we're pointing at our television with a shaking finger and screaming "EAT ME, JOHN! JUST EAT MEEEEEEE!" as most of us do now.
Obviously this guy has never watched a football game where Madden was doing the commentary. Madden moves between a few mindless quips and stating the obvious. Why people are so impressed with Madden, I will never know. Yes, the guy really knows football, but listening to him makes me want to shoot myself.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
1.) Movies make tons of money off sequels that may not give the same emotion as the original hit.
2.) Technological Advances are usually a very very attractive feature without having the game being identical otherwise (cept Doom 3 which was technically a very sweet redo minus the original emotion for most)
3.) There are always new kids/buyers to sell to and nobody wants to buy old games or watch old movies. Maybe the hairstyles turn people off ;)
You may agree or disagree, but I believe these are obvious points.
some sequels are completely lame, but others OTOH are actualy a marked improvement on a fun game.
take the command and conquer series. the first game was awesome and each consecutive release was better than the last. now were going on to something like the sixth or seventh and they have yet disapoint me*
even after ea took over, I grudgingly admit, red alert 2 and generals were (and still are) a lot of fun. and from what I hear, theres a red alert 3 comming.
*renegade dosent count. that game was completely lame. that was a bad sequel.
"What does slashdotting mean?"
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John Buchanan, the university liason officer for Electronic Arts, came to our university. I remember him specifically talking about how EA was not an "art house" and that their main objective was to entertain people and make lots of money doing so, much like Spielberg (sp?) and Lucas want to do this very same thing in Hollywood.
The way to achieve this? Sequels of course, and rehashes of tried and true concepts (read: steal ideas liberally from best-selling games). Nothing else is guaranteed to be a profit, and although you won't ever come out with a truly stellar bar-raising game that makes zillions of dollars, on average you're going to be doing better. How do you get new ideas? Buy out smaller companies. John challenged us to name one original game that EA has put out in the last five years -- he said he'd give us twenty bucks -- and nobody could. He was sort of strangely proud of this, proud that they'd figured out a way to just, well, fucking rip people off and let them have a good time at it. How does EA get new games, ever? They buy out smaller companies.
If you want to become a games programmer because creativity is your thing, EA is not the place for you. It was quite disconcerting to hear someone be so upfront about these things.
I asked him if it was depressing, to him personally, as a human -- the fact that he acknowledges what they're doing is hardly art, is hardly revolutionary, but just aims to please the masses while earning them all a big fat paycheck -- and his answer? No... the money's good, I have some fun, I get to travael, why should I complain?
Basically I was just disgusted by the whole experience. IBM, Google, Microsoft, Sun -- they can all afford research departments, I don't see why the major games companies in industry cannot... even if there's no short-term payoff, in the long term I think there's a lot more money to be made... there's an incredible amount that simply *hasn't* been done with computer games and interactive entertainment to date, to the extent that it could really really push outside of the current teenage "gamer" market.
I mean, think about it: the games industry grosses more than the Hollywood box office, yet its real market is a fraction of the size. How are you going to reach a larger market? Research, risks, bona fide works of art, and truly engaging experiences.
List 'em here:
Star Control 2
umm... umm...
No, you want depressing? Your comment prompted me to reach for my copy of Strike Fleet (circa 1987) and read the box copy: And remember, this was the company which in its early days brought us (stolen from Wikipedia):
- Pinball Construction Set (1982)
- Archon (1983)
- M.U.L.E. (1983) - Dani Bunten, we miss you.
- One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird (1983)
- Music Construction Set (1984)
- The Seven Cities of Gold (1984)
- Skyfox (1984)
- The Bard's Tale (1985), by Interplay Productions
- Adventure Construction Set (1985)
- Populous (1989)
- Chuck Yeager's Air Combat (1993)
Could those games have been made at EA today? I may just go and cry now. What a difference twenty three years makes, eh?Carthago delenda est!
There's a difference between a sequal and a remake. A sequel usually involves the same characters in a new (though perhaps similar) story. A remake however involves the same characters in pretty much the same story.
GTA3, GTA VC, GTA SA each use a slightly updated engine, but with new characters, in a new story.
The EA games however use a slightly updated engine, with the same characters, and the same story.
While sports games are sometimes an exception because the rules of the game are fairly ridgid, people tend to prefer sequels over remakes.
As for the people who would buy the new version even for the updated roster, I'm reminding of P.T. Barnum's statement "There's a sucker born every minute".
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
I don't know why no one has figured this out yet, but sports games are not "sequels." For the majority of sports fans, they are buying NFL200X because it has the new players/rosters, anything else is just gravy. In all honesty, if you told them it was the same exact game they have, but with the teams updated, they would still pay 50 clams for it.
Now that we can do local storage on consoles, why not just sell the rosters every year at the same price, and sell a true "sequel", i.e. an improved game, every other? Your current revenue stream would remain largely unchanged, and every other year you could double it by selling a new game.
Sports fans buy sports games. Sports fans are fiercly loyal. Give them what they want, the players/teams they identify with. Let the sports *gamers* decided when they want a new game.
-- I have fans? Wow.
While the melodramatic stories are certainly not to everyone's taste, each FF game is different in that the skill learning/character customization system gets a shakeup in every game, and the series isn't afraid to try bold experiments that sometimes don't work as well as hoped (e.g. the Junction system in FFVIII -- innovtative system that abolished armour upgrades in favour of using magic for stat alteration; probably worked very well on paper, but made the game too easy in practice).
FFX-2, the first direct sequel in the series' history, is a completely different experience from FFX because the character customization systems are radically different.
-Stephen
Laser Squad Nemesis is supposedly a pretty good modern version of X-Com. It was actually created and developed by former X-Com developers, so you may want to download the demo and give it a try. I haven't been able to try it out yet, so I couldn't tell you how it is, personally. The reviews seem pretty favorable, though.
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