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Does a Game Have To Fail To Get a Real Ending?
After the closure of Tabula Rasa over the weekend, the Opposable Thumbs blog asks if that's what it takes for a game to have an actual ending these days. Quoting: "It's no surprise that most games hope for a sequel, as it's the easiest way to get some of that money back while taking advantage of the staff, engine, assets, and other advantages you've banked while creating the first title. The problem? This has lead to a generation of cliff-hangers at worst, and endings that hedge their bets at best. ... As all the game's characters die, as the servers are shut down, as the data is erased or backed up and then boxed or whatever happens to MMO data once the game is done, it's hard not to be a little sad. The sights and sounds of the world of Tabula Rasa are gone, forever. All the memories written into those ones and zeroes will quickly be forgotten, and no one will walk those grounds again." Massively put together a few screenshots and videos to commemorate the ending of the game.
I'd go broader than games. Pretty much any mass market entertainment these days has to fail to get a real ending, and even then it doesn't usually manage it.
When was the last time you went to the cinema to watch a major release that didn't end with a blatant hook for a sequel? When was the last time you saw a TV show end without some form of cliff-hanger? And yes... when was the last time you saw a game end without a plug for a sequel?
I think TV has it worst. The push to wring as many seasons as possible out of a particular intellectual property has destroyed the capability of a generation of screenwriters to actually write an ending for a story. They write a strong beginning to get people going, then just sit down and churn out "middle" for season after season until the ratings drop and the network starts to swing the axe. Then, if possible, they write in an ending from whatever point in the story they'd managed to get up to.
I remember when I got into watching anime, back in around 2001, the first thing that struck me was that many series did actually have endings. Sure, in some cases the endings were incomprehensible, but at least they were there. However, even with anime, as time has gone one, the classic stand-alone 13 or 26 episode series has fallen from favour in recent years.
The problem is that we are creating a body of cultural products which will not stand the test of time. Now, ok, you can write off 95% (at least) of modern pop culture as ephemera, but it would still be nice to think that we might actually be creating a few things that will still be watched, read or played in fifty years time (and beyond). But unless things have ending, it just won't happen.
Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down? How many modern TV stories have been ruined by this kind of thing? The X-Files? Lost? Buffy?
Ironically, given what sparked this discussion, MMOs don't actually need an ending. They're not usually intended as a story as such - more as an ongoing, but usually static, world that players participate in. They generally kind of exist in the same continuity-free zones as daily-gag comic strips in newspapers and the like. That they ended Tabula Rasa in the way they did is actually kind of cool and probably rather better than the shoddy game deserved.
It possible to end a story and still leave enough open for a sequel. A cliff-hanger doesn't end a story, it just stops it. And with the time it takes to create a sequel people will have forgotten about the cliff-hanger when they start the sequel.
All the memories written into those ones and zeroes will quickly be forgotten, and no one will walk those grounds again
All the more reason to make sure you're actually having fun playing. Too many people think they're accomplishing something and end up ignori...
.... BOP EPIC!! Finally, about time that trinket dropped. I mean really they need to up the drop rate, or make it boe, all this grinding is ridiculous.
What was I saying again?
Do Games With Real Endings Fail?
Better known as 318230.
No, the fat cats need to grow some balls and know when to quit.
ilovegeorgebush
During the period this game was about to shut down, I thought it'd be interesting to see the reactions of the players in the game. I wonder if we can use the virtual world as a substitute for the real world to probe the psychological attitude and behavior of the inhabitants/players within when the world comes to an end. What went through their mind as their virtual world, which they have come to love and enjoy, which packed all their emotions and experience, had finally come to an end?
Isn't it the nature of games to never really end? I mean a game of chess ends when one of the players is checkmate or when there is a draw, tournaments end when one of the finalists win the final, but there will be no end to chess (barring an "Idiocracy" scenario...).
Books and movies have endings, but games are meant to be played over and over, more so than books and movies are meant to be re-read and re-watched. Games should ultimately be released to the community for modding and improvement.
and it will live forever.
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To me, it seems that this is life in general too. Of course, the memories and screen shots and perhaps some online buddies from your ingame time will persist. But it seems to me that even though life you end up completely dropping one chapter and moving on. After high school, I didn't talk to too many people I spent 4 years with. Same thing with college. It's kinda sad, but life, as well as games go one.
OK, that was horribly written, I'm still sleepy. zzzzzzzz
To paraphrase:
"The most irritating thing about the play 'Hamlet' is that the first and third portions of the trilogy are clearly missing."
Step outside and let the rays from that scary yellow ball of fire called the sun bathe your sickly translucent skin.
2001? Long anime has been around before that. For example, Detective Conan started airing in 1996, and still is. Dragon Ball, though a bit shorter at ~150 episodes, aired back in the 80's in Japan.
On the other hand, there are still way more "stand-alone" animes than long ones. Though, if a stand-alone anime becomes really popular and well-received, they'll produce a second season for it, such as with Code Geass. I see nothing wrong with that as long as the second season is good as well (and in the case of Code Geass, it was good).
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
It appears that single-player games can afford to have real endings, yet be successful in a sequel.
Not sure about Warcraft though.
Others include movies (Indiana Jones, Star Trek) and books (Tintin, Asterix). Weird, huh?
LSL is the counterpoint... these games were full of fail, and yet there was always a happy ending.
And they produced what, half a dozen sequels to it? Well, I'm including the missing one.
On who's servers?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Sadly this has even moved on into books. For instance, The Wheel of Time dragged on so long that the author died before he finished it. It is sad, and he was too sick to really write. I feel for Robert's family, but there are other examples. Another one is GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire, he's not a young man keeps pushing dates back. Authors have lives, as do any content producers, but I think that they may need to look at maybe limiting their scope a little more so their projects can be finished in their lifetimes.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down? How many modern TV stories have been ruined by this kind of thing? The X-Files? Lost? Buffy?
The inherent assumption that you are making is that Shakespeare would would have a bad sequel. I don't think this is true. Shakespeare was in the business of making money. If he had thought he could make money through making prequels or sequels for some of his popular plays, say Young Hamlet or How We Miss Caesar, he would have, and some of them would have been excellent.
However, I really think that you're missing the point. You're really comparing apples and oranges when you compare Shakespeare's plays, written for the stage, with big budget games or movies. The latter cost a lot of money to develop while in general the former do not. Thus, I think to some degree movies, video games, and even many books (with high unit and distribution costs) become formulaic because of the production costs involved. Many video games cost millions to develop; many movies cost over $100 million. For those types of entertainment, when a corporation with shareholders footing the bill, you're going to see less chances taken. A successful movie or video game is almost like the lottery, so the smart, responsible thing to do for your shareholders is to milk it. Before you say that this doesn't apply to video games, think about how many lines of code it takes to write a decent game that's going to sell. For that, you need someone with money paying you to pay your rent while you're developing your game. That means someone, ultimately, expects to get paid.
Besides, this is what people want. They want to watch or experience the same things that made them happy before. The last thing that a video game developer wants it to hear that its new game sucks compared to the old one. Fanboys can be vocal and vitriolic, and unfortunately many developers spend much of their time keeping their original audience happy, rather than expanding the audience.
Make love, not reality television.
"When was the last time you went to the cinema to watch a major release that didn't end with a blatant hook for a sequel?"
The only films this statement really applies to are the "Blockbuster" style of films. I would say that the majority of films don't end in this fashion (then again, I am rather choosy regarding the films I watch these days, so perhaps I just don't notice).
What's perhaps worse are those films that are not expected to have sequels, but because they're successful, you end up getting a bright spark claiming it's time for a sequel.
That small gripe aside, you're spot on. I remember an interview with Dominic Monaghan (from Lost) who was saying (around Season two or three) that the original script for Lost was intended to end after Season Three or Four, but the studio executives objected and told them to stretch it out much further. Funnily enough, this was around the same time I lost interest in the show.
I find this approach alienating. It decreases the chance of new viewers being attracted to a show (how many people want to play catchup with a weeks' worth of viewing just to figure out what's going on), not to mention that the "indefinite" approach is likely to encourage a high fall-out rate as people either get bored, annoyed at the never-ending and increasingly more unbelievable plot twists, or simply fatigued.
Oh, and yeah, kids, get off my lawn!
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Sadly I can point to George Lucas as a good example of that. He's clearly stated that he wont make eps 7-9 for starwars because he wants to do something else before he dies!
Who goes to see "major releases" for the story, anyway?
On who's servers?
Presumably the same people interested in supporting it as open-source. Servers are very, very cheap.
When was the last time you saw a TV show end without some form of cliff-hanger?
Television is the absolute worst offender. It is very rare that the writing staff has enough advance notice of their cancellation to end the story appropriately.
When you're a new show and worried about being allowed to finish 1 season, do you plan out arcs that span 4? When you finally make it to season 4, where do you aim at to end the show? Where will the studio decide to axe you?
Too many variables.
Star Trek Enterprise had a pretty good ending IMO, showing Captain Archer present at the formation of the Federation (albeit as a holodeck recreation on NCC-1701D). The final scene showing 3 generations of Enterprise is pretty good.
Star Trek Voyager also had a good ending where they made it back to earth (and beat the Borg as well IIRC, its been a while since I watched the show)
I havent seen enough TOS to know how that one ended as a TV series. The real ending to TOS is where Kirk passes the mantle on to a new generation in the NCC-1701A in Generations and also dies in that film (and it was a proper ending at that)
I play Solitaire, you insensitive clod.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
> I think TV has it worst. The push to wring as many seasons as possible out of a particular intellectual property has destroyed the capability of a generation of screenwriters to actually write an ending for a story.
Anime may have leaned towards no ending series goes on as long as it can, but many still stop at one season. Berserk. Fruits Basket.
Japanese Live Action dramas usually only go for one season. Stories are so much better with a beginning, a middle and an end.
c.f. The X-files. a beginning, middle, middle, middle, middle, middle, middle, middle, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
I the last two months? "Doubt", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Revolutionary Road". Don't they qualify as "major releases"?
Sadly I can point to George Lucas as a good example of that. He's clearly stated that he wont make eps 7-9 for starwars because he wants to do something else before he dies!
Ah, in a rare moment of lucidity, he saves us all...
doesn't matter... within a few years you could emulate (if required) the cluster within a virtual machine. More to the point, if that was really the case you wouldn't have any unofficial wow or daoc servers available now like you do. (just google them)
The reason most companies do not want to open source is that ANYONE (including the fans) could take that code base, rewrite the code through love (or whatever else spurs these entities on) and bring out a better mmo than the company had planned as a sequel.
What if for example... Mythic open sources DAOC, the fans rewrote it and hosted it for free - and was, shock horror, better than Warhammer? shareholders would blame the possible bad 'sale' of Warhammer due to the popular demand for an IP that they dont really own anymore.
I don't agree with it AT ALL, I'd love to see the Amiga classic 'jet strike' open sourced or superfrog (or Cannon Fodder!) so I can continue to play it without needing the original hardware or emulation... but it will never happen because these MEDIA companies (from games, music and film) are scared of their past. Team17 (or their current owners) will keep the Cannon Fodder IP on the off chance that maybe some twit will be willing to pay for the same thing again on their PSP. (and they have)
I believe quite strongly that if the MAFIAA want us to conform to not pirating media, a new law should be put in place that ALL digital media after 10 - 20 years becomes open source and freely available to the public domain. This would encourage the sharing of source, the bettering of society and reduce the splurge of sequel after sequel after stinking sequel.
But I admit I live in a dream world where logic exists and money is only an afterthought. The media conglomerates hold the key and the drm and you need to bend over and take it like a man.
Btw. A perfect example of this is Falcon IV. To quote wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_4.0
"The game was originally designed and produced by Steve Blankenship and Gilman Louie and published under the MicroProse label. The game was rushed to the market in order to make the 1998 Christmas selling season. Unfortunately, Falcon 4.0's first release contained numerous bugs. The final official patch (version 1.08) fixed most of them. After completion of 1.08 patch, the original development team was laid off by Hasbro Interactive. Nevertheless, Falcon fans still sought further improvements of the game. Early modifications altered the game's multimedia and the executable by editing the hexadecimal code. After the game's source code leak, a Falcon 4.0 player optimized the game further by re-programming parts of the game's original programming code.
Through its lifetime, Falcon 4.0 has received ongoing fixes and enhancements from various groups of volunteers, which have enhanced the detail and complexity of the simulation over the years to its current state, as well as mended the numerous errors in the original release and its patches. Much of this comes as a result of the source code being available to the developers of modifications. Benchmarksim (BMS) being the premier team to take on the task of user modifications. However, game publisher Atari later issued a cease and desist order against all executable modifications, and thus many modifications were not hosted by websites. Private modification development did continue, even so, as can be seen by the FreeFalcon/RedViper and Open Falcon leaks. It is rumored that the FreeFalcon and RedViper teams have recently separated."
To add pain to the developers ... Hasbro did in fact release a sequel to Falcon IV. It is considered 'better' than the original falcon but most enthusiasts still find it too rigid than their hacked ones...
http://www.combatsim.com/memb123/htm/2001/12/f5-part1/
I, for one, am looking forward to the end of Battlestar Galactica in a few weeks time...
My Journal
You mentioned Lost. Lost *is* working toward a planned ending. But that does illustrate your point. The writers felt like they were floundering because they didn't know how many seasons they had to write. Now that they know, the writing is much tighter (though I'd argue it's also rushed occasionally).
Really what we're talking about, in terms of American television anyway, are miniseries. I miss the days of 12-week epic TV events like Shogun and Centennial. Nowadays, a miniseries is rarely more than a three hour movie over two nights.
The first series of 'Sledge Hammer' ended with a nuclear explosion destroying LA. And it STILL came back for another series! So writers should not be afraid to end stories if they wish - you can always explain your way out of it if you get another chance.
Authors may also want to decide whether they are actual people who deserve to have a life of their own, or simply story vending machines which exist to provide people with a lfew hours entertainment and then fade away.
And he has this to say on the subject. Given the choice between hearing about how GRRM has been watching football all day, or reading a hacked up finale to an otherwise great series of books which he just felt he needed to put together even though he was miserable doing it, I'll be one of the first to order him some beers and pizza and hand him the remote.
Ooooh, surveys! We're getting so MySpace these days.
"When was the last time you went to the cinema to watch a major release that didn't end with a blatant hook for a sequel?"
Changeling
"When was the last time you saw a TV show end without some form of cliff-hanger?"
Off the top of my head, Life on Mars which is extremely ironic since the TV show has a sequel and the sequel is actually pretty decent once you get past the first two episodes.
"And yes... when was the last time you saw a game end without a plug for a sequel?"
Mario Galaxy (also ironic since there will no doubt be a sequel)
"Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down?"
Yes.
"How many modern TV stories have been ruined by this kind of thing? The X-Files? Lost? Buffy?"
42
Now pass this along to 6 other friends or you will be cursed forever and your wang will fall off (if equipped).
And even sadder, this is not new. In my opinion, Dune never really ended, either. It was only terminated by the death of Frank Herbert, and I know from historical articles that he had other stuff planned. That stuff is all lost, now and will always be.
No, the Brian Herbert books don't count. They're not a continuation of the original in any way; they're inspired by the original and in some ways are a reasonable attempt to close the gaps and tie up the loose ends that were left when Frank died.
The lack of an ending for the sake of telling an ongoing story is not new.
I can think of a number of *good* TV series that do have a clear end - e.g. HBO's "Six Feet Under", or the original BBC version of "The Office".
Then there are series that do have a clear ending, only to carry on in a spin-off anyway - e.g. the original BBC "Life on Mars", continued as "Ashes to Ashes"
Let's see some examples about games I recently played: Bioshock has an ending narrating also the last moments in life of the main character decades after the events played in the game, when he dies for natural causes at an old age. Dead Space has an open ending that leaves room for a sequel, but not really a cliffhanger. GTA IV definitely has an ending for the main story, but since life goes on for Niko Bellic we don't know yet if we'll see him again in a sequel, or in cameos. Fallout 3 has once again an ending for the main character, but it's very likely there will be a sequel with a different playing character. World of Goo, well... it's surreal. It's a game that doesn't need to tell a story to be fun. But overall we assist at the creation of worlds and ambients that can spawn a thousand stories, and commercial considerations aside there seems to be an approach to storytelling that reminds in some way the social sci-fi of the sixties, where stories were often unfinished or widely open to the considerations of the reader who's implicitly invited to fill in the gaps and tie a few knots. The main character may die, but the world goes on.
I agree with you on The X-Files and Lost, but Buffy had a very strong ending. The characters continued to develop throughout the show's run until a very climactic ending.
Buffy suffered more from losing focus in the middle of the seasons. A couple of them start strongly, lose their way a bit in the middle and then have a strong ending. But that tends to be true of a lot of shows that work to a standard 22 episode season. 12 episode seasons tend to be a lot tighter but US television isn't geared up for that.
When was the last time you saw a TV show end without some form of cliff-hanger?
Avatar: The Last Airbender. But then, they actually planned their arc. Before that, Cowboy Bebop. Before that, Firefly. Before that, Babylon 5.
when was the last time you saw a game end without a plug for a sequel?
Fallout 3. Mirror's Edge. Dead Space.
It seems all youtube videos for the final moments are down. What gives?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCgcizG3qbk
Mirror's Edge.
The immediate story (getting Kate off the hook for Pope's murder) was resolved, but the news report during the credits saying Faith and Kate were on the run is just begging for a Mirror's Edge 2.
All of those games had a very clear ending point, sure, there was stuff to do afterword, and you could keep replaying all the older missions, but there was a definite ending in the missions where you saved the world/became a hero.
None of the three main games ended on a cliffhanger, and the only expansion Eye of the North was obviously a lead into Guild Wars 2 which was already in production. Even so, that game still had story closure.
Well what about Watchmen or V for Vendetta?
Plus sometimes the writing is a post-script season(read, oh shit! We're still on the air and we've ended everything! Such as SG-1).
Now back to the topic at hand. MMOs aren't meant really to end. I completely agree with you on that point and that how they ended it was kind of neat, sort of like what Blizzard did for their "End of Beta WoW" days.
You're probably right for shows like 24, but I don't think you're right for most sitcoms.
The TV show Seinfeld had a pretty definitive ending (despite the spinoffs that followed). It sucked.
Contrast that to South Park and Family Guy, where although there's a tiny bit of ploy carry-over from one episode to the next, each individual episode tends to have an ending that completely wraps up that episode's story arc.
So the thing common to Seinfeld, South Park, and Family Guy, is that they do have good endings: at the end of each episode. And when a series final ending was attempted (Seinfeld), it failed.
Yeah, like licence out Clone wars cartoons...
Sequels, when done well, allow for the characters to evolve and become more complex. Normally for a Movie a good chunk is establishing the character. Then less time with actual plot in the 1 1/2 - 3 hour block of time. Sequels allow for the character to go from where they left off, or further down where their character background is already known.
Prequels, on the other hand are for more dangerous, As the plot usually stinks as they need to establish the characters again for their younger self, and try to make these new characters to try to fit into the later ones, and if the character is that well established before hand your view may not mesh with the imagination. Like Darth Vader being a whinny little brad.
But for these stories it is important to understand when it is good to make an end or when to allow for sequels. If there is room for more character growth then it may be good for a Sequel. But in such as Austin Powers sequels will not expand the character any further just the same old in a different environment.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Thrawn Trilogy + Ridley Scott
I'd be on board for a Coraline 2 - Bedlam Strikes Back.
Don't forget Stargate Atlantis. That had a great ending imho.
Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down? How many modern TV stories have been ruined by this kind of thing? The X-Files? Lost? Buffy?
You are judging two different things. You should have the comparison be sit down and watch all of Shakespeare's plays vs watching a watching season of any show of your choice on DVD. I have no idea how many plays Shakespeare produced, but I can't stand most of them that I've been exposed to. Now let's compare that to B5, Smallville, or Buffy. Taken individually, each show is usually a complete product. It's taken as a whole where each wraps around your head and you've just gotta find out what happens next to these folks. Actually, I'd say that they are getting better now with DVD releases of at least finishing a show/season in such a manner that its a fair pausing spot that may or may not be resumed if it does great on DVD sales. B5 was great for all the little things in one episode becoming important later on.
It reminds me of something that I was forced to read in college. It was a French soap opera thing were basically a single writer produced dozens and dozens of books set around his slightly different Paris. All those little people in one book might or might not get a book of their own. I wonder if we had complete Roman or Greek plays if they had the same thing back then. This concept doesn't seem new. It's just that the stage effects and presentation that have changed somewhat over 2 thousand years.
Authors also have to decide whether or not they want to eat. Once one story has sold, it's a lot easier selling sequels to it than to sell something entirely new. If they don't sell stories, they don't eat. So sequels and long-running series are the norm.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
MMOs don't actually need an ending. They're not usually intended as a story as such - more as an ongoing, but usually static, world that players participate in. They generally kind of exist in the same continuity-free zones as daily-gag comic strips in newspapers and the like.
This, in an nutshell, is the problem with MMOs. I love RPGs, but I have no interest in a perpetual grind.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There's also the opposite problem of too many endings - presumably because the writers repeatedly think the show will be cancelled (e.g., Stargate).
I'm gonna have to disagree on that about WoT. In my first reads I never felt that there was any intentional dragging out just to sell more books, I loved each of them and I think they all add something important to the story.
I do agree that it is a very common phenomenon now to drag everything out. I dont read much anymore, but usually have the TV going while doing homework and recently I've been going through Heroes season 3. The first was good, the second was okay, the third is showing obvious signs of stretch. Just kill the bad guys when you have them so they dont escape for the 10th time!
...is Duke Nukem Forever.
It's a real failure that will never end.
What are you talking about? I thought the ending in God Emperor was very satisfying.
Wait--are you trying to tell me he wrote books after that one?
Funny enough, the clip at the bottom of the post features Ricky Nelson in 1985 - the year of his death.
Don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon.
If anyone could drag a Shakespearian plot out for 17 plays, Hamlet could do it. Or at least think about doing it or not doing it for 17 plays before being forced into action when the Globe burns down.
More music, fewer hits
Why not play a MMO that intentionally wipes all the user data when the story ends?
I only know of one: http://www.atitd.com
Son and Co. claim to have unearthed notes and whatnot left by Frank concerning Dune.
Don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon.
Until relatively recently, the idea of a television series getting a proper "ending" was unheard of. A TV series would run until the network canceled it, and then it would just stop. David Banner was never going to find a cure for his Hulk disease, the Fugitive never would find his one-armed man, The Prisoner would never escape from the island. The idea of a special "final episode" that marked an explicit and unambiguous end to a TV series didn't really come along until the 80's. The idea of a "final seasons" and even the rare series with a definite running time for the whole *series* (such as Babylon 5 and some BBC series) followed even later.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I'm pretty sure that the fact that Fallout 3 is the fifth game in the Fallout series pretty much implies that a sequel is not only possible, but also quite likely.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He did. And he did. Henry IV Part 2 was basically a tacked-on sequel to wildly popular Henry IV Part 1, where he reversed all the character development of Prince Henry (the future Henry V) to do it all over again. And then he did The Merry Wives of Windsor to bring Falstaff back for yet another encore.
With a "kill screen"
When I was a kid we didn't HAVE friends to play with, if we wanted morrpmgsss (or whatever you youngsters call 'em) we had to leave the house and truck down to the arcade. Then we had to wait in line to continue the life of someone else's character. And by "mass" we meant 4 players and we liked it.
It wasn't about exp and armor either, it was about gold. We didn't have to wait for a posse to go into the dungeon. Our games were ALL dungeon and we liked it. None of this customizing your character hoot-nanny. You got an elf, thief, hero or whatever and did we complain? No. And we didn't pay monthly for it either. We payed quarterly (well, with quarters anyway). So dying meant money. You kids have it easy.
X-Files I'll give you cause it went downhill after Mulder left, and the ending, while kinda cool learning the date for something important to happen (not gonna post a spoiler for those that never saw it) had you going "huh?"
But Lost and Buffy? It was around season 3 that they announced their plan for a total of 6 seasons, with a clear cut ending, no movies after the show's over or anything. By the end of 6 seasons, it would be wrapped up quite nicely.
And Buffy was just stellar tv. Yea I'm a biast Whedon fan but damn, you're telling me season 7 of Buffy wasn't good? Even if it felt like it was dragging on past it's time, each season had a logical reason to continue. Seasons 1-3 high school, Season 4 and 5 college/home life/dealing with several deaths. etc etc It even had a logical conclusion that you always wondered about since season 1: "If there are so many demons, vampires etc in the world, how can ONE Slayer take care of them all?" Answer: the ending of season 7.
Oh and not to be a dick, don't mod down for it but, if Buffy over stayed it's welcome, then how come the Buffy Season 8 comic book series is selling like hotcakes? It's Dark Horse's best selling series, ever (even more than Witchblade). And they've already announced a Season 9 comic series once 8 is complete.
Aw Frell this
LOST does have an ending in sight -- next season, the sixth, will be its last.
I've never heard of Tabula Rasa, but that video looked cool as hell! Where can I download it?
True but Detective Conan doesn't feel like it's just dragging on and on. There is still a lot of story left in that series but it's always exciting and interesting so I'm happy to have another 300 or whatever episodes.
If you manage to tie up all the loose ends, then yes, you might not have a powerful and satisfying story. But you may also never be able to revisit the characters in that story. To put it bluntly, sometimes you want to have that option, since doing so can make the entire series better. The original Starwars movie was reasonably self contained. But the original trilogy as a whole is a much better story.
Shows like Lost or X-Files that seem to lurch forward with no idea what the hell they are doing may well be the result of trying to draw things out longer than you ought to. (I know this to be the case for X-Files. I am on the fence regarding Lost, since they may just have no idea how the hell they wanted it to end).
Not all shows have an obvious long term story arc though. Star Trek Original Series and the Next Generation were very episodic in nature. When should those shows have ended?
For modern media, each movie or TV season should have an arc and a good end point. But that does not mean you must tie off every possibility of continuing the story.
END COMMUNICATION
For me, I consider a game dead when I stop playing it, stop hearing about it from friends and stop visiting the website. Isn't that pretty much the point at which it dies for each of us?
Take Ultima Online. Notably the first graphical MMO that reached a real massive population even though it was surpassed in many ways by successors. It's still running. Last I heard the population is about 30k. I heard the last live gathering of players and devs was more like a trailer park smoke and bitch fest.
Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Guild Wars... I guess they're still running, but who cares? The few thousand people hanging on will be jumping, too, just as soon as they find a new MMO that tickles their fancy or they buy a new computer that can run a game from this decade. They're just more reluctant to change.
Welcome back to the real world. Now that you've failed in the MMO market TWICE, you can go back to what youre good at. Making fun games.
Those of us who still play RPG's will forgive you for courting the MMO world, it's obviously a very attractive suitor, but MMO's can be just as costly and cruel to developers as they are to players, and now its time for you to rekindle that flare you seemed to have had for crafting excellent stories into living worlds and fun games.
Sometimes you have to step back to move forward.
Just look at Firefly. Would there be such a rabid fan community if the series had finished even one season with a cliffhanger? They made every show like it was their last and they never had a cliffhanger. 6 seasons of fighting, say, niska, or badger, or the reavers would have gotten predictable and dull. Hooray for endings of any kind. Also, try to remember this is just one more reason TV sucks.
As much as i loved the show when I was 8, it's hardly a high water mark for artistic merit.
Let's not confuse MMOs with "normal" single player games here. MMOs have no ending. You are supposed to play (and pay) forever. That's what they're about. Single player games need no cliffhanger to spawn a sequel. Did Call of Duty have a cliffhanger? Or Command and Conquer? The big nasty warlord needn't escape your grasp in the end to allow a sequel, wars didn't go out of fashion just because Hitler was beaten in WW2, there's plenty of nasties to start new wars. And just because the princess was rescued in the first part you needn't let the bad guy escape to have her kidnapped for a sequel.
MMOs continue for a simple reason. It's not about the game and "beating" its content. You can do that fairly easily and in relatively short time (depending on MMO). It's about items. What makes people play MMOs over and over is that they don't have the last item for their set yet.
That's also why TR failed. No item hunt. You could actually "finish" this game. You have seen all the instances after a fairly short time and ... well, why bother doing it again, it's not like you need to get some ultra-super-duper-rare drop from some boss monster in a 8+ hour 25 people instance.
MMOs today also do what single player games offered for the longest time: Different difficulty levels, for better rewards on higheer levels. You could play on harder modes for better scores for quite a time. Then single player games came equipped with "unlockable" goodies like concept art or better weapons or graphics. MMOs do pretty much the same these days, usually you can choose your difficulty to increase your chance for a drop or to unlock different, more powerful drops, on higher difficulty.
TR failed to deliver any of that.
And that's why TR failed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Good thing Mirror's Edge all but tanked.
"No one expects the .. Oh bugger"
Of course, that was all part of the joke but it was a darn good episode and it ended in mid sentence.
And if you are drawing a blank, it was Monty Python, and "Spanish Inquisition"
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
I think part of the issue here is that when a story teller says they are going to tell a story there is an implied obligation to tell the end of the story. He should feel the need to put together the ending because a story teller acting with integrity knows how the story ends before they claim to be telling it. When the author of a work sells out and starts milking us for the middle after a good hook we become frustrated.
That's a ripoff. At least do a big flash of light or something to signify nukes going off.
Technoli
As long as character development never stops, does the universe of the game/book really ever have to end? Well Ok, sometimes it does by its very nature - apocalyptic, dystopian situations tend to have such dramatic changes that the universe in question isn't going to be the same (if the ending doesn't suck that is).
In an ideal situation for on-going series, books and especially games like MMO's we are taking part in an extremely varied and evolving universe that we actually want to live in. Individual 'episodes' take us to different parts, different arcs, different people - but in the end many people get very involved in the lore and ideas of certain worlds, just look how far the Cthulu stuff got taken after the original author.
Its still gotta be good, people will die, new characters will join, existing ones will develop to a point where you no longer recognise them - all this is part of immersion, which many would agree is all too often missing.
Frankly, Sony did this with Heavenly Sword too. I was rather shocked when i saw a dead Nariko floating down the river in a canoe... The game is really well done though.
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
I partially disagree. MMOs for obvious reasons do not need to have an ending, but there have been good series with full on endings and even games with true endings. Babylon 5 and EFC both had true endings to the series (spinoffs notwithstanding, but a spinoff is different from a sequel), and from what I understand those endings were out least sketched out before the first production began. In games, The Force Unleashed has a true ending (2 actually). Even games with sequels of a sort can have a definitive end to the plot in that game. For instance, KOTOR II was much more of a spinoff than a sequel to KOTOR which had a very conclusive ending. I do think most television is the way you describe, but as you point out most television is ephemera. There is a large corpus of books, movies, and even (non-mmo) games with absolutely conclusive conclusions.
It doesn't fit with the overall meme. After all, if they kill the bad guys, then that means that violence was the answer in the first place, and any pain and suffering after the first season is pretty much their fault for being a bunch of squeamish bitches.
Code Geass was planned from the start to be two seasons, like many Sunrise shows.
(And the second season was still horrible, geez.)
actually, that's why I like shows from the UK such as the office. they decided 'hmmm, let's write for two seasons and call it a close.' I wish more american programs did that. I'm sure it'd be cool to have like 12 seasons of a great show [such as it's always sunny in philadelphia], but sometimes it's best to go out on top.
give the writers something fresh to write about after those few seasons, because obviously they have proven that they can write great stuff. I'd rather see fresh new shows with new characters and maybe a majority of the same writers than 38 seasons of say, the simpsons. we're in an age where people get bored quickly.
that being said, I wish dirty sexy money got a resolution before it was axed =\
What game developer still in business is going to open-source a game that's actually using state-of-the-art technology? I'm not talking about Doom[three versions back] or the Second Life client, I mean an actual state-of-the art game with a story arc and competitive graphics and physics.
Even if they have rights to enough of the IP to do it, why should they? They'd just be creating a competitor to their NEXT game.
While I am not glad BSG is ending because it is the best Sci-Fi show sence Babylon 5 I am glad that is is going to be a planed ending unlike so many other Sci-Fi Channel's shows (anyone remember Farscape).
Not sequels. F2 was the only sequel in the series. Just because something is set in the same universe doesn't mean it's a sequel.
Except he clearly doesn't want to do anything else before he dies.
Original trilogy - check.
Original trilogy, special edition - check
Prequal trilogy - check
Rerelease of original trilogy with minor changes - check
Rerelease of both trilogies in 3D - pending.
He may not be making 7-9, but he's certainly going to be doing star wars until he dies, because that's his cash cow.
I could never install the game. kept getting a cryptography error.
NCSoft support were useless also. I'd say Garriot needs to make a new game so he can go into space again.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Or you might read stuff like Kirk dies.
Oh, wait...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I lost my mod points yesterday, otherwise I'd mod you up.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Fallout 3, you die. Was it a failure? No, is it going to get a sequel? It has.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You mean Dune actually had a sequel???
hawk, who thought those vapid things with "Dune" in the name were yet more dismal fan-fiction, like for Star Trek
Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down?
Yet another sign of the decline of today's educational system.
Clearly ou are not familiar with Shakespeare's little known swan song, "Tempest II: This Time We Mean It."
It is very rarely performed, possibly because the play doesn't work without the finale in which the theater burns, and the characters rescue most, but not all, of the audience.
For that matter, it is rarely covered (or even its existence admitted!) in most college courses on Shakespeare, due to administrator's prissy ideas about classrooms catch fire, and the danger to the rest of the building.
For that matter . . . uh, oh, I may have mentioned too much. *OW*
hawk, running from his burning keyboard with blistered fingers
Metal Gear Solid 4 had a fantastic ending! And is likely to have a sequel apparently.
Well, Fallout 3 definitely has an end. And a lot of people are pissed about that. Finish the main quest and you're done. Yes you can load a save from before finishing, but you don't get to play around at all wiping out the last mutants as the world starts to clear of radiation.
But OTOH, if they want to do a fallout 4 it wouldn't be that hard to right a story set another couple hundred years in the future when some other calamity has destroyed things.
Probably the better question would by, "is there any point to actually providing a proper ending" the answer is not unless you're providing a proper game. It's pointless to render an awesome ending when the game play up to that point results in few people making it that far.
Another one is GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire, he's not a young man keeps pushing dates back.
I'm not at all a fan of Robert Jordan, but I did get sucked into George Martin's Ice and Fire series. The problem here isn't quite the same as the problem faced by MMOs or "Lost" - those keep going because there's money to be made.
Chances for an ending to Martin's epic are fading because he doesn't seem to know how to end it. He published the first 3 books within 4 years, but the fourth took 5 years and the fifth is nowhere in sight. It's also worth noting that the 4th book wasn't nearly as good as the first three. With the success of the series and an HBO series in planning, Martin would probably be better off financially if he could get past his writing difficulties and finish up the series.
And I think that the bigger part of the issue is that this so called 'obligation' is a load of crap. If you sign a contract with a publisher to write a certain number of books then you should fulfill that contract, but the act of reading a book does not somehow place the author in your debt.
I don't feel Martin owes me anything. And by the same token I don't owe him anything. He lost the plot with the last volume of Ice & Fire and so I won't be reading any more. I wish the hell he'd never even started the damn saga. Hard luck on me.
After that and the Wheel of Time I won't be getting caught a third time.
From now on, it's only finished stories for me. None of the ones I have read could be described as failures.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Adaptations from stand-alone books, and movies based on real events, don't really count.
By your criteria, we may as well list "Valkyrie" too. ;)
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On the topic of that, even if there's an ending, mechandise and other related spinoff stuff will still be made/sold years after the series ends. Just wanted to add that.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
His point was correct, though - LOST's ending wasn't defined when the series started, and the producers have stated that part of the reason Season 3 dragged so much was because they didn't have an end in sight and were getting kind of directionless.
I thought the second non-canon book was OK, or at least bits of the end were. The co-authors probably had more original stuff to work with for that one. The first I found to be pretty bad, not in tune with the mood of the earlier books, and the last one was better but still significantly worse than any book in the series actually written by Frank Herbert. Way better than anything else I've picked up by Brian Herbert, though. I finish almost anything I start to read, but I've discarded some of his stuff.
I did not find that the two books really added much to the series, but I don't regret reading them, either. I am not going to read their other pseudo-dune stuff, though. The excerpts are pretty weak.
I wish Douglas Adams could have written a Salmon of Doubt, and, of course, lots of other stuff. Judging from his later works (both biographical and fictional) the last few years of his life were not really happy. Too bad he did not stay in Britain. RIP.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
Assassin's Creed. Decent Game for those who had the patience to play through it. The ending... BIG CLIFFHANGER... Leaving it WIDE open for a sequal
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
Well Lucas shows that just because you have an end doesn't mean you can't still screw it up and keep it alive by prebirthing it. Time goes both directions, -equal wise.
And if George has perma-wrapped both ends now, I'm sure he'll strike out along a new time axis somehow. The prequels weren't about $300 million movies. They were about $2 billion in licensing before the first one was even made. The whole cost of the movie is nothing more than a loss leader for that.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
One of the things I was really impressed about with Lost, at first, is that they didn't constantly abuse cliffhangers. Many of the first episodes have real conclusive endings to a particular story, and they'd end on a kind of lullaby note. Now it feels much more cliche.
On a more positive note, maybe Sanderson will manage to tie everything in the last book. The Mistborn books as a trilogy worked quite well. No loose threads in the end.
I'm hoping Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles does the same.
I'll say... according to Amazon, now it's scheduled for september 29. And it's not even a sequel, but parts he left out in Feast of Crows.
No sig
"Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down?"
You mean like how fan favourite Falstaff got killed off in Henry V so the eight-play historical cycle could suddenly turn all serious?
Yeah, a real artist like Shakespeare would never do something like that.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Buffy had a very strong ending
It did. But then they made seasons 6 and 7...
Why not? They were all with high profile Hollywood stars.... Am I missing something?
I think anime is to blame for the worst of it. Nearly every series either sets in stone the length of the series ahead of time, or it gets dragged on for several seasons much to the dismay of the artists who made it, at least up until they check their bank accounts.
Take for instance Slayers.
At the end of the first series, the biggest baddest mofo in the universe is defeated.
then, there's a second season. And at the end of the second season, the biggest(er) baddest(er) mofo(er) in the universe(er) is defeated.
And then there's a third season...
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
The only passable ending you've seen was quantum leap? (and there was something passable about that pile?) You must not be old enough to have watched MASH.
Personally, Shenmue is the example I go back to when someone brings up abrupt endings, "coulda been great", "if only they'd given it a chance", etc. etc. I played the original on the Dreamcast, bought the import of Shenmue 2 and went through that whole boot cd thing, then bought it again for the XBox. And there we are, at the end of 2, staring at that wall, wondering where they could possibly go from there.
Turns out, nowhere.
This is a game that, like a lot of games and shows other people have mentioned, had a (I guess) small but devoted following; I really enjoyed the game(s) and really thought we were getting into a "true" tv-like series, only with a Virtua Fighter engine. And it was just dropped. Nobody has even *hinted* that anything new will ever come out, nor has Yu Suzuki or anyone at Sega even bothered to, at the very least, throw up a web page to tell how it was all supposed to come out.
Sadly, I think this is also a case where fan-fiction wouldn't help; it was supposed to be this whole story that Suzuki supposedly wrote and would have (theoretically) been spread out over a lot of "episodes".
Oh well, now I'm depressed...maybe I'll watch some Babylon 5 to cheer myself up.
Oh wait... dammit!!
2001? Long anime has been around before that.
Reading comprehension! 2001 was when the OP started watching anime. No one said anything about when anything first came into existence.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Well, he does speak of how animes are becoming shorter: "the first thing that struck me was that many series did actually have endings ... however ... the classic stand-alone 13 or 26 episode series has fallen from favour in recent years."
I'm trying to say that: 1) there are still plenty of short anime series 2) there are popular anime series like Detective Conan which started before 2001 and still haven't ended
I believe that my assertion is relevant even if it does not directly contradict his. I apologize if I wasn't clear enough.
Also, irrelevant to the anime discussion, but relevant to the OP's post: remember Conan Doyle. His famous works were serialized in a magazine before being published in a book. Apparently, works can have literary merit even when sequelized to the extreme.
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
I think you're completely right, especially about TV shows. I think that's partly why Firefly did as well as it did in DVD sales. They didn't wring the same formula through a dozen proverbial dry cleaning seasons, and so it stayed fresh right till the very end. There was no point where it went over the hill, or "Jumped the Shark". But that's the point where money meets artistic interest, to do something to keep your actors/actresses, set crew, and all upper management employed... or to do something right but finish within one season.
Posting with out proof reading since 2001.
Gladiator had a very final ending. That was much more recent than most of the movies mentioned so far and I certainly enjoy it enough to watch it again periodically.
I think the ending versus hook into sequel has a lot to do with the director.
This is a common case for a certain type of author (particularly for authors working in SF, fantasy, and crime), but it's by no means universal. Consider John Grisham or Dick Francis, for example; both have managed to produce huge numbers of bestselling books while only occasionally reusing characters.
And there are entire major genres, such as light romance, where sequels themselves are generally unpopular. (The readers are after a story about a woman finding Mr Right; they don't care about what happens after the wedding.)
Conversely, there are plenty of cases where a long-running series is clearly the result of an author wanting to write a series, not of financial pressure. I don't think JK Rowling would have been in any danger of starving if she'd decided to stop after only 3 Harry Potter books.
Likewise, IIRC Henry VI part 1 was written as a prequel to Henry VI part 2, which had originally been the first of a two-part series.
The original author seems to be making the point - "Modern movies, books and games are all designed with sequel hooks and are pure commercial enterprises. They aren't REAL art". Stop looking down your nose at commerce! Face it, who can afford to make pure art without worrying about how to feed themselves?