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Game Endings Going Out of Style?
An article in the Guardian asks whether the focus of modern games has shifted away from having a clear-cut ending and toward indefinite entertainment instead. With the rise of achievements, frequent content updates and open-ended worlds, it seems like publishers and developers are doing everything they can to help this trend. Quoting:
"Particularly before the advent of 'saving,' the completion of even a simple game could take huge amounts of patience, effort and time. The ending, like those last pages of a book, was a key reason why we started playing in the first place. Sure, multiplayer and arcade style games still had their place, but fond 8, 16 and 32-bit memories consist more of completion and satisfaction than particular levels or tricky moments. Over the past few years, however, the idea of a game as simply something to 'finish' has shifted somewhat. For starters, the availability of downloadable content means no story need ever end, as long as the makers think there's a paying audience. Also, the ubiquity of broadband means multiplayer gaming is now the standard, not the exception it once was. There is no real 'finish' to most MMORPGs."
The first thing I thought of when reading the summary was "I don't think Square fits here." FFVI had a half hour ending, and that was on the SNES.
But I don't really see this effect. For example, GTA IV does have an end to the plot. Now, there's still the open world that you can keep playing in, but the storyline has a conclusion. Modern Warfare 1 had a concrete ending, and it was pretty good.
I'd argue that this isn't an industry wide trend as much as EA... I mean, their biggest franchises are the sports games which of course have no ending and rely on multiplayer as the platform... and EA has a history of taking great franchises and tanking them.
But IIRC, EA didn't have anything to do with EA. That was Activision.
Video game endings have always been of interest to me. Ever since my siblings and I first starting Super Mario Bros. in the 1980s, that and subsequent game completions were fun to discuss and play around with. We discovered that turning the volume all the way up on the TV during the ending song produced a much different sounding song and purposefully annoyed the adults around. Then one of us beat Castlevaina 2: Simon's quest and I discovered not only that game endings could have awesome, uplifting music, but that there could be alternate endings!. The simple fact that there were 2 endings gave the game great value in re-playability. Fast forward to today and game endings have less of an impact. More emphasis goes to the 'completion' of a game, as in getting 100% achievements or the equivalent. You also have to factor in the cliff-hanger endings. Too many games leave it open to a possible sequel. As the area matures even further I'm sure things will continue to change.
One of the things that was perhaps best for the Stargate Atlantis and SG-1 series was that they were fairly faithful to their "meme" throughout the series, and then came to a fairly definitive conclusion.
OK, well actually in the case of Atlantis the wraith are still out there etc - which might leave room for a movie - but the series was "completed" rather than be allowed to trail off until it was just a murmuring gurgle as it was pulled off life support.
IMHO, Atlantis was a fairly successful way to "conclude" one series (SG-1) and start another. There's a definitive relation between the two, and even cameos and intersecting plot-arcs, but the overall focus of the two series was different enough to lend it some uniqueness, and the characters were different between the two.
Unfortunately SG-U seems to break-down because, while having a new setting and characters, it also tries was too hard to focus on some fairly tired memes and doesn't seem to have nearly as strong a plot base as its predecessors.