are yearly franchises hurting games?

Do you think yearly franchises are hurting the gaming industry? I mean games like assassins creed were so much fun until you got burned out with the same sub-par game like three years in a row and COD was also insanely fun but there comes a time were you just burn out. I mean the new batman game while i felt it had enough new improvements and a fun story many reviewers criticized it harshly for being too similar to its predecessor. How come that game gets a tough review while games like assassins creed and COD get good reviews even though have the same fault?

No. The year there isn't a COD is the year the gaming industry collapses. Only game worth playing most years.

Absolutely. Look at Tony Hawk, and Guitar Hero. A year simply isn't enough time to meaningfully iterate upon the game that came before. Sports games are a little different (except WWE, I'd say that suffers from the same problem).

Haven't these things been going on for a while?

Fuck this again? Sorry but there was heated thread about this already.

Recap:

Arkham Origins is a single-player focused adventure game that was made by the B-team this time around. It's derivative and though you can approach it multiple ways it's basically the same experience for everyone. It's the third in a series that need new life breathed into it. I thought Arkham City was pretty bland really.

Call of Duty is like a sports game, the single-player is usually good but the meat is the multiplayer where every game is different. Each year is like a dramatic roster update with new weapons and maps. If you're a fan of the series one you buy the game it becomes your go-to game for that year, maybe two. Nobody will play Arkham Origins all year, it's not that sort of game.

Call of Duty get criticised every year by reviewers and gamers. People act like they're the first person to say "Hey, has anyone else noticed CoD hasn't changed much?". You are not. Yeah it gets 9s and 8s, maybe 10s, but if you disagree with that reviewer constantly realise that's their opinion and move on. Maybe don't read their reviews anymore. I hardly ever agree with Jeff so I don't read his reviews (Syndicate was a 3-star game, Pokemon X is brilliant IMHO).

Hurting games? How exactly? Sports game have been annualised forever, now some shooters are too ... it's not a huge deal.

The games industry is too big and broad to be "hurt" by a few yearly franchises. If you don't like it, you have infinite other options - new IPs or the flood of indie games.

But why is being single player focused being judged differently than being mulitplayer focused? I mean, I get that they have different target audiences but the amount of play time does not mean that the quality of that play time is better. It's like saying a game that offers an infinite amount of content is always better than a game with a limited amount of content.

You have to understand that the people who reviewed Batman Arkahm Origins didn't necessarily review Call of Duty or Assassins Creed.

There's no reason to equate anecdotal burnout on annual franchises with the overall health of the industry, at least until that burnout starts to affect sales. Anything that sells a ton isn't hurting the game industry.

I remember when i would get excited for Assassins creed games...........never again :-(

Let me clarify when i mean hurting games i mean that some companies are changing their games in order to try and make them yearly franchises. Like resident evil that went from a great survival horror game to a generic shooter, i know those games bring in massive amounts of money but when i think hurting the industry is games are almost no longer allowed to make one great story but more about setting up a franchise.

Who ever said that? I play Battlefield 3, I have about 250 hours in it. I love the shit out of that game. My all time favourite game is Ocarina of Time, which takes about 40 hours. Time doesn't equal quality. The OP's issue was why do annual games get a "free pass" but a once every few years Batman game get slammed for being unoriginal. The reason is modern shooters are like sports games -- they are designed from the ground up to be annual. Arkham Origins is a one and done experience, and from all accounts it's not hat much fun. It doesn't get a "free pass" for annual because it's a single-player game that doesn't change with every play, Call of Duty for example does. No two games are the same.

On the flip side should original IPs get a "free pass" for being new? Do they get a score bump for trying something different? Fuck that. I want my review to say "hey you know that job you work at for 40 hours a week to make money, well this game is worth that money" not "look it's not that great, but it's new! So buy it! But if they make sequels avoid them."

Agreed.

Sports games are fine with yearly iterations. But some game series have been slipping in quality every year. The Tony Hawk series is a good example; Pretty much everything post THUG has been garbage, or filled with bad ideas and gimmicks, aka Tony Hawk Ride.

The Assassins Creed series feels like it's been slipping the last couple years. Revelations was okay, but it was a sizable step down from Brotherhood and I couldn't even get through AC3. I had no interest in it and a couple hours in nothing was compelling enough to make me finish it.

I've tried to blame Call of Duty for the yearly release spam games that other companies have put out over the years to try and cash in, but it makes no sense anymore. How does releasing a new AC game compare with COD? I see them as entirely differently beasts. Call of Duty, the multiplayer aspect at least, just looks like a $60 map pack to me every time it comes out. And a new AC game looks less impressive every year because they're cranking them out so fast they can't hunker down and flesh the game out more. After AC4, take a break guys. Take a year or two off and come back with a jaw dropper that sweets the charts and wins all the Game of The Year awards and puts me in my nay saying place.

They might be hurting the individual game series, but I'd say they are generally good for gaming as a whole. Money is money, dawg.

Why has your response to his question been to attack his credibility rather than, you know, discuss the issue?

I'd say it more or less killed Madden. Pretty much all Madden needs(ed) was a roster update and maybe a new version every 3 years or so. But instead we get stuffed with badly overpriced new releases (aka glorified roster updates) every year. And that gets (got) old fast.

But for most others no. As long as there good ideas and they can be executed well that fast, Ain't no thang. A series doesn't have be yearly to be out of ideas, and just because it does doesn't mean it is.

Killing? Maybe. Killed? Not at all. It's still selling OK, and its dip in sales could be circumstantial rather than because of the quality of the game.

Killed in the sense of its relevancy and what I personally liked about it. I think Madden will be around as long as EA has the exclusive NFL license, cuz there are a lot of people will play any football game just because it's football. But Football doesn't dominate videogames at all like it used to.

It's still a cash cow, but it hasn't been interesting in nearly ten years.

No, not really.

Few series ever turn into a yearly thing. Call of Duty, Assassins creed and the plastic guitar games back when those were still a thing. (oh and sports games but those hardly count)

If anything they help games since it makes it more mainstream and accepted by the general population.

It's also "not killing the industry" by having so many other games go after the "CoD market" because guess what? ITS AN INDUSTRY. They're trying to make MONEY. I don't even expect to see many "CoD knockoffs" in the future either since msot of the the time they aren't very good or well liked. Medal of Honor anyone?

Does it kill that specific series/franchise? Sure most of the time. Call of Duty is still going strong, but I'm seeing alot of people i know who are huge into be less and less excited each year.

Assassins creed? Well I think they should really drop the whole future bullshit memory machine aspect of it. Cus thats fucking stupid and drags down the story. Alot of people hated AC3, i thought it was OK, the main character was bland and it was SO slow and rigid. The story was kinda dumb.

I also don't get the rabid internet hate for Call of Duty. Seems people hate it because its popular. I'm not big into it because i don't really like TDM or deathmatches in shooters i find them boring. And i'm not a fan of super arcadey feeling shooters. But other people are and well, CoD does it great every year. Call of Duty is always a very well made and high quality game. Just because it isn't for you, doesn't mean you should shit on it and claim its killing gaming when its not.

I agree with everyone saying that annualizing franchises doesn't hurt the industry as a whole, but is definitely hurting certain particular franchises: Assassin's Creed would be my go to example. I agree with @ch3burashka that there are so many options that it doesn't matter if a particular franchise or three burn themselves out, something is always ready to replace them. CoD replaced MoH, it looks like Watch_Dogs could replace Assassin's Creed, Dance Central replaced Rock Band which itself had replaced Guitar Hero (that's more anecdotal. I don't recall how the later GH games sold). That analysis doesn't even take into account the burgeoning indie game sector which can be as profitable as a AAA title, and certainly offers more variety. It bums me out that Ubi has killed my once significant interest in the Assassin's Creed franchise, but there is a ton of other good stuff out there for me to explore.

EDIT: Also, to be clear, nothing is actually hurting or killing the gaming industry/games. The industry overall is generally projected to grow by tens of billions of dollars over the next 3-4 years.

No. The people who buy into all the dlc nickle and diming crap are.

Because this issue is among the most discussed in video games and if you're not bringing ANYTHING new to the table why bother? This is the third or fourth thread in a week to call out annual games getting special treatment. We get it, he thinks Call of Duty/other annual shooter/yearly adventure game are harming the industry. I mean, they aren't. They keep people employed. A LOT OF PEOPLE. If that's harm than so be it.

No, it's fine.

No.

MMOs and mobas/f2p are killing games. MMOs because almost every franchise worth half a fuck runs the risk of going mmo and getting decimated. Mobas and f2p because, like with mmos previously, everyone wants to make the format (but not the quality) that brings in the most money.

Also exclusive dlc. Fuck that shit.

Well for me they are not killing gaming but they are killing their franchise like they aren't putting a big improvements every year which causes games to become mainstream only times they do a improvements is the gen up times like this.

Not as much as pre-ordering and relying on income from DLC to fund bloated game budgets. This whole industry needs a bullet in the brain.

It does for certain franchises such as Assassin's Creed where it feels like diminishing returns.

guitar hero and rock band are the best examples of what your saying, but they were trends and those died faster.