Do developers get trapped?

There is this idea I've been toying with lately. This idea of a lot of developers being stuck making the same games over and over. Perhaps they're under pressure from publishers. Maybe the fans are being aggressively demanding of sequels. If you go any game related site on the web, you're probably not going to struggle to find a "they should make a X sequel." thread or article. There are probably a lot of reasons I have yet to think of. I'm not making an uncommon observation when I say the video game industry is very sequel-oriented. It's always been that way. I'm speaking to more than that. I've noticed there are quite a few developers out there that continue to make games that are very similar to their past work, some for many years, regardless of them being sequels.

Hidetaka Miyazaki quickly became a game designer I knew I had to keep tabs on when I first popped in Demon’s Souls back in 2009. He knocked it out of the park again with his follow up, Dark Souls. Stepping down from lead design to supervise while he presumably went on to bigger and better things with Bloodborne, Dark Souls II kept up the tradition of being another sensational game in a sensational series.

Bloodborne is precisely what I wanted it to be. It might have a new setting, it might have a new name, it might be a new IP, but it’s still another Souls game. Having already completed Bloodborne twice, I’m already itching for some DLC, or you know, a whole new game. I want Miyazaki to continue cranking these games out, and I’m growing wary of that want.

I look at so many franchises, The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, the Call of Duty, that apart from one or two key games in each series, seem quite reiterative from one game to the next. If you want to be really hardcore about all of these games every sequel is generally mixing it up just enough to be a fresh experience. The same is true for Demon’s Souls moving to Dark Souls, and Dark Souls moving to Dark Souls II, and now with Bloodborne, and presumably with the forthcoming Dark Souls III. There is plenty different in each for my being a hardcore fan to make the most of.

A more casual (if that’s a thing) Souls player is less likely to find the nuances of each game and dismiss it as more of the same, just as I am when it comes to a new Call of Duty or Pokemon game. A big reason these games keep getting made is because of the public demand for them, and publishers liking money. Activision has been known to run a few series into the ground, as have other publishers. Call of Duty has somehow continued to survive Activision's publishing ways, but it is a good example of publishers keeping devs on one type of game.

Speaking of Call of Duty and its developers, Vince Zampella and Jason West used to work at a studio known as 2015 inc. At that studio they led the design on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault which released in 2002. They left, formed Infinity Ward and released Call of Duty the following year, which as most of us know, spawned a lot of sequels. Since the whole debacle between Activision and these two guys, they formed Respawn Entertainment (West left in 2012) and Titanfall has since been released. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault opened with a sequence straight out of the film, Saving Private Ryan, and the original Call of Duty opened with one from Enemy at the Gates. The Call of Duty series moved to the modern era, and Titanfall shows the future. While the settings change, these are all games maintaining a distinct overall feel with their gameplay. It probably shouldn't surprise anyone to know these games were all made by a lot of the same people. Even though Activision might have been pushing for more Call of Duty with Zampella and West, they made a game like them before, and Respawn is set to keep making games like them in the future.

There are some other well-known developers out there that fuel this idea. Keiji Inafune is making Might No. 9, which blatantly takes after Mega Man, a series Inafune had worked on for a long time and helped create. Koji Igarashi is credited with putting the "vania" in metroidvania, for his work on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Throughout the 00's he continued his work on the series on Nintendo handhelds with more Symphony of the Night style Castlevania experiences. He hasn't done much since his work with the series concluded with Harmony of Despair in 2011, but recently he came out of hiding to follow in Inafune's footsteps and revealing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on kickstarter, a game that, based on the pitch, is very closely following the Symphony of the Night tradition.

There is one particularly striking example showcasing this observation of developer's reiterating on their original ideas. Ken Levine's first game since founding Irrational Studios, System Shock 2, was released in 1999. It was critically adored, and despite its poor sales, it became a cult hit. Bioshock released in 2007, also critically adored, but it was a commercial success. What makes this example interesting isn't just the gameplay similarities, but the story similarities as well. Bioshock seems like more than just a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. It's like Ken Levine felt like he had something there, but didn't quite get it right, but with Bioshock, he perfected the original idea and narrative he put out in 1999.

The shock example, as well as Inafune and Igarashi's kickstarter campaigns has give rise to an idea that maybe these developers aren't trapped, but are just a bunch of perfectionists. That maybe, they just don't feel they quite said what they needed to. They got close, but need another chance. There are probably cases in which developers are trapped, stuck making one kind of game repeatedly, whether it's the fans or publishers pressuring them. Perhaps the devs get nostalgic just like everyone else and just want to make the same game. There are probably also cases in which all of these factors and others are relevant. One developer might create the “same” game over and over, but there are a lot of developers, so it's not the biggest issue. It would be if every developer was making the same game as everyone else. Good thing that's not the case (except maybe at Ubisoft).

The nature of the industry is that sequels or similar types of games result in less risk and better sales for developers/publishers. You do see a lot of complaints on forums like this about sequels yet these same people will go and back a product on kickstarter which is a spiritual successor to a game they loved in their childhood.

Part of this is probably the fact it's hard to push for something new from a studio even as a fan. Whenever developers interact the community they are inundated with 'when are you making the sequel to Game X' type questions. The fact is that as a fan it's hard to want something new when you don't know what that new thing is. It's simpler to ask for a sequel to something you loved than to ask for something completely different. I considered this point during the week following the Bombast discussion about what Rockstar should do next. The whole crew were discussing the possibility of sequels to Red Dead or Bully yet nobody considered the idea Rockstar could produce something completely new.

As a developer/publisher it must be hard to justify taking a risk on something new when the media and public spend all their time pushing for sequels. On top of that sequels tend to sell better than new IP unless you make a truly exceptional game such as The Last of Us (although it could be argued even that took a lot from Uncharted). Games like Watch Dogs, The Order and Driveclub have shown that if you try something different and don't produce a masterpiece your game will be poorly received critically and sell poorly. Financially it just makes sense to produce the same type of game which you know will hit a certain sales level and be cheaper to produce having already done the same thing in the past.

It's a real shame but not something I expect to see change given the recent trends.

I believe we are in that stage where we have our "Brands" that we like and in some cases, need and the people who are responsible for bringing the product to the consumer know this and are going to capitalize on it. It is not just practiced in the video game industry neither, just look around and you will quickly realize we live in a world chock-full of IP and products that are basically reiterations and rehashes of the thing before it. I look at it like this, it is all part of the evolution of the game.

Speaking as someone working in a large studio that does servicing as well as original IPs, the other side of this is trying to work on projects you're passionate about. It's half skill, half luck. Managers assign people to projects as they enter pre-production. Usually you'll be assigned to projects where you can excel, but a lot of it is up to the luck of the draw: the projects that are being started up when you're done with your old one. If you're really good at Alpha projects, but all that's available are Bravo projects when your schedule opens up... hope you like working on a Bravo project for the next 9-12 months. This might be a grass-is-greener scenario; maybe I'd be singing a different tune if all I could do was the game genre that gave me a big break.

It all comes down to money, which is unfortunate but unavoidable. However, since the indie scene is still thriving, there's always opportunities for something totally new to come along. Yeah, a lot of smaller games riff on established mechanics/genres, but you never know what could happen.

I think a lot of people would envy being able to find one thing someone is really good at making that also gives them a lot of success. When you find that thing you are good at and makes you money and a good living, it's pretty scary and risky to jump off onto something else, on the hopes it does the same.

It's the same situation musicians, artists, writers, and other creatives find themselves in; for some, you experiment and take risks and try new things until you find what, hopefully, makes you happy AND brings you great success - and then you keep doing it and refine it as you go.

edit: I was doing some more thinking on this today and thought of something to add: if you apply this "trapped" comparison to successful figures in other lines of work, it gets a bit funny. Imagine if people claimed Keith Richards was trapped in creating guitar rock & roll music... sounds a bit crazy. What should he branch out into? Upright bass rockabilly?

Imagine how absolutely ridiculous it would be if a sports star, let's say... Michael Jordan, was to have one day said to himself "I'm pretty good at sports but I am limiting myself being just the best at basketball. I should try something else, like... uh... baseball or something." Just imagine what a monumental train wreck this completely hypothetical situation would have been. ;–)

Wasn't that always the story on Kojima? That he wanted to make other games, but Konami always made him to do more Metal Gear?

I suspect as others have said there are a multitude of factors of why some auteurs end up making similar games over and over (it's what they are good at, it's what a publisher will back, it's what the dev enjoys etc).

@stinger061: I like your point about what Rockstar could be working on next. Almost always when a company goes dark, people just speculate and hope for a sequel (Go back to Agent please Rockstar). I definitely agree with you. It's a damned shame that this is the way it is and likely to stay.

@whitegreyblack: I certainly thought about bringing other mediums into my post. Directors of movies is more of what came to mind for me. Movie directors have really long careers though, so while it's easy to expect every movie from Scorcese to be a crime movie like Goodfellas or The Departed, he's directed stuff like Shutter Island, Raging Bull and The Aviator as well.

@slag: I thought about mentioning Kojima, and I probably should have given recent events. Your second point is definitely on point. There are plenty of reasons to make the same game.

It's always worth noting that developers have to eat, too. Call of Duty pays the bills for a lot of people and there's never a dark, dismal "will this actually succeed" cloud hanging over the whole development process.

I doubt that Inafune and Igarashi would have gotten as much Kickstarter money as they got if they were working on something that couldn't possibly be compared to the franchises that gave each person their positions in the industry.

@morecowbell24: Good point on the film director parallel.