Sequels: Are They Good For the Industry?

One of my editorials I wrote when I was writing for my own blog a while back.  Since it's interesting I thought I'd share it with you guys.

Written by Adam M. a.k.a Ziriux

The same runs true for Final Fantasy, and especially with Halo.  I remember picking up my Xbox with a minimal choice of games. I was almost ready to put that big black brick away. That was, until I discovered Halo. Rushing to the store to pick it up, I started playing the game and was blown away by the sheer grandiosity of it. One of the signs of a great game is leaving you wanting more, and each of these titles are great games.

Many of us have been playing Call of Duty games since the series was first introduced on the PC.  Activision shares the franchise with two different developers, Infinity Ward and Treyarch, while the fanatics of each developer will argue over which is superior, the Infinty Ward developed games are held as superior by the majority. Whether it’s sales, reviews or gameplay, Infinity Ward knows how to make a game that puts money in activisions pocket and satisfies millions of gamers at the same time.  The majority of the series was set in World War 2 until Modern Warfare was released last year setting record sales numbers for the franchise. What does Treyarch do?  They go right back to WWII and borrow the same concept from Modern Warfare, which seems to be working.  Call of Duty is one franchise full of sequels, that never seems to get old. Hopefully Modern Warfare 2 continues this tradition when it’s released in November ‘09.

Every fan of First Person Shooter’s knows the name Halo.  Developer Bungie has released 3 Halo games that have innovated the genre in some way.  Halo: Combat Evolved saved the Xbox single handedly during its sales slump, the game sold over 3 million copies and brought the Xbox back into relevancy.  Soon after the release of the original Halo, Bungie went right to work and developed the highly anticipated Halo 2, which sold over 10 million copies to date.

The game offered people an unrivaled online experience on consoles, allowing game types beyond your generic deathmatches and its groundbreaking matchmaking system arguably put Bungie on the map.  The story wasn’t the best we’ve ever seen, but the multiplayer was the main attraction and was the real reason to stay. With the release of Halo 3 in September, 2007; we received updated graphics and an end to the story arguably “Finishing the Fight.”

Halo 3 brought multiplayer to a whole new level. The brand new Forge mode was a  basic yet versatile map editor. The game also offered a film saving feature that had you spending hours looking through and picking out your best clips and uploading them to a Bungie-run community website.  So what’s next for the franchise? An expansion to Halo 3, Halo: ODST is set to release sometime in 2009.  Also in the mill is a rumor that Halo 4 is in development by Gearbox, creators of the Brothers in Arms franchise. Where is the Halo series going? We don’t know exactly, but there is much in store for this series, even though the fight is finished…  Although it does leave us wondering, is Halo being stretched further than it can go?

This leads to a few other questions.  Should game franchises be released on a yearly basis?  Can a developer really put out quality in the short amount of time?  These are questions that the developer needs to address in the decision they make about sequels.  Activision seems to be doing alright switching between Treyarch and Infinity Ward every year, but can other developers afford to do the same, or is the extra year or two worth the wait. We can only see as time goes on.

Your thoughts? Please comment.

One of my editorials I wrote when I was writing for my own blog a while back.  Since it's interesting I thought I'd share it with you guys.

Written by Adam M. a.k.a Ziriux

The same runs true for Final Fantasy, and especially with Halo.  I remember picking up my Xbox with a minimal choice of games. I was almost ready to put that big black brick away. That was, until I discovered Halo. Rushing to the store to pick it up, I started playing the game and was blown away by the sheer grandiosity of it. One of the signs of a great game is leaving you wanting more, and each of these titles are great games.

Many of us have been playing Call of Duty games since the series was first introduced on the PC.  Activision shares the franchise with two different developers, Infinity Ward and Treyarch, while the fanatics of each developer will argue over which is superior, the Infinty Ward developed games are held as superior by the majority. Whether it’s sales, reviews or gameplay, Infinity Ward knows how to make a game that puts money in activisions pocket and satisfies millions of gamers at the same time.  The majority of the series was set in World War 2 until Modern Warfare was released last year setting record sales numbers for the franchise. What does Treyarch do?  They go right back to WWII and borrow the same concept from Modern Warfare, which seems to be working.  Call of Duty is one franchise full of sequels, that never seems to get old. Hopefully Modern Warfare 2 continues this tradition when it’s released in November ‘09.

Every fan of First Person Shooter’s knows the name Halo.  Developer Bungie has released 3 Halo games that have innovated the genre in some way.  Halo: Combat Evolved saved the Xbox single handedly during its sales slump, the game sold over 3 million copies and brought the Xbox back into relevancy.  Soon after the release of the original Halo, Bungie went right to work and developed the highly anticipated Halo 2, which sold over 10 million copies to date.

The game offered people an unrivaled online experience on consoles, allowing game types beyond your generic deathmatches and its groundbreaking matchmaking system arguably put Bungie on the map.  The story wasn’t the best we’ve ever seen, but the multiplayer was the main attraction and was the real reason to stay. With the release of Halo 3 in September, 2007; we received updated graphics and an end to the story arguably “Finishing the Fight.”

Halo 3 brought multiplayer to a whole new level. The brand new Forge mode was a  basic yet versatile map editor. The game also offered a film saving feature that had you spending hours looking through and picking out your best clips and uploading them to a Bungie-run community website.  So what’s next for the franchise? An expansion to Halo 3, Halo: ODST is set to release sometime in 2009.  Also in the mill is a rumor that Halo 4 is in development by Gearbox, creators of the Brothers in Arms franchise. Where is the Halo series going? We don’t know exactly, but there is much in store for this series, even though the fight is finished…  Although it does leave us wondering, is Halo being stretched further than it can go?

This leads to a few other questions.  Should game franchises be released on a yearly basis?  Can a developer really put out quality in the short amount of time?  These are questions that the developer needs to address in the decision they make about sequels.  Activision seems to be doing alright switching between Treyarch and Infinity Ward every year, but can other developers afford to do the same, or is the extra year or two worth the wait. We can only see as time goes on.

Your thoughts? Please comment.

Develpers CAN put out quality upgrades within a years time. But the key word is upgrades. If developers wan't to really redesign or revolutionalize a game it just takes longer, simple as that. I'm a huge fan of sports games, basketball in particular. So I know exactly what its like to get sub par games year after year. This is why I was pushed from the NBA Live franchise a few years back. It was actually 2005 when the 2K sports crew released NBA 2K5. It was priced at just $20 and was making huge strides to equal and even overtake Live in some areas. So I decided to buy it over Live and never looked back. Ever since then Live has gone downhill every year. Their downfall IMO was the EA guys were making too many cganges to try and keep Live fresh and new and interesting. What I think 2K does more so than EA is just focus on the game of basketball and making it as fluid amd real as possible. It seems like EA just keeps throwing things into their games year after year and praying something will catch on so they can ride which ever feature it is for the next few years. Anyways my point is that Some developers can successfully develop games year after year with fresh ideas that work and some can't. But. You'd be hard pressed to find a developer that can make real meaningful changes to a series in a years time. 

Good response.  I think that with Live EA is banking too much on their name, just because there are many Madden fans there would be just as many Live fans, but they forgot gamers want quality in their gameplay.  I think they need to hire a new creative producer to try to help and take the series to the next level and make some critical changes.

Making a video-game at this point is very expensive, to such a degree that when someone launches a new IP it's a "franchise", of course implying sequels of some sort. Video-games also lend themselves well to sequels because game-play can usually be refined up and down over and over. Takes too much time to develop a game so developers choose to focus on some key aspects and then in subsequent iterations improve and include more. 

A sequel is also much more financially safe compared to making a completely new game, so even with diminished returns it's much easier to break even.

That's understandable.  New projects do tend to take more resources and time that a developer simply can't afford or take the time to do in today's economy.

Not even just in this economy, but the incessant arms race of hardware and the inane amount of 'from the ground up' development that goes on, shit get's expensive fast! Hopefully as hardware improvements slow down there will be a bigger focus on making good architecture and SDKs. Especially Sony, seeing as how shitty their architecture has been since the PS1 days, and they aren't as accommodating and helpful as they were back then. Hopefully they've shed some arroganse after how they've been doing this generation...

Yea but these economic times make it even harder, you can't say that before this they actually care too much about starting new projects.  The CEO of EA at D.I.C.E said that thanks to this economic situation and companies laying off like EA it helped them get rid of garbage.  Those were his same exact words.

I wanna go out a limb and say that there is inherently something greater with a smaller team. More work for everybody, sure, but it makes it easier for all involved to see what they are doing and how it affects the over-all picture. In a giant corporation like EA I suspect there are a lot of fluff positions, going by my own experience in similarly sized corporations, and getting rid of the fat and harnessing the core is probably a good idea (especially for the 'current economic situation').

In regards to EA's current policies I really have sky-high expectations for their project with Suda-51, even though I haven't heard much about it (besides the fact that it exists...). :)

Yea it definitely seems as if the smaller the dev. team the more personal they take the project which is a good thing, more work is put into projects with a great motivation.

I'm going to say "No, it's not good for the industry," with a couple of caveats.

As a general rule, sequels are never as good as the original. The initial "gee whiz" factor that makes a game stand out from the crowd will rarely be repeated in any sequel.  Typical sequels are more of the same, with updated graphics, and a (usually) gimmicky new gameplay mechanic.

On the other hand, if done correctly, a perfectly crafted sequel can revive an old franchise.  The trick is to keep the game fresh yet familiar, and very few companies (outside of maybe Bioware, Blizzard, and LucasArts) have been able to do it successfully.  LucasArts for example, created an amazing game in the original X-Wing. But they took it a step farther in TIE Fighter by keeping a lot of the core mechanics, but adding in a twist (playing the 'bad guys').  That's the sort of thing that really makes a sequel interesting, and not just an 'expansion pack' to the original title.

Are you serious? Sequels FUEL the industry. Period.

I think when a new IP comes out that exceeds all expectations, then you can expect sequels.  If no sequels occur, then anything that is released later that has a similar theme or look, it'll just be compared as a clone to some previous smash hit.  Sequels are easier to develop since you're building on what is already there & the marketing is already built-in.  Why go off & build some other FPS & have to rebuild the marketing behind the game to get people to notice it?  The extra profit from the IP cash cow can be used to pay for new IPs or new types of video games.  It appears it's here to stay.  Also, if you look at all the old consoles, sequels are nothing new, they've come out with variants on a theme of a game, like Mario Bros, ad nauseum.  For PC gaming, I think the ideas of sequels only lasted once & then everyone moved on to something else.  So unless gaming starts heading back to the PC & consoles die off, which isn't likely, I think that sequels are here to stay.

Yea the success of that original IP has determined the out come of the sequel almost in all games you see have a sequel for the 3rd time.  We put our money down for those products even though they've only received upgrades, so we fuel the sequels, it's not a bad thing at all, I'm just posing a question to see what many of you think.

Siome sequals are very nice, but others are a waste of space.

Yea besides Call of Duty: World at War, each CoD was different in the sense that it offered more or something different.

I think no IP is invulnerable.
Even the CoD franchise is getting sickening, I swear if MW2 doesn't change anything from CoD 4, I am done with that franchise.
Although I will say the Halo franchise is getting milked, but it is nowhere near as milked as some of the other franchises out there.

Yea I am confident in saying that Infinity Ward will change things up, they know how to bring variety from CoD 1 to 2 and on to 4, they will make MW 2 different.