So you’ve probably heard the announcement list from E3, sequels all of them. Now I personally don’t mind sequels, I know many people would argue that it shows lack of original thinking and blah blah blah, but I like sequels. Some of my favourite games ever were sequels; Half Life 2, UT2004 and TF2. Though the main difference I’ve noticed with all of these games that made them so good when they first game out is just how long it took them to come out. The shortest was UT99 to UT2004, which I hope you can tell that it was a 5 year gap between them. Whereas Modern Warfare 2 it’s only been 2 years since CoD4 and one year since CoD5. And of course look at L4D2, they’ve only just released the SDK for L4D and they’re releasing a second one, and what we’ve seen is very similar.

The main thing that’s changed I think is the pressure from publishers and investors on video games. Since, unfortunately, as the industry expands it will become less and less about good games, but more and more about selling games. Look at Half Life 2 for example, Valve made Half Life 1 and released in 1998, it got critical acclaim, winning dozens of Game of The Year awards, but the sequel didn’t come out until 6 years later. That just wouldn't happen today, because publishers are being able to put greater pressure on developers to make more games. I think this is a bad thing since, look at just how phenomenal Half Life 2 was. It surpassed all expectations, revolutionized many parts of gaming, and the engine it was based on was used by games for years to come. Whereas today, we get things like CoD5.

I guess Call of Duty is the prime example of gaming is becoming more about selling copies. Let’s have a look at the series. Call of Duty 1, the graphics weren’t that amazing, but the gameplay was insanely fun. Then two years later came Call of Duty 2, I don’t know about you but that game blew me away. It was the first WW2 shooter that achieved that true WW2 atmosphere, it didn’t feel like I was playing a game, it felt like I was in WW2. There were great improvements, in gameplay, multiplayer and most of all Graphics.

Then infinity wanted to try and do something great, they had an idea that they wanted to pour their time and passion into, but Activision didn’t like this because it was drawing out the development cycle. So Activision’s “solution” to this was to put Treyarch on the case, and we got the extremely mediocre Call of Duty 3, which for me at least, almost destroyed my faith in the franchise. Though finally Infinity Ward’s dream was finished and they released Call of Duty 4, and it was awesome. I think it’s only when a developer has enough time to let creativity flourish that get truly amazing games.

This is why my confidence in games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Modern Warfare is wavering, because I don’t want more of the same game. I can play it again, or mod it, or DLC, but i don’t just want another game which has different content. Which is why I don’t like CoD5 as much as I did CoD4, because CoD5 was just a WW2 mod for Modern Warfare, it was totally uninspired.

Sequels are great, but there comes a stage when it’s just publisher trying to exploit the consumer.

Cross posted from here