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).