IGN: Are Franchises Killing Gaming?

[rocket_thumped]

Australia, April 14, 2010 - With Modern Warfare 2 now old news, Gears of War 3 on the horizon and Halo: Reach landing in between – you'd think gamers with a love for epics have rarely had it better. You'd be right – but what you might not realize is that these blockbuster games are arriving at the expense of other smaller, less popular titles. What's more, it's beginning to strangle the development scene with an 'only the biggest survive' mentality.

Entering a development cycle that promotes endless sequels can provide great financial reward (Activision, we're looking at you) –but it can also cause the decay of the brands involved (Tony Hawk, oh how the mighty birdman fell to Earth!) – and it also discourages original game design and risk-taking. Those two points alone are causing a slow rot in the games industry, paralleling the film industry's increasing focus on big-tent pictures.

The lingering argument is, of course, that epic games, films and franchising has almost always existed as a major component of the entertainment sphere –and money is ultimately the greatest concern of any corporation, like it or not. Artistic merit is all well and good, but that won't help you when the investors come knocking.

The Strangler
Why take a risk on a new concept when it's easier (and potentially more profitable) to rest of an established brand, concept or character? This attitude is so all-consuming and pervasive right now that it rings with clockwork predictability. More and more often, we're hearing about developers opting to create franchises rather than standalone releases; we saw it happen with Mass Effect and Gears of War – to great success.

However, the assumption that the game warrants a trilogy is a flawed and dangerous one. You need only look at what happened to Silicon Knights' sci-fi / mythology trilogy-that-isn't, 'Too Human' - a title that, after dismal critical response and mediocre sales, would likely be far too risky a proposition to continue the franchise. So too with SEGA's 'Shenmue'; titles like these hold too much back from the story, structure and gameplay in order to provide compelling content across three games, rather than simply nailing an outstanding first game and letting the market decide if it wants a sequel.

Release Dates, Dollars and You
When it comes to core business concerns, spacing out your major game releases across the fiscal year makes a lot of sense; moreover, games need enough space between them that they don't end up competing for the same dollars, which is clearly bad for sales. Companies also like to make sure there's a solid title per year – that way, the earnings don't have massive dips every other year, which drives down investor confidence and devalues the company. That's the shorthand idea about scheduling.

The flipside is, careful release date planning can also muscle out competing titles in the same release window. For example, several high profile games, such as Mass Effect 2, were scheduled to land within the same release period as Modern Warfare 2. Rather than face such stiff competition, EA opted to push Mass Effect 2 wisely back into January 2010.

In theory, this kind of scheduling concern should discourage cluttered release periods, but it hasn't – the market flows rule. Here's how it works.

The gaming retail sector traditionally has pretty logical peaks and troughs – generally in line with main holiday periods and global fiscal-calendar-year transition. If it seems like are April to June typically quiet periods, but suddenly January to March and September to November are booming, just take a look at the major public holidays that fall into these periods – Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving and the US school summer holiday period, not to mention the wind-up of the financial year in many countries.

Being the Bigger Dog
Of course, when you're competing for those same gaming dollars as your competitor, you'll want to be the bigger dog – and beat them to the punch, too. The results mostly speak for themselves – the biggest game releases are reserved for times when people want games, and when people have money, companies are quick to part them from it – hence, a glut of big games all at once.

It's easy to look at a situation like this with a fair degree of pessimism but the reality is, games development will always have its blockbusters – and there will always be developers scrambling to emulate their success. What we, as gamers and lovers of this fine pursuit, must do is encourage more risk-taking by buying into games that don't just tick the same few generic boxes. We need to embrace creative thought, experimental gameplay (so long as it's fun, right?) and hopefully stimulate enough sales to stem the creeping tide of franchises and sequels.

I've always thought that when the big franchises did well financially it allowed the companies to spend more time and money on new concepts and one-off games. It's an interesting argument and I'd like to hear what you guys have to say.

[Tanner]

If this is true then where's my HL2: Episode 3?

[Nexx]

I've always thought that when the big franchises did well financially it allowed the companies to spend more time and money on new concepts and one-off games. It's an interesting argument and I'd like to hear what you guys have to say.

Just curious, why would you think that? You don't get to hand them a note of intent when you buy their games, you just give them your money. They look at that and say, "Hey, this product got that consumer to help us make a profit. Let's make more products like that." How would it go down any other way? Capitalism is simply about money, and it requires guidance in order to do fancy things like what you're describing. (Guidance that it currently doesn't have, obviously.)

EDIT: That's not to say that companies that do go out and make new good stuff time and time again can't succeed - they totally can. The market supports them too. That's why Pixar is still doing great. But the market also supports products that are the result of creative stagnation, as the article talks about. What companies produce rests largely on what consumers will buy.

@Yahoozy: There's nothing wrong with dominating the market. The article's not about that. What's wrong with franchises is their potential for creative stagnancy, and consequently the recent gravitation of the market towards franchises may backfire in terms of overall game quality (or at least variety) available to the consumer.

*Entire post edited for relevance*

[yahoozy]

The gaming industry functions much the same way that other popular media industries do, something not many people realize. It's almost always been this way, too; gaming franchises existed with the creation of Super Mario Brothers. If it's some form of entertainment that appeals to the general public, there are going to be franchises that dominate the market.

[rocket_thumped]

Just curious, why would you think that? You don't get to hand them a note of intention when you buy their games, you just give them your money. They look at that and say, "Hey, this product got that consumer to help us make a profit. Let's make more products like that!" How would it go down any other way? Capitalism is simply about money, and it requires guidance in order to do fancy things like what you're describing. (Guidance that it currently doesn't have, obviously.)

Obviously if the company is making larger profits they can spend more money producing their games. Not all of that money is going to be thrown into sequels, that would be stupid. They have to come out with new IPs sooner or later. Look at Assassins Creed or Bioshock, those were great games before they were franchises.

[Nexx]

Obviously if the company is making larger profits they can spend more money producing their games. Not all of that money is going to be thrown into sequels, that would be stupid. They have to come out with new IPs sooner or later.

Of course, but you can see how, when a lot of buyers are purchasing those franchise sequels, it tends to slow down the production of novel games because it makes the sequel/franchise market more appealing to game companies.

[Tunco]

I just skimmed through what you all wrote, but I think this is related to the subject as an example:
Thanks to Tanner for pointing this out on irc

D: Haha.