2000's- the rip off years

[Furrama]

Come on- how many games (and movies and songs for that matter) have you seen remade or have had a sequel this for this decade? I mean there's nothing wrong with a good remake now and again (unless it's Planet of the Apes or some car racing game that comes out ever few years with one new track and three new cars and slightly updated graphics) but for the love of bunnies I can think of very few of them that actually outdid their predecessors, save for the fact that the graphics were better. Really, what's wrong with dated graphics? Doesn't that mean that everything this decade will be re re made in twenty years? Congratulations, your youth was pointless and will be pillaged and grotesquely molded by your children.

As for sequels, I know that an established fan base and story will bring in the core fans for the pocket rape, but is that any excuse for the amount of sequels? We're up to Fallout what now? Half the time they aren't even good, they rely on the greatness (or not) of the previous titles and then make you feel bad about the entire series. Case and point-the only real thing that the first real FF sequel (FFX-2) did was murder it's beloved character's characters (make sense?). Horray, Yuna's a slut now, Titus came back... what? How is that possible? It made the first game seem pointless, and for RPG's who's story is VERY important that's VERY bad. I don't want to replay X (which I considered very good) because the memory of the bad sequel is jumping up and down in the back of my mind, telling me how much it sucked muffins, and it won't stop till it's ruined it's predecessor. I won't even talk about the gameplay... that was a different kind of suck. But I've seen this occur time and again across the genre board.

Songs? Kids today don't even know how much of their music is 'sampled' or remade. Movies? This year alone most everything has been a remake or a sequel. Have we lost our creative sparks? Is our culture becoming stagnant while we wallow in our 'greatness'. We were taught not to plagiarize in school, but aren't we plagiarizing the 80's and 90's?

Go ahead, figure out something new and innovative that everyone will love. It will only be remade after a billion sequels have ruined it beyond recognition. It's all about the money.

 

[wilsonscrazybed]

One might argue that the 80's was the era of sequels for cinema. Perhaps games are just at that development stage where they are too expensive to take risks on?

 

[super_smash_jesus]

Well, I make it a goal in life to not listen to any music that sucks, and hence, I do not run into any remade songs in my day to day listening.

The problem is oversaturation of people in the industry making games. Befroe, it was the only the people that had a passion for games and designs that made any original ideas, whereas now we see lots of younger individuals getting into the gaming business because they took 2 years of school. School does not lead to talented people in any variation of entertainment, just leads to people trained at making said entertainment by learning from past greats. Originality is the thing of the past, may it rest in peace.

 

[Jumplion]

Yeah, these years are full of sequels, but I'm sure it's just a phase like the movies (as wilson said above me)

 

[Shadow Tyrant]

Not every sequel has to suck. In fact, a good majority of them don't.

Case in point: The Dark Knight.

And I don't really know where you get your music, but I only have maybe 10 or 12 songs that are 'remakes' out of 16 something gigs, so I don't know what you're trying to prove there..

 

[Furrama]

Well, I make it a goal in life to not listen to any music that sucks, and hence, I do not run into any remade songs in my day to day listening.

The problem is oversaturation of people in the industry making games. Befroe, it was the only the people that had a passion for games and designs that made any original ideas, whereas now we see lots of younger individuals getting into the gaming business because they took 2 years of school. School does not lead to talented people in any variation of entertainment, just leads to people trained at making said entertainment by learning from past greats. Originality is the thing of the past, may it rest in peace.

That's one of the smartest assessments I've ever heard. It makes me look at my own field of work and see the same thing. Perhaps innovation and the new only occurs when the right people are allowed to do whatever they want. Which is why I hope Prototype will be good.

 

[Rotating Bread]

There are a lot of sequels about at the moment, and I don't think that is something that will change any time soon. I don't think this is something new to the 2000s though, there were sequels by the bucket load back in the 90s too.

Are sequels such a bad thing anyway? No-one complains about the Half life sequels (4 and counting if you include portal) or COD4, or GTA4 and come to think of it gears 2 and Fallout 3 look pretty good too. So is it perhaps just poor sequels we don't like.

Games are made to make money, and when you can guarantee to bring in the dosh by putting out a sequel why wouldn't you. Even much revered games like Bioshock and Portal were just trying to sell units, and any noble ideas about artistic vision and originality were afterthoughts (and this is where the 'games as art' argument falls flat for me).

 

[Furrama]

Not every sequel has to suck. In fact, a good majority of them don't.

Case in point: The Dark Knight.

And I don't really know where you get your music, but I only have maybe 10 or 12 songs that are 'remakes' out of 16 something gigs, so I don't know what you're trying to prove there..

I never said all sequels suck- I said there were a lot of them as of late. And some do suck and those that do tend to ruin the originals for me.

As for music, I don't know what you are listening to- a lot of pop, rap, country, and others have a lot of do-overs. You might not be listening to them, or they might be the beat under your favorite song. You might not even know it.

 

[Spleeni]

By no means are there a lack of good ideas; just implementation. And no developer wants their game or movie to suck. It really just comes down to a couple points.

1. Money, or the lack thereof. A safe franchise is boring, but it pays the bills. Many developers simply don't care about the quality of their merchandise, but most do.

2. Technology restraints. There are many ideas that are restrained by current technology (indeed, most are) it's the nature of the beast, as technology marches forward, more ideas can be explored that were once impossible. We won't have LESS originality. We WILL have more because A. There will be more people, and B. the technology will allow us to explore more possibilities.

 

[Furrama]

There are a lot of sequels about at the moment, and I don't think that is something that will change any time soon. I don't think this is something new to the 2000s though, there were sequels by the bucket load back in the 90s too.

Are sequels such a bad thing anyway? No-one complains about the Half life sequels (4 and counting if you include portal) or COD4, or GTA4 and come to think of it gears 2 and Fallout 3 look pretty good too. So is it perhaps just poor sequels we don't like.

Games are made to make money, and when you can guarantee to bring in the dosh by putting out a sequel why wouldn't you. Even much revered games like Bioshock and Portal were just trying to sell units, and any noble ideas about artistic vision and originality were afterthoughts (and this is where the 'games as art' argument falls flat for me).

Art and money have gone hand and hand for years. Michelangelo was paid for the Sistine Chapel, most artist don't do it for the love all the time (I don't). The question is whether or not it's 'good' art or not. But then that's a whole can of worms.

And should games just be for the money? And if then are, I don't want to know about it, or notice while I'm playing. " Wow, Mario and the Giant Mushroom 8. Surely this wasn't made just for the sake of money, I'm having so much fun". It's no excuse for bad games.

And I never said sequels were bad... just that there are a lot of them and fewer and fewer originals.

 

[stompy]

I suppose that while sequels are abundant now-a-days, I just ignore the shit and find what I like. If it's a sequel, well, who cares as long as I enjoy it. Right?

 

[AboveUp]

I'd like to take this time to say "3 is the magic number, welcome to the generation of 4".

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Only sequels and remakes are being marketed, but quite a few (but not as many) original titles are coming up that I'm looking forward to, I'm trying to re-cap on them but the problem is - the place that I had my "wishlist" stored at - banned me >_< because I said the words "any hole's a goal"

(Gamespot btw, had an RSS on a lot of games)

 

[Arcticflame]

Songs? Kids today don't even know how much of their music is 'sampled' or remade. Movies? This year alone most everything has been a remake or a sequel. Have we lost our creative sparks? Is our culture becoming stagnant while we wallow in our 'greatness'. We were taught not to plagiarize in school, but aren't we plagiarizing the 80's and 90's?

That's the 90's. I think music has actually -dare I say- got better since the 90's, it's still not as good as it was 20-30 years ago, but the 90's was a bad decade for music if there ever was one.

 

[Railu]

If you think the 80's and 90's games weren't chock full of cheap knock offs, you clearly were not around to play those games. I used to go 3-4 times a week to the local rental place and I literally would go through every single NES game they had and back then the selection of games was actually MUCH bigger. Nowadays you have 1 aisle Xbox, 1 aisle Nintendo, etc. Mario Bros. was a HUGE success and most games basically copied that formula. People only nowadays REMEMBER the great games of the 80's and 90's but I'm telling you, back then, 80% of games were basically Mario, Zelda or Megaman knock offs.

Why? Because back then you could make a game with 3-4 people and was the case in many instances. You had small budgets and pumped out a game in 6 months. And let me tell you, most of those games did suck big time. I had to go through 6 or 7 before I found a gem.

If they rated all the games back then and widely publicized them like we do now, you would see a dramatic INCREASE in quality level. This is because now we're dealing with almost Hollywood level budgets and staffs of 50-60 people. People still make bad games, but if you grew up with anything after the SNES and Genesis, you have absolutely no reason to complain.

 

[Radelaide]

Not every sequel has to suck. In fact, a good majority of them don't.

Case in point: The Dark Knight.

Awesome movie. It doesn't suck because they're re-making the series, completely ignoring the old ones.

 

[Railu]

Not every sequel has to suck. In fact, a good majority of them don't.

Case in point: The Dark Knight.

Awesome movie. It doesn't suck because they're re-making the series, completely ignoring the old ones.

Batman is the rare exception because of one fact: the series was turned into a flaming pile of excrement. Nolan set about returning it to glory instead of trying to make a quick buck. Sure, he made a lot of money, but his top priority was to make a quality product.

Most re-makes are taking what was a great movie/game/song and simply trying to make it 'modern'--hence losing all the things that made it great in the first place.

 

[TerribleTerryTate]

While I certainly agree with your sentiments in the OP, I do believe originality is still out there...just difficult to find.
As others have said, not all sequels suck. Fair enough, there are plenty that royally suck, but I guess the same could be said for most things.

I do get sad, however, when a movie I loved ends up getting raped of it's originality by greed. For example, Saw. I believe they are making a Saw V now. It just saddens me. After the third Saw I refused to watch anymore. The first one was a breath of fresh air, but I wouldn't be surprised if in two years time, the trailers for Saw XV are hitting the screens.