At what point is a Franchise Whoring Out?

[Austin Howe]

When you start pandering to people that nobody wants in your fandom.

See here.

 

[Austin Howe]

Now, Final Fantasy - more specifically FF7 - has been whoring more than Paris Hilton at a boy-band reunion.
Not only are many a FF spin-off mediocre, some are down right BAD.

And the problem is, they have not once done anything resembling fanservice with the franchise since the game came out. We wanted a sequel. We got a bad movie sequel and a bad prequel. (On the PSP! Which no one owns! Because even if that game was good, it'd still be crap!) We wanted a remake, and we got Final Fantasy X HD and (for fuck's sake) a sequel to Final Fantasy XIII! And they did that instead of making Versus XIII, which is the only game Square announced any amount of tiem ago that anyone's actually excited about anymore! Square really does hate us.

 

[Soxafloppin]

Is it unnecessary? Yea.

Will the game still be fun and high quality? probably, yea.

Will I buy it and enjoy it, yea and yea.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

When they release a game every year and there is nothing new added. MW does this, same game with another stupid terrorist to beat. If they are fun to play then thats great. But do you really want to play the same rehashed game again and again?

 

[distortedreality]

This is the point a franchise is whoring out.

I've never seen whoring out taken so literally before.

 

[Kukakkau]

Around the time you can play through a game and go "wow this added absolutely nothing necessary to the previously established plot."

You generally see this in sequels with a name instead of number (eg Assassin's Creed: Revelations) but you also see it in numbered ones too (Gear of War 3)

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Would you add sports franchise games to this as well? Same game every year with minor tweaks when they could just have DLC to update the game the following year instead of asking you to pay full price again.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

(preparing to be flamed)

I believe that the Assassin's Creed series has been hardcore whored out the minute Ubisoft discovered people liked Ezio. It's like they thought "Hmm...he's liked by a lot of people. Let's make 2 additional "tack on" games, squeezing his popularity across them both, but we'll throw in multiplayer to confuse the masses from realizing that there's just not enough content with him or his story to warrant two complete new games. Oh, and one city this time. We're trying to MAKE money."

I agree with this to a point. I liked Brotherhood, I thought it improved on AC2, it added new mechanics which were actually fun, the city of Rome was amazing fun to explore. It may have been a way to extend the series even further and cash in in Ezio's popularity but it was done well.

Revelations on the other hand... was the point for me where I lost interest. Ezio again? Now he's old? Oh and let's tack Altair again because everyone liked him a little bit, right? Seriously? It had no new story to tell, no new useful mechanics and a boring old city no one cared for. It was poorly executed, souless and added nothing. Bad move Ubisoft, bad move.

Around the time you can play through a game and go "wow this added absolutely nothing necessary to the previously established plot."

You generally see this in sequels with a name instead of number (eg Assassin's Creed: Revelations) but you also see it in numbered ones too (Gear of War 3)

It's a real testament to just how "samey" the Gears of war games have been when someone can say that the final game in the trilogy, literally the conclusion to the story, added nothing to the previously established plot!

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Overmilking? Yes.

Whoring out? No.

Yes, there's a difference between "overmilking" and "whoring out." To me, "whoring out" is when the creators of the game quite obviously care for NOTHING but the bottome line: "how much money can we make?"

When a game is nothing more than a product designed to make money and there's little to no creative spark of life in it, it's a "whored out" franchise piece.

Whether or not this applies to God of War remains to be seen.

 

[Saulkar]

It occurs the moment a company makes a game in a franchise whose quality is impaired beyond immediate recovery or when the franchise extends into complete unrelated and incompatible mediums.