Polish vs Premise

[Amethyst Wind]

I was thinking about a conversation I had with a hipster hippy in China about originality in media. I also thought about Moviebob/Yahtzee and their thoughts on this.

I thought about this:

Given that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is mostly bought for the multiplayer (supposedly, it's the base concept that we'll accept for the sake of this conversation), would the sales of a sequel be greatly affected by working on the multiplayer, improving and expanding it, and then doing absolutely nothing to change the single player[/i]? Improve the multiplayer and literally repeat the exact same single player experience?

Is repeating the same story in a fancier/shinier/more polished way (Dances with Wolves>Pocahontas>Avatar) such a damning thing if it is entertaining? Or is it somehow inferior to a new idea that perhaps isn't produced so well?

Where's the tipping point?

 

[staika]

I always weigh Polish as being the more important of the two because as long as I can enjoy it I don't care if its a new idea or not. I would say the tipping point would be at the point that all originality is gone and it is basically a blatent copy of something else with different names.

 

[SckizoBoy]

You lost me at 'hipster hippy in China'... I'm trying to imagine that... and failing, because the Chinese just cannot 'do' 'hip'... at all...

 

[teisjm]

Not all games are made for the sake of the story Some games, like online shooters, fighters, raceing games etc. focus more or less strictly on gameplay and graphics.

Battlefield focussed, to the extend of my knowledge only on multiplayer in all of their games, except the BFBC's.
Single player in 1942, BF2 and 2142 was as far as i remember it, just multiplayer but with bots.
Not sure about BF3 though, swallowed my sadness, and stopped careing about after hearing about EA origin.

I haven't played the singleplayer in either MW2, BC2, or most other FPS'es i've played primarily for the multiplayer.
I did play the MW1 singleplayer, but didn't really fidn it spectacular or anything, and wold probably not have played it, if my internet had been working.

Yatzee will rarely give a fuck about a game, if the story doesn't hold, and will most likely never focus on how polished online multiplayer is in a game, and will hold originality in such a high seat, that half his rants will mean nothing, save for a good laugh, to peopel who haven't played as many games as he has.
I think both he, and moviebob have both explained how originality becomes more important to a critic, because of the ammount of stuff in their respective medium they "consume" making everything more easily forgettable and dull, because they've seen it before.

 

[Custard_Angel]

Redoing a concept is only acceptable with polish in my opinion.

If the same thing is brought out, then how the fuck can they justify selling it as a new game?

See also: Any of the sport franchise games (FIFA, Madden etc.)

 

[Miggiwoo]

I believe wholeheartedly that polish is better than premise. We live in 2011, and I have certain expectations. The first of these expectations is that "it's all been done'. This is especially true for stories, ultimately most games fall back onto a tried and true archetype or make a story that is so convoluted that it's absurd.

The second of these expectations is that my game will look and play like a game from 2011. Say what you will about graphics being unimportant, a beautiful or innovative art style can make or break a game for me. And even more important that visual style and execution are things like controller behavior, the AI for enemies, physics engines and the like. I think my favorite part about BFBC2 was the bullet curvature, followed closely by helicopter handling. Two exceptionally well executed mechanics in a predominantly online shooter.

However, I do accept that there are some titles that are increasingly blurring the line between improvement and reissue. The first that comes to mind is black ops. Aside from a mediocre story mode that I doubt many people even played, this 'sequel' added nearly nothing to mw2.

 

[Talshere]

While its undoubtedly a strong multiplayer experience, originally it was not only the multiplayer people bought CoD4 for, the single player was amazingly well crafted and generically loved. Personally CoD4 is one of the few FPS campaigns I have played again and again.

While you could just release a multiplayer concept and just try and improve it (read counter strike and all accociated mods or the unreal series) but you need a good story to pull people in to start with. Plus, unless you make "big" changes you cant really get off charging a full new game. It should either be free patches or 2 or 3 pound DLC. Unfortunately if time has shown us anything its that FPS devs dont realise that crap like map packs should be free. So if they are charging 15 quid for that, god help us if they ever decide to to charge for balance updates...