Sequels Part 2

[Jumwa]

I get the distinct impression from this two part discussion topic that Jim and Bob are having a serious, thoughtful discussion and Yahtzee is just throwing around big, childish blanket statements that need constant addendums to hold up any kind of water.

As the two serious debaters pointed out, sequels can be a great thing, and franchises/sequels are often used--by good developers--to bring around radical new gameplay mechanics but under a market friendly face that minimizes such risk. It's unfortunate that it needs to be done, but it's better than the "expansion pack sequels" as Bob says. A whole lot better. Not even on the same level.

 

[The Random One]

Personally, I find cliffhangers inexcusable in any medium. I didn't like it when I finished the first Discworld or the first Hitchhiker's novels and found that I need to buy the second to find out how it ended, even if I had already decided I would buy them while reading. Anything that makes itself out to be a self-contained thing should be so, and anything that wants to be part of something greater should leard how to do so while remaining self-contained.

I really doubt that the people who enjoy the story in gaming are so small a minority to be a small blip in devs' minds, and I really doubt they are a smaller minority than those who defend games should have no stories at all. Maybe it comes from narrowing down what 'story' means in a game, and forgetting that a game like Team Fortress 2 can have a great story without having any story whatsover in a traditional way.

I hope you come back to the pricing discussion later. One bad thing from the idea Jim brought up is that if $60 games are still being bought, then that is a price people are comfortable with, and any scaling in price should go from that point upwards. Isn't that what Activision did? Or what DLC does indirectly? But this discussion has much more potential in it - games are electronic media, and pricing in electronic media is very weird, because - well, if you want to sell, say, a salad, you add the cost of the ingredients of the salad, add a little more to pay for the cook that makes the salad and the waiter that serves it, and a little more for profit, and there you have it. In electronic media, the 'cook' is paid a lot, and they are paid for a long time before you can serve the salad, and the ingredients are worth almost nothing but if you charged only a little more you'd never cover the costs of what you paid the cook for the last three years. I don't doubt price fixing exists in gaming but I'm not sure how much is nefarious executiveering and how much is legitimate fear of what will happen to the market if this baseline is destroyed.

Oh ho ho, the "I hate Jim Sterling" crowd never gets old.

Or maybe it's just that it's been old from day one, thus doesn't appear to be getting old because there was nothing funny or clever that would start getting old and tired. Yes, I think this is far more likely.

Yeah, just like Jim Sterling. MASSIVE ZINGER

 

[rapidoud]

Yahtzee takes it away from $60 pricing because Australians get gouged quite severely by all mediums (except imports), Steam has been known to jack the price up $20-30 USD (even though the AUD's cheaper...) on the majority of titles saying 'it has no control over it'. Right, that's like saying I have no control over the selling price of a pack of gum in a retail corporation, absolute crap. You can say 'you fairly price it for all or GTFO'.

Where games regularly go for $84AUD (around $92 USD), some PS3 titles hitting $110 (and some N64 titles many moons ago that were at $120 like conker's BFD) SC2 barely hits $70 (god damn I hate blizzard for everything after W3) even a year after release where DEHR has regularly been $30 on sales before its release.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Extra Consideration: Sequels Part 2

The much awaited sequel to the original with MovieBob, Jim and Yahtzee.

Read Full Article

Just a heads up, but the first link in "Again, I feel titles like Call of Duty is dominating while the games of Suda 51 and his eccentric ilk disappear without a trace." (in the last paragraph of the first section of the first page) is borked and eating all the text between it and the following link, so the entire section about Deadly Premonition and whatnot ends up missing/not displaying.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

Bob seriously needs to stop with the whole Madden thing, he clearly doesn't play them and has no idea what he's talking about. I know quite a few people who play the Madden games, and none of them has ever gone on about how excited they are for a "roster update". What they care about are things like massively improved enemy AI (one of my friends just wouldn't shut up about how much they improved the AI's ability to respond to your decisions in the most recent one) and engine changes that improve the flow of the game and remove animation glitches. He just sees that they all look the same without stopping to consider that they all look like football and have no reason to change that, and he never bothers to notice what's different under the hood because he never actually plays the bloody things. The $60 price point is probably still too high considering the yearly iterations and the number of art assets they can reuse, but that isn't the complaint he's making.

 

[MowDownJoe]

Activision got away with it with Madden fans full price for a yearly roster update.

I know it's popular to hate on Activision (and I don't blame you... Bobby Kotick deserves it), but it's EA that makes Madden. Not Activision. Activision makes a Completely Different franchise that gets milked regularly.

 

[I forgot]

Okay, this is just ridiculous. You may claim that games borrow too much fromcinema, but this sequelphobic idiocy is out and out copied verbatim from film. And its ludicrous.

Look, here are the facts. Look at Gamesrankings list of the best games of all time. The first original IP is Halo: Number 11 - an original IP no longer breaks the top 10. After that? LittleBigPlanet: Number 21. After that? Half Life: Number 30. Of the top 50 games ever made, you have a grand total of 5 new IPS - Company of Heroes and Gears of War rounding out the list.

Of what has been judged the best games ever made, new IPs make up 10%. What value does a new IP bring outside of some arbitrary weighting to it being a new IP? It beings originality? Compare Brink with Resident Evil 4. It brings a new story? Compare Homefront with Half Life 2. This obsession with new IPS is just a ridiculous holdover that seems to assume that gaming is the exact same as Film.

So true. Well some of it. I wouldn't use gamesrankings as a list of best games but most of the best games we have are all sequels. I too am tired of this sequelphobia. As I said in another thread, originality is overrated.
What's worst is how people are so hypocritical with it. Some idiot whines at another Mario or Street Fighter game, regardless of their quality, and complains about no new IPs from Nintendo while at the same time bitching about why there isn't a half life 3 or kingdom hearts 3.
Also, this discussion has now brought story into it which is a whole other mess.

 

[I forgot]

How bout you guys stop picking on the COD series for no reason. Seriously, grow up.

There's a definite reason for them "picking on" CoD; which is that it hasn't made a significant evolution since Modern Warfare.

Now I loved CoD 4, loved it to death- and I will defend it against anyone who badmouths it. Yet, even with that love, I can't deny that MW2, Blops, and probably the upcoming MW3 are/appear to be more of the same. Same settings (or at least types), same Cold-War era mentality (even in the "modern" ones due to the villainous Russians), same HUD (which is now spreading to other games), etc.

Essentially, Activision believes that releasing the same game every two years with better graphics (and little else in the way of innovation) is justification for an additional $60. This is an attitude that is poisonous to the entire games industry because it propagates crass indulgence and money-grabbing instead of technical or artistic innovation.

So, yeah, they aren't "picking CoD for no reason," they are suggesting flaws in the current system of gaming, of which the continuous cloning of CoD 4 is a serious symptom.

If anyone needs to grow up around here, it's a fanboy who blindly defends a series that has stagnated against any constructive criticism which might make the series better in the long run.

And what exactly excuses companies like Nintendo and Capcom from releasing the same game for the past decade?

That they make other games and they don't actually make the same games. The only times they ever make the "same game" is when its a remake or compilation of older titles for, you know, people who may not have played them the first time or even owned the console they were on, which isn't a bad thing.

 

[Norix596]

Well the potential down-side to breaking the $60 price tag is that big name games (like Call of Duty or whatever may replace it) may become more expensive because audiences are willing to pay more. If there is a market for Call of Duty Elite, it would demonstrate that prominent titles could be charged for a good chunk more.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Excellent piece. Now can you PLEASE do one on the pricing of games.

 

[PlasticTree]

Nice touch with the 'Sequels Part 2' title.

 

[The Lugz]

Isn't MarioKart 7 the 7th version of that series?

Previous versions:

Super MarioKart
MarioKart 64
MarioKart Super-Circuit
MarioKart Double Dash
MarioKart DS
MarioKart Wii

Am I missing one or has MovieBob made a silly mistake?

it is indeed the 7th version of the personal entertainment edition of mariokart
( there were two arcade versions, one was devloped mostly by namco and featured pacman as a side caracter )

overall, it is the 9th game to be called mariokart
personally i don't think arcade games count, especially when they did not come entirely from nintendo's coders

but you know bob, he likes his big pictures eh.

wiki:
Mario Kart 7 is an upcoming racing video game for the Nintendo 3DS
Similar to other games in the Mario Kart series, it incorporates various characters from the Mario games racing with one another on Mario game-themed tracks
New additions to the game include hang-gliding attachments for karts and the ability to drive underwater

If anything it should be Mariokart: off the beaten track!

i guess 7 worked for microsoft, so why not eh.

ooh, i have a good one, call it M.a.r.i.o.k.a.r.t hey? hey? eh?

Mario
And
Roomies
In
Overtly
Knarly
And
Rainy
Tracks

bam, there's a name for yah.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

I think HBO shows generally have a good way of having narrative cliffhangers. They generally tie up any loose threads most characters have, but not in such a way as to have them too tight. And end with a satisfying conclusion that leaves the audience wanting more. A few good examples in my mind:

Rome: ends on a cliffhanger, except not really because ignoring the fact we know about history they very cleverly left every character in a place we were happy to leave them. Be it coming to terms with bad decisions in life or finding hope for the future. Totally open.

Sopranos & The Wire: Pretty much every season ended in a way that if it was cancelled the next day you could be happy knowing the plot was wrapped up. Maybe not the characters but the plot. Which is the absolute key to a narrative sequel: characters.

Carnivale & Deadwood: Same again but both were very obviously planned to continue but were cancelled. Carnivale in paticular felt like it needed more but ended in such a way that the audience could fill in the blanks themselves. Only one or two plot threads were really left open.

Lots and lots of other shows not just on HBO do this but I always admired this trend they seemed to have with ongoing series. New season = new status quo. Just look at Game of Thrones for proof of this (have not read the books)

Also why is extra credits leaving like this sites 9/11 or something? They are gone, get over it and move on. They are in another relationship now, don't be a creepy ex.

 

[Sabrestar]

To respond to Jim Sterling's bringing in of books and cliffhangers:

In a good book series that ends in a cliffhanger, the reader doesn't have to drop 60 bucks to read the next book.

 

[Marik Bentusi]

I don't have anything against cliffhangers as a concept. I do have a big problem about their execution tho.

Like already pointed out, most games prioritize gameplay over story and there's no telling if the same team will be around for a sequel IF it comes out. De facto this means you often get a so-so story with an open ending just so they can do more if the game is a monetary success. You don't get them because of story reasons and there is no telling what the sequel will be like - it can be a huge disappointment gameplay wise or have a very different writer that takes everything you liked so much in a very different direction. Maybe a change of direction is even dictated by an evil publisher forcing the studio to copy game X in order to maximize profit.
I really, really can't stand it if there's a perfectly fine ending around the corner, but it's obvious the devs put in a cliffhanger just so they have an option for making more money. Sadly I can't list examples because the mere mentioning of a game would spoil its type of ending.

The wolf in sheep wool concept is interesting, but it's also flawed. No spoilers for Human Revolution, but while I think it did a pretty good blend between working newcomers in and keeping parts of the old fanbase, the original had a really cheesy storyline, and it was part of why it was fun. Human Revolution, in my opinion, has a very different feel due to the stronger Ghost in the Shell and Bladerunner inspirations, and especially the end felt like trying to deliver very real political messages or at least food for thought.
My point is that Human Revolution still had to take the original storyline as canon and somehow combine the cheesiness with their own style. I think both of them have their place, but shouldn't be mixed. It's like eating chocolate with muscle cars.

Call me pessimistic, but I think a Sequel Ban would just mean more ripoffs, that's all. It's a sad age full of possibilities and ideas, and money is blocking the way of art - not the absence of money, but the suits wanting to make as much money as possible.

 

[Jonathan Fifer]

I know alot of good sequals, but most of them are in 90% story based games (like phoenix wright), and the only really good series I can think of that isn't mostly story is Assassin's Creed. Assassin's Creed 1 had a very meh ending, but think of the ending to Assassin's Creed 2. That was such a WTF plot point, that it actually improved the story because players had to wait a year in order to see what happened next. Also, they manage to get closure because, though Desmond's story always has a 'to be continued' vibe, Altair and Ezio get complete begining, middle, end story arcs in every game. This is all helped by the fact that by all appearences Ubisoft has fully scripted Desmond's entire story already.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I really don?t get what the big deal is about sequels to tell you the truth. If people didn?t want them, they would stop buying them, and publishers would stop churning them out. I kind of wish the whole conversation was about pricing (not just of new games but used games and dlc as well) because some of those practices are the biggest factors stunting consumer growth in this industry.
If it?s innovation-stagnation we?re worrying about, then instead of having a problem with the solid franchises that sell (and are usually made) well, we should have a problem with copycat games that are shorter and not as well refined (and yet still sell for the same $60) because those are the devs that should be trying new things and innovating.
It isn?t anything new. Remember the NES? Most of the games on it were SMB clones because it was a big game on the system. Most of them were crap but the SMB sequels (the real ones at least) were great.
We didn?t complain last gen when R* was making a new GTA every year but there were a shiton of GTA clones we could?ve done without. And then again, sometimes you get a clone that outshines what it was copying: everyone I know thought Saints Row 2 was far more fun than GTA4.
So I guess we can?t say one practice or another is all bad, gamers just have to vote with their wallets and use their best judgmen...oh, I see the problem.

 

[Subatomic]

Video game sequels are neither inherently bad nor inherently good, though like movies they of course have tendencies to become worse with each following installment (as always, there are exceptions).

There's also a big difference between mostly story and mostly action driven games, as those are two completely different beasts in my opinion. A game that focuses on story, lore and a consistent fictional world can pull of a good sequel much easier than a game which greatest appeal is its gameplay and action. The latter are more akin to sports (or even *are* sports games) and if they even have a story mode, its secondary at best. Narrative driven games can continue their story provided the previous game ended with enough narrative room left, or tell another story set in the same world. Action oriented games on the other hand lack that justification, and instead must rely on improved technical aspects (graphics / physics / gameplay) alone to attract buyers.
In a very broad comparison, story driven games are like movies and novels, while action driven games are like a sport. You can (relatively speaking) easily relase a new installment that advances an engaging story every few years, but it's an entirely different endavour to release slightly updated football rules every year and still provide a meaningful sequel.

Another big thing to consider is player expectations. Someone else already mentioned Dragon Age 2, which was -understatement incoming- a pretty divisive game. A lot of fans of the original expected a bigger, better Dragon Age: Origins, and instead Bioware delivered a sequel that was "in name only" to some, with a very different narrative structure compared to it's predecessor (focus on one location and one character, instead of DA:O's more open world and event-driven story). To a lot of people, Bioware simply changed too much that didn't need changing, and didn't advance the story of the character played in the previous game.
On the other hand we have Mass Effect 2 (ironically by Bioware too), which also changed a lot of things from Mass Effect 1, like the complete removal of inventory management and greatly reducing the complexity of character advancement. Sure, there were a lot of critics of those changes too, yet still ME2 is regarded by the majority as a great game that is at least equal to or even surpasses ME1.
It is very difficult for a developer to know which changes are acceptable to the fans and which aren't. One man's innovation is another one's unneccessary change or 'jumping the shark'-moment, so there's a very delicate balance between changing just enough and not too much at the same time.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

dammit make the article longer, I have the attention span to read more than two pages and this stuff is actually interesting

 

[BrotherRool]

I have about 400 books and I have to admit I can't really think of one that ends in a cliffhanger. Oh except Colour of Magic. No Terry Pratchett apart from that really ends in a cliffhanger although there are a couple of sequel drops (which are different) in a couple of them.

No Agatha Christie ends in a cliffhanger, I can't think of an Asimov novel that ends in a cliffhanger. Even the foundation series doesn't end on cliffhangers. No Jane Austen, none of the Edge Chronicles, no Artemis Fowl, no Redwall, none of the leCarre that I own. None of my Jack Higgins, none of my Biggles (that takes you back )

I think one of the Mortal Engines has a bit of a cliffhanger. No Michael Crichton that I can think of, going back a bit no Hardy Boy or Nancy Drew that I could care to name.

Now Lord of the Rings, I think those end on cliffhangers ish. But they really should be read as one book to get the true experience

All the Harry Potters have pretty well defined self-contained stories, except maybe the sixth and certainly they all have proper endings where conclusions are drawn and events are finished, nicely delineated by term times.

I think maybe your authors are a little bit bad at doing self-contained stories properly I'd be pissed if I got to the end of the book and it didn't have an ending. There's no reward.


Also didn't Little Big Planet have a lower price than most games? And that turned out well in the end, they really should have learnt from that lesson