Sequelitus

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So I’m sure you’ve all heard the recent news of Activision and Vivendi merging. The long-term reprecussions of  this newly formed mega-publisher aren’t clear, but the news also revealed the existence of Guitar Hero 4 and Call Of Duty 5. Wait, what? Already? Yes. It’s sad, but these two series are just two new additions to a long list of  franchises that suffer from Sequelitus.    Sequelitus is the act of taking an extremely promising IP and then mercilessly crushing the life out of it, in a sense.  For instance, Sam Fischer was poised to take on Solid Snake as the Western answer to Metal Gear… a Metal Gear “killer” if you will. It was hailed for innovative gameplay, stunning graphics and so forth. It was hailed as one of the best games of the year and was a best-selling game. But then Ubisoft, one of the absolute worst perpetrators of Sequelitus, mishandled the franchise with yearly sequels.  The idea seemed excellent from a business standpoint; have two teams working on the same franchise, spacing it so that a new one is released every year. The resulting sequel “Pandora Tomorrow” was saved by the grace of its innovative multiplayer, which was an early Xbox Live hit. But in four years we had four Splinter cell games, and each subsequent game sold less than the previous installment by orders of magnitude. Meanwhile, Solid Snake only made a new appearance every few years, each one lovingly crafted with time and care by Kojima. Every new Metal Gear game is an event, preceeded by incredible amounts of hype, something Ubisoft has sadly robbed from poor Sam. Unfortunately they do this to most of their big franchises. The formula is this: release a stunning new game, then churn out yearly sequels based on that foundation rather than going back to the drawing board. Instead of being excited for Prince of Persia sequels, I grew sick of them.  Ghost Recon 2 hardly passed as an expansion pack, and Brothers In Arms suffered a similar fate.  And you better believe you’ll be seeing Assassin’s Creed 2 ads this time next year. In fact, it seems the only Ubisoft games that don’t get dilluted by frivolous sequels are their unsuccessful ones.     Call of Duty has been handled in a similar way. Activision has given the “odd number” games in the series to Infinity Ward wannabe Treyarch, which already has people joking “wake me up once Call of Duty 6 is announced.” The fact that Infinity Ward titled their in-house documents for Call of Duty 4 “Call of Duty 3″ is pretty telling.      Guitar Hero is another story. The core gameplay was perfected in the original, and pretty much every worthwhile new feature was added in the sequel. Neversoft’s Guitar Hero III was essentially a new track list, and I imagine that’s all Guitar Hero IV will be. Really what they should be doing is  selling a “Guitar Hero Starter Pack” and just get rid of all the sequel nonsense. Sell the starter kit, then sell new tracklists as downloadable content or cheap retail discs. This way you would still make gobs of money and give users the freedom of choice.   Really what this comes down to is  that many mega publishers care very little about the consumer. All they see are dollar signs, and so they will keep doing this sort of thing until people stop buying it. What they don’t seem to realize is that this sort of behavior is what drives franchises into an early grave. Just because it works for sports games doesn’t mean it works for everything else, guys. What you need are quality products, and sizable gaps between them. Just think about it: new Star Wars and Spiderman Movies came out three years apart, and each one was a massive blockbuster. Wheras Pirates of the Carribean and The Matrix sequels floundered compared to their originals because they came out only a year apart, which not only hampered the quality but diminished excitement from the fans.   The reason series like Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo and Half Life are so revered is that they are given all the time they need to be a great, and the end product is usually a much better, much more memorable experience than it would have been otherwise.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight for this sort of business model. It’s mainly restricted to third-party developers, since they see it as an easy counter to the growing cost of game development. The only major third party publisher that seems to be taking decent care of their IPs in this regard is CAPCOM, and that’s because its being judged by a very low standard.  Equally troubling, though, is the trend towards Multiplatform development, which will be the subject of my next post. Stay Tuned.Nate-B 

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