It’s time
to let
a good
thing die
The gaming industry needs to learn when it’s time to let a
good thing die quietly.
It’s a problem that doesn’t just affect games, of course - constant
reboots of major film franchises are also fairly commonplace (Spider
Man, Batman, Evil Dead, etc). But video game publishers take it to a
whole new level, not only by rebooting games that often don’t need
it, but also by infecting their most popular franchises with a bad case
of sequelitis, a horrible disease which dictates that a series must have
a new title every year for fear it will be forgotten. Urban Dictionary
even describes the condition as “A medical condition propogated by
a combination of commercial success and creative ineptitude.”
Sequelitis
Just a few of the Call of Duty games
Call of Duty is perhaps the industry’s most infamous
sufferer here, which has seen a new game released
every year since 2005. Assassin’s Creed is little better,
with up to four games released each year since 2007.
Tomb Raider was one of the first to catch sequilitis,
with eight titles released between 1996 and 2003,
though perhaps the most severely affected was the
Guitar Hero brand, which managed to release over
fifteen games in a five year period from 2005 to 2010.
This particular case eventually culminated in the
collapse of the music game genre, from which it still
hasn’t recovered.
The problem with this yearly release schedule is self-
evident: the market becomes over-saturated, to the
point where it becomes very difficult to get excited
about the latest Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed game
when you’ve been playing the series year after year.
It also results in the most exciting, daring releases
in the series being overlooked- the latest Call of
Duty (Infinite Warfare) was the biggest shakeup
the franchise has seen for years, but it sold poorly
compared to its predecessors and was criticised for
taking the series too far in a different direction.
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Random Reboot Syndrome
The other affliction that seems to be rife amongst
publishers is Random Reboot Syndrome, or RRS.
This condition imprints an undeniable urge in
the publisher’s brain that a game series needs to
be rebooted. Often, there’s no logic to which game
this will be or why; sometimes it’s to bring back
an old name and tug on the nostalgia heartstrings,
sometimes its to freshen up a series that was going
fine until just recently. Sometimes these reboots
are more like retellings, serving only to update the
mechanics of an older title to make it more palatable
for a modern audience. Sometimes, they’re pretty
bizarre.
Spotlight: Weird Reboots
Syndicate, a 1993 squad-based tactical shooter by
Bullfrog Interactive, reborn as a First-Person Shooter
by Starbreeze Studios in 2012.
The original Syndicate was dark, gritty, and
challenging. The remake was glossy, stylish, and
brutally violent, and had very little to do with the
original game at all.
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