Thursday, May 28, 2009
How To Fix Game Sequels
So the movie Iron Man 2 is scheduled to be released in May, 2010. The first movie was awesome. But if you missed it - hey, don't worry. Just watch the sequel. Once you watch Iron Man 2, there's no reason to go back and watch the original.
In fact, you could just watch Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith to get the whole Star Wars experience. You can skip the other books and just read The Return of the King, too. Ditto for the movies. And Led Zeppelin's final studio album was, arguably, In Through the Out Door. No sense dredging through that earlier stuff, right?
Wouldn't life be weird if we treated sequels or further volumes in a series in other media the same way we treat games? Unlike other media, with games we have the belief that newer is (almost) always vastly superior. Not just the, "If you liked Batman Begins, you'll love The Dark Knight" kind of superiority, but the kind of superiority where going back to play an earlier title is almost physically painful. There is a tendency for newcomers to a game series to assume that previous entries aren't worth revisiting.
Why Sequels and Series?
Our reaction to sequels was born of harsh experience. At least amonst the hard-core gamers who have been at it for a few years.
First of all, games are frequently built upon the foundations of their predecessors. Oftentimes, the sequel is effectively everything the developers wanted to put in the original game, but couldn't. But with the sequel, developers frequently have a solid code base, tools path, workflow, and pre-existing content to build and improve on. So the next game is everything the previous one was, and then some.
But even when that's not the case, the developers (or at least the publishers) also gain experience. Game development is still not a mature science, and the market seems to be constantly in flux. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of a game, and the needs of the actual audience (the fans of the previous game), can really help developers make a better game. Each sequel allows them to refine the formula.
In addition, games have been so dependent upon technology that it's difficult to even go back and try to play older games. I spent part of last night trying to reinstall Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption, with no success. You'd think a game that came out in the Windows era would be easier to run than an old DOS title, but that frequently isn't the case. I remember excitedly installing Strike Commander on a hot new Pentium once, wondering what the game would play like when finally playing on a machine capable of running it at more than 8 frames per second. Guess what? It sucked. Apparently it had never been tested beyond about 15 frames per second, and the horrible frame rate actually disguised some pretty ugly math issues.
Marketers in the game industry have also really pushed this expectation. It's been very easy for them to sell us on "newer is better," as they have all this inertia to work with. Particularly with games that you don't clearly "win," they have to convince us that while we're still playing and enjoying Madden NFL 08, we should put it on the shelf and shell out another $50 for the "new and improved" Madden NFL 09. And keep doing that, year after year. And so they keep telling us that everything that came before is - well, not exactly crap - but unworthy of our continued attention, and that we should only pay attention to the new and shiny that is coming down the pipe.
Finally, there's the flip side of this issue - as gamers, we have come to expect that sequels are too often little more than "new and improved" versions of their predecessors. An upgrade, not a different game. We have been entrained to view games like widgets instead of entertainment. The stories may be a little different, there may be a couple of new play modes or updated player rosters, but the "formula" that the developers keep refining often gets stale pretty quickly. The enhancements may give us a reason to go forward, but very little argument to go backwards.
Fixing the Perception Problem
Publishers in long-standing novel and movie series often drop any numerals from the title. The concern there is that their potential new audiences may shy away from the newest installment because they aren't familiar with the predecessors. They don't want to limit their potential audience to those who have already enjoyed the preceding works.
This has annoyed me a bit recently, as I've been reading the Harry Dresden novels, and after book six the publisher quit advertising each book's position in the chronology. Fortunately, it's not too hard to hunt down which one is the next book in the series (my friends and my wife have all read them, and have been trying to get me to read 'em for years - as they knew I'd love 'em). I really don't want to read them out of order, but I can see the publisher's intent here. Sequels and new installments in a series in other media frequently increase sales of previous installments.
Game developers and publishers have started shying away from enumerating the order of their games for an altogether different reason: They don't want to sabotage residual sales of previous games in the series. So they disguise their order so each game has to stand on its own. I do not know if this is a valid concern or not - but we gamers definitely come in with our preconceived notions in that regard.
(I should note: This wasn't always the case. The early Wizardry games, reportedly, suffered the same problem as traditional media - their audience was always a subset of the players of the preceding games. Back when the platform - the Apple II - was relatively static, and for full appreciation of the sequels you really needed to have played through the earlier games).
Is It Time For Change?
From my limited vantage point into the sales of things, it does look like a sequel results in a short burst of improved sales of the original, followed by an immediate decline (and then stability). On the indie game front, it's unclear as to whether sequels really cannibalize sales of the original over the long-term or not. But my vantage point is also restricted to a pretty small subset of the wider gaming universe.
On the mainstream front, it is unclear just how many residual sales of older games are actually generated, and at what price point. The bulk of game sales - or so we are told - have run their course within the first three months of the games' release. So why be concerned, as a publisher? Technology as a driver of game evolution also seems to be slowing down. Each successive console generation seems to last a little longer than the last, and four years makes far, far less difference in than it used to in terms of capability and apparent quality.
A lot of the issues with sequels do not apply equally across all genres. Sure, while there was little to prefer Guitar Hero III over Guitar Hero II other than new songs (and I didn't even bother with World Tour), there's not such a comparison between, say, Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy X. I actually preferred the earlier release. Or Monkey Island 2 versus Monkey Island. Sure, the latter was technologically very clearly superior to the first, but both games stand well on their own. RPGs and Adventure Games seem to leave a lot more room for real sequels rather than just a succession of upgrades.
For indie games, there's even less of a natural succession. There's even less technological change, as they are frequently created for compatability rather than taking advantage of the cutting edge. Now, I'd be the first to say that I felt Aveyond 2: Ean's Quest was a superior game to Aveyond: Rhen's Quest (note that Amaranth Games also seems to be deprecating the numbersl in the game titles), that superiority has nothing to do with technology. It's using the same engine. She clearly learned a lot from the first one, and had a bigger budget for the sequel. I'm sure the two chapters of the next game will also show improvement. But these are much more like books or movies. You really, really don't need to play the first game to enjoy the second. Aside from some cameo appearances and a couple of references to the events of the prior game, Aveyond 2 stands completely on its own (and I never played much of the freebie original "prequel" to the series, Ahriman's Prophecy, so I have no idea if I am missing anything... Gee, it sounds like I'm officially Part of the Problem, doesn't it?)
I believe things are already changing. While sometimes even the classics don't always age well, there has been a bit of a surge in interest over the last several years in older games and games that aren't riding the top of the technology curve. Both games and their audiences are maturing. I don't know if we'll get to the point where people frequently revisit an entire series of "evergreen" games like they do certain book or movie series, but I think there's a distinct gravitational pull in that direction.
How to Fix Game Sequels
Unfortunately, I believe attitudes will lag reality for a bit. But I also believe there are a few things that developers / publishers / marketers can do to speed things along - and that's by fixing some of the issues that caused our strange attitudes about game series and sequels in the first place.
#1 - Make an effort to make sequels different, not just an ugrade.
We enjoy a series or a sequel because we want, "familiar, but different." That's a tough tightrope to walk, granted. But half the reason game sequels have such a bad rep is they are too frequently little more than a retread of too-familiar territory.
#2 - Reward familiarity with past games.
While you do not want to even come close to alienating new audiences, it doesn't hurt to reward loyal audiences, or to throw in a little bit of veiled advertisement for older titles in the series.
#3 - Revisit the Older Stuff
Just because game #3 is out in the series with some new whistles and bells does not mean you couldn't or shouldn't go back and provide a little bit of the same TLC for the previous games. No, nobody expects you to support them as well as when they were new and leading your sales charts. But going back and letting them take advantage of some of the easier-to-import improvements you've since made in the newer titles could give them a nice bump. And if those older games are still worthy of your attention, that leads us to believe they may be worthy of ours.
Hopefully, one day, we won't have quite as much a problem with sequels being treated as simple upgrades - by developers OR consumers.
Labels: Biz
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:33 AM (Permalink)
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Good article. I think there really is a lot of discrepancy between various sequels. In my opinion, Fallout was a much better game than Fallout 2...the second game improved on so little, including keeping the same engine and just decided to make the game bigger or something. With a much weaker story line. On the flip side, Diablo 2 was a desperately improved game from the first one...to the point that I would recommend people never even touch the first one and just pick up the battle chest. Here's to hoping that Bioshock 2 isn't simply the tired rehash/expansion of the first it looks to be.
I think it's very tempting from a developer point of view to adopt a mass production philosophy, where you try to figure out methods that will allow you to put out as much content as you can as fast as you can. As you note, the game itself then becomes more of a widget for displaying content rather than an individually unique experience.
Along with what you suggest one thing I think might help indie developers would be to separate UI improvements from gameplay innovations and really focus on selling the idea of a different experience. FPS, RPG and strategy games often boil down to strategies. In sequels, along with varying environment and story, I think it would be vital to focus not so much on "better" but on "different." Risk taking out darling strategies from a sequel (maybe by evolving natural counters) so that the player is forced to play a different way. That would provide enough justification to play a previous game. A good example of this would be the nerfing of the pistol in Halo 2 and addition of dual wielding, which makes both games very different.
Along with what you suggest one thing I think might help indie developers would be to separate UI improvements from gameplay innovations and really focus on selling the idea of a different experience. FPS, RPG and strategy games often boil down to strategies. In sequels, along with varying environment and story, I think it would be vital to focus not so much on "better" but on "different." Risk taking out darling strategies from a sequel (maybe by evolving natural counters) so that the player is forced to play a different way. That would provide enough justification to play a previous game. A good example of this would be the nerfing of the pistol in Halo 2 and addition of dual wielding, which makes both games very different.
There definitely is the attitude of "it's the same thing, but better," particularly in sports games, as you mention. If it's just the industry leaching off of gullible gamers, well, that's no good... but if the target audience really does get their money's worth out of playing the same game over and over again... perhaps this isn't a 'problem' so much as a different paradigm than we're used to looking at.
Hell, I absolutely adore the PS2/PS3 Disgaea titles... and they're a great example. Disgaea 3 is exactly the same on a basic level as the first game... higher-resolution sprites, more item world points of interest, more character types, yes, but it's the same game. Not only that, the dialog is sub-par and the storylines have been going downhill.
Why do I love it? Because more of the same is exactly what I (and many fans of series like this) were hoping for. Yes, we probably have that ingrained expectation because of the way the industry has worked for a long time... but is that because it's profitable, or because that's actually what people want? I don't think there's any way to say with much certainty one way or the other, and as with most things, both (and other factors) are almost certainly involved.
Plus, with regard to story-based media like novels or films, the argument can be made that it's much the same: Every Star Wars movie, while being part of the overall story, is just another underdog story set in space. Every episode of Dollhouse, while dealing with different situations, is still an examination of the same central themes in the same environment. Every Clive Cussler book might draw on the ones before it, and even the genre changes slightly from time to time, but they still share so many of the same basic elements that while you're getting a nice, shiny new plot, you're getting it in the same package as you ever have -- if you weren't, it wouldn't be a sequel or part of a set, it'd be a wholly different beast.
Anyway, the long-winded and obfuscated point I'm trying to make is that perhaps this isn't a problem so much as it is a different way of approaching continuity (one that is, perhaps, more appealing to our general desire for familiarity).
Hell, I absolutely adore the PS2/PS3 Disgaea titles... and they're a great example. Disgaea 3 is exactly the same on a basic level as the first game... higher-resolution sprites, more item world points of interest, more character types, yes, but it's the same game. Not only that, the dialog is sub-par and the storylines have been going downhill.
Why do I love it? Because more of the same is exactly what I (and many fans of series like this) were hoping for. Yes, we probably have that ingrained expectation because of the way the industry has worked for a long time... but is that because it's profitable, or because that's actually what people want? I don't think there's any way to say with much certainty one way or the other, and as with most things, both (and other factors) are almost certainly involved.
Plus, with regard to story-based media like novels or films, the argument can be made that it's much the same: Every Star Wars movie, while being part of the overall story, is just another underdog story set in space. Every episode of Dollhouse, while dealing with different situations, is still an examination of the same central themes in the same environment. Every Clive Cussler book might draw on the ones before it, and even the genre changes slightly from time to time, but they still share so many of the same basic elements that while you're getting a nice, shiny new plot, you're getting it in the same package as you ever have -- if you weren't, it wouldn't be a sequel or part of a set, it'd be a wholly different beast.
Anyway, the long-winded and obfuscated point I'm trying to make is that perhaps this isn't a problem so much as it is a different way of approaching continuity (one that is, perhaps, more appealing to our general desire for familiarity).
On the subject of older game technology: there's an interesting "bubble" effect. Start with the unbelievably ancient games and work your way forwards, and almost all of them are still fully playable via emulators. This continues forward into the DOS games (via DOSbox) -- but then you hit the early Windows 3 and Windows 9x games, and you've entered the bubble. Suddenly very few of the games are still playable today. Step forwards in time a little more (to the 2000/XP era), and you're on the far side of the bubble and almost everything is playable again. (For recent consoles the bubble is less evident; PS1 games can mostly be played perfectly fine in emulation. PS2 games can't, but you can still buy PS2s easily.)
Eventually the bubble will shift, as better emulation arrives on the low end and tech gets out of date on the high end. But it never seems to go away completely.
Eventually the bubble will shift, as better emulation arrives on the low end and tech gets out of date on the high end. But it never seems to go away completely.
@Miral - Fascinating point about the "bubble." I really have found that to be true - the hardest games to get working seem to be the ones released in about a 4-year window from 1996 to 2000.
Interesting. I haven't really tried to get Ultima 7 to run under DOSBOX, but - as far as I've played - Exult has been pretty dang good at handling things.
Phu - yeah, it's a difficult balancing act, as I mentioned. And it isn't unique to games, either. Popular television shows suffer the same problem - if you don't change things enough, things become stale and the audience becomes board. Change things too much, and you may violate the very reason why your audience returns to your show.
I do believe that, on the whole, videogames have erred too much on the "stale" side of the fence, however.
@Nick - Good examples. Yeah, I don't know if I could go back and play Diablo 1 again - though there were a few things I preferred in it over Diablo 2's take on things. But for the most part, Diablo 2 really offered about everything the prior game did, plus a heck of a lot more. Because of its randomly generated content, though, I don't know how it could have done anything all that different and remained "Diablo."
@Wavinator: It's extremely tempting. Don't think I'm not tempted myself. But I know I have a community of people here who will call me on it if I err too far in that direction, so that helps keep me honest. I like your thought about separating UI improvements from gameplay innovations. I'm gonna have to chew on that one for a bit.
Interesting. I haven't really tried to get Ultima 7 to run under DOSBOX, but - as far as I've played - Exult has been pretty dang good at handling things.
Phu - yeah, it's a difficult balancing act, as I mentioned. And it isn't unique to games, either. Popular television shows suffer the same problem - if you don't change things enough, things become stale and the audience becomes board. Change things too much, and you may violate the very reason why your audience returns to your show.
I do believe that, on the whole, videogames have erred too much on the "stale" side of the fence, however.
@Nick - Good examples. Yeah, I don't know if I could go back and play Diablo 1 again - though there were a few things I preferred in it over Diablo 2's take on things. But for the most part, Diablo 2 really offered about everything the prior game did, plus a heck of a lot more. Because of its randomly generated content, though, I don't know how it could have done anything all that different and remained "Diablo."
@Wavinator: It's extremely tempting. Don't think I'm not tempted myself. But I know I have a community of people here who will call me on it if I err too far in that direction, so that helps keep me honest. I like your thought about separating UI improvements from gameplay innovations. I'm gonna have to chew on that one for a bit.
I think there's an interesting line that's not being drawn here between "sequels" and "episodic content". We natually analogize game sequels to film sequels, but it seems to me that episodic content like Half-Life 2 is actually a much closer fit to the pattern of, say, summer blockbuster franchise sequels: the style and technology underlying each film in those series is usually comparable (like the HL2 episodes), and the audience goes in to watch Action Movie IV expecting it to feel much like Action Movie III.
I think a better film analogy to game "sequels" would be the remake. A remake generally looks back at an old favorite film and decides to present it again to modern audiences, usually updating the style and technology in use to match modern innovations and modern sensibilities. As in gaming, these changes are not always for the better. Remakes are often criticized for focusing too much on surface. And indeed, many mainstream film-goers are encouraged to skip the original and watch the remake instead, while purists tend to emphasize that the original is worth watching even if the remake is decent as well (and sometimes insist quite vehemently that the remake is garbage that misses what made the original great).
Thus, Fallout 1 and 2 are pretty close to being "episodic content", and thus like film sequels: they pretty much use the same tools to tell a similar story, and let the audience have more or less tyhe same experience that they liked the first time. Ditto for titles like Aliens vs. Predator 1 and 2; Thief 1 and 2; and so on. By contrast, any franchise that lets more than a couple of years pass between releases is probably aiming for more of a "remake"-style game: Fallout 3 and Thief 3 are pretty good examples, as is the jump between the early Prince of Persia games and the franchise's reboot with Sands of Time (although the three games in the new series are more like sequels of SoT).
Given this analogy, I'd actually like to see more game "sequels" (as opposed to "remakes"): episodic content should be much cheaper to produce than entire new games, and there are plenty of great titles from 1998-2005 that I would play again if they added another 30 hours of content to the same engine. The current Hollywood remake craze seems to dovetail with the same pattern in the game industry; I'd actually like to see more sequels and original works, and fewer remakes.
I think a better film analogy to game "sequels" would be the remake. A remake generally looks back at an old favorite film and decides to present it again to modern audiences, usually updating the style and technology in use to match modern innovations and modern sensibilities. As in gaming, these changes are not always for the better. Remakes are often criticized for focusing too much on surface. And indeed, many mainstream film-goers are encouraged to skip the original and watch the remake instead, while purists tend to emphasize that the original is worth watching even if the remake is decent as well (and sometimes insist quite vehemently that the remake is garbage that misses what made the original great).
Thus, Fallout 1 and 2 are pretty close to being "episodic content", and thus like film sequels: they pretty much use the same tools to tell a similar story, and let the audience have more or less tyhe same experience that they liked the first time. Ditto for titles like Aliens vs. Predator 1 and 2; Thief 1 and 2; and so on. By contrast, any franchise that lets more than a couple of years pass between releases is probably aiming for more of a "remake"-style game: Fallout 3 and Thief 3 are pretty good examples, as is the jump between the early Prince of Persia games and the franchise's reboot with Sands of Time (although the three games in the new series are more like sequels of SoT).
Given this analogy, I'd actually like to see more game "sequels" (as opposed to "remakes"): episodic content should be much cheaper to produce than entire new games, and there are plenty of great titles from 1998-2005 that I would play again if they added another 30 hours of content to the same engine. The current Hollywood remake craze seems to dovetail with the same pattern in the game industry; I'd actually like to see more sequels and original works, and fewer remakes.
When it comes to rewards for fans of older games etc, one of my favourites is still having the original Manic Mansion as a playable game within Day Of The Tentacle - a nice little touch but it gave a whole load of extra play time if you wanted
# posted by 
: May 29, 2009 7:43 AM
: May 29, 2009 7:43 AM
I like how SquareEnix is handling the Ivalice "brand". As far as I can tell, it started with Final Fantasy Tactics, and has gone through Vagrant Story, FFXII and FFXII:Revenant Wings, and both FFT sequels. Ivalice is a *place*, and games happen to take place in it, despite being somewhat different games.
They handled Midgar in a similar way, with the FFVII spinoffs.
The Tactics Ogre games have a similar effect, and I find it interesting that TO:Knight of Lodis presents itself as "an excerpt of the Ogre Battle saga". I think that sort of large scale branding and setting/story/lore construction is a great way to provide a flavor of the familiar while still being flexible enough to create game play innovations.
It's not that these sets of games are "sequels", exactly, but they are definitely family, and that's enough for me to hang brand loyalty on.
...and yes, I've had a hankering for classic games lately. I just finished MechCommander 2 again, and I picked up TO:KOL again, and they have been a LOT more fun than any modern games I've played, especially MMOs.
Now, if I could just get Privateer running again, and carve out time to actually play it as much as I'd like...
They handled Midgar in a similar way, with the FFVII spinoffs.
The Tactics Ogre games have a similar effect, and I find it interesting that TO:Knight of Lodis presents itself as "an excerpt of the Ogre Battle saga". I think that sort of large scale branding and setting/story/lore construction is a great way to provide a flavor of the familiar while still being flexible enough to create game play innovations.
It's not that these sets of games are "sequels", exactly, but they are definitely family, and that's enough for me to hang brand loyalty on.
...and yes, I've had a hankering for classic games lately. I just finished MechCommander 2 again, and I picked up TO:KOL again, and they have been a LOT more fun than any modern games I've played, especially MMOs.
Now, if I could just get Privateer running again, and carve out time to actually play it as much as I'd like...
It sounds like Nintendo's already doing some of what you're advocating, in that they're releasing updated versions of their older games with added/revamped Wii controls: Metroid Prime and Pikmen are the two I know of.
Something you didn't touch on is the alternative to sequels that allows creators to tell the full story they wanted to without resorting to a full sequel. That's, of course, expansions / add-on content / DLC. If you want to continue to tell a story, that's sort of been the traditional way to do series-based content in the same engine.
Of course, I'd argue that anyone setting out to make a game with a sequel is pretty big-headed in the first place. As those screenwriting books are fond of saying, don't hold anything in reserve for the sequel; always use your best ideas. Even George Lucas knew enough to include an operational Death Star in the first movie.
The other comment I'd make is that in a lot of cases, if you're plunking down $60 for a game, you expect to get the full story/experience. So with a full-price sequel, from a consumer's perspective either the story had better be a really good follow up to the previous game, or else there had better be some pretty hefty innovation going on under the hood. (Or both.)
Something you didn't touch on is the alternative to sequels that allows creators to tell the full story they wanted to without resorting to a full sequel. That's, of course, expansions / add-on content / DLC. If you want to continue to tell a story, that's sort of been the traditional way to do series-based content in the same engine.
Of course, I'd argue that anyone setting out to make a game with a sequel is pretty big-headed in the first place. As those screenwriting books are fond of saying, don't hold anything in reserve for the sequel; always use your best ideas. Even George Lucas knew enough to include an operational Death Star in the first movie.
The other comment I'd make is that in a lot of cases, if you're plunking down $60 for a game, you expect to get the full story/experience. So with a full-price sequel, from a consumer's perspective either the story had better be a really good follow up to the previous game, or else there had better be some pretty hefty innovation going on under the hood. (Or both.)
And then there are remakes that miss something.
I recently played Chrono Trigger DS with the Vintage Game Club, after having finished it on the SNES years ago. The game is still good and awesome, I've finished it again, and am religiously getting all endings one after the other.
But the stuff they added to show that "it's new, and not just rehashed" is bland. Blander than bland. There's no spirit in it, it's just empty and simply embrace the trope "Infinity +1 sword" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InfinityPlusOneSword)...
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I recently played Chrono Trigger DS with the Vintage Game Club, after having finished it on the SNES years ago. The game is still good and awesome, I've finished it again, and am religiously getting all endings one after the other.
But the stuff they added to show that "it's new, and not just rehashed" is bland. Blander than bland. There's no spirit in it, it's just empty and simply embrace the trope "Infinity +1 sword" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InfinityPlusOneSword)...
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