Franchise fatigue is usually thrown around among video game players like pizza among the hordes of drunken friends you invited down this past weekend. It’s natural for people to hunger for a new series after playing through the twelfth “Call of Duty.” I’m someone who abhors the concept, and have mostly given up hope for new intellectual properties in the AAA space. If you’re hungering for new experiences check out the indie space, it’s the video game Mecca of innovation right now.
Franchise fatigue is as relevant as ever in the wake of a new console launch. The repercussions of overextending a company’s cash cow don’t merely affect consumers. Developers are as much a victim of penny pushing a CEO’s tactics as anyone. Bungie continuously made “Halo” Microsoft’s hallmark exclusive. At this point, seemingly every Ubisoft developer on the planet is working on “Assassin’s Creed” in some capacity. Game development is taxing enough, but force an over-worked group of employees to innovate on the same concepts over and over and eventually they’ll snap.
All this pressure usually leads to messy divorces between a studio’s original creation and the publisher that owns the rights to said creation. These creators then move on to a different publisher or, if they’re lucky, switch to a new franchise. Part of this phenomenon involves the transition of a franchise to a new studio charged with carrying on the series’ legacy and financial viability.
More often than not this ends in disaster. Spark Unlimited took over “Lost Planet” after two competent entries and created a game whose quality was universally hailed as analogous to eating the terrible chicken within Kid Cuisine microwave dinners. Not the brownies though, those were always delicious.
There are countless other examples, most recently it sounds as if the new Batman game simply isn’t up to snuff. Similarly, “Spyro” fell into a deep pit of irrelevance after Insomniac gave up production on the series. “Crash” suffered the same fate. “Army of Two” never really produced, but its third game, created by what seemed like an absolute mess of a studio, Visceral Montreal, ended up just as unfulfilling as the first two.
For the litany of failures I could list off, I’m going to defend one facet of this generally soul-sapping practice. Although “Sly Cooper” took a small hiatus, Sanzaru Games received the opportunity to revitalize the series after creating the HD collection. 343 Studios took over Bungie’s little baby and made what I considered the finest “Halo” since its third entry.
Ready At Dawn contributed to the “God of War” series with their excellent PSP entries and finally got the opportunity to craft a new upcoming console title. Even Nintendo’s flagship games are changed around among internal studios generally shrouded within mystery, but still offering fresh faces an opportunity to take a swing at their classics.
If one developer starts to tire of iterating on their same ideas, then sometimes it seems the best idea is to find another developer willing to take it on. The key is finding someone both talented and passionate. It’s not an easy task, but throwing a relative unknown on a high-profile project can sometimes reveal the worth of that developer.
It also gives a chance for new ideas to be thrown into the mix. Tunnel vision becomes a common phenomenon among a singular creation team, so handing the reins to a fresh set of eyes can provide a jolt to a stagnant franchise. It’s a healthy byproduct that hopefully leads to a series of developers with fresh ideas.
Even if the new “Batman” isn’t as great as Rocksteady’s, the pedigree behind Warner Bros. Montreal indicates their future creations could hold promise if they try to remove themselves slightly from the previous games’ formula. Shifting development creates new opportunities but also allows the industry’s most talented creators to move onto other projects.
Bungie found “Destiny.” Rocksteady is making something I’ll eventually drool on. Naughty Dog, Insomniac and Sucker Punch keep changing up their current projects every generation. Iterating on brand names can become a chore, but don’t forget, somewhere a developer is just hoping they might get a shot at that vaunted franchise.
Do you sometimes satisfied if games are handed off? Discuss with Adam at arparis@wisc.edu.
