Every gamer has their favourite franchises, whether it is long running series like Zelda or Final Fantasy, or more recent ones like Fable, Bioshock, and Gears of War. Most of these games are story driven, but still rely on improving the gameplay mechanics between iterations to draw in new and returning consumers. Of course, the hardest part for any gamer is the wait to hear if a sequel is going to be made, and how many years they will have to wait to jump back into that game world. Then, there is a whole other group of games that don’t really suffer from those problems. Essentially, they guarantee a new offering in their series every year – with eager fans lining up to get their hands on the new iteration. But how different is the game year to year? Does the investment of time really balance the investment of cash that consumers shell out year after year for games like Madden, NHL, FIFA and other (mostly sports) games? That is the topic for this issue.
First let’s look at some of those franchises I put into the first category – the story driven, long development franchises. Even here you can have ups and downs in terms of quality and ‘improvement’ of games. Two examples I’m going to look at – Fable and Bioshock – have three games in their respective series (or at least Bioshock will when the new game is released). The first Fable game, created by Lionhead studios, was released for the original Xbox, which would later be bought by Microsoft, making the newer Fable games First-Party licenses. The first Fable had a great world filled with lots of British humour, but was simple and featured a relatively small game world when compared with later games. Fable II advanced the story a few hundred years into the future, to the time of the industrial revolution hitting the world of Albion. Featuring a vastly more detailed, and larger world, Fable II was a great advancement on the size and look of the original, but failed somewhat on the gameplay front. Fable III followed the same trend, with a larger, more detailed world, but again, a drop in gameplay. While the original had a kind of basic RPG style advancement system split into Melee, Ranged, and Magic combat, the newer games instead just rewarded with a generic point system including everything from shaking hands with villagers to killing the largest enemies. Magic powers were scaled down, combat was simplified with the removal of health and mana bars to be replaced with the standard ‘take cover for a minute after the screen starts to go red and your health will regenerate’. With Fable: The Journey being released for the Xbox 360 Kinect, and Fable IV in development (apparently) I have my hopes up. Why? Because I love the humour of the series and always hope that they will realize that they already had great gameplay, they just need to bring it back (maybe on the Xbox 720???).
The second franchise I’m going to talk about is Bioshock, which currently has two games in the series, set in the underwater city of Rapture, and a third game on the way in a new, floating city. The Bioshock series has risen to success (see, the game is going from underwater to above the clouds) through a combination of great gameplay, beautiful environments, and deep storylines. I’ve talked before about the great audio diaries hidden throughout the original game – they don’t just give you a neat little picture into the world, they also expand it. A series of three audio diaries tells the story of a family torn apart by the sickness of their daughter and her transformation into a little sister – but you can actually find their apartment (use the keycode from one of the diaries) and see the conclusion of the story. All that is second to the main storyline, and can only be found if you search every room for new things. The second game was a bit of a letdown as it was in the same world again – still great, but not exactly new. Gameplay was largely the same – except you now play as a Big Daddy, one of the main enemies from the first game, which didn’t really change the game much. I think the other problem is the lack of a deep storyline – you aren’t trying to find out what happened to Rapture, since you already know what happened, instead, you just wander around. I will eventually go back and finish Bioshock 2, but the story failed to pull me in as another game I was anticipating was released. Bioshock: Infinite looks to revitalize the franchise with a whole new world, while keeping the quirkiness of the original. New characters, locations, political struggles – this isn’t a dead world you are walking into, this is a world in chaos – look to recapture the great qualities of the original, but we will have to wait and see how it shapes up.
So how about that second group I talked about – the repetition gaming category? Well, this is a genre that I just could never find myself interested in, mainly because I’m not a very sports-oriented person, and the idea of playing through an entire football season really doesn’t capture me in any way. For this reason, I always watch in wonder every time a new Madden NFL, NHL, FIFA, or other game in that genre is released, and millions of people line up in droves to shell out $60 for a game that suddenly makes last year’s completely obsolete. Does the gameplay really advance that much year to year? Is the rendering of grass or ice really that much more detailed to warrant the expense? Do the new uniforms for a team really affect your enjoyment of the game? Apparently, it depends on which console you are playing.
FIFA 13 is making news right now for becoming one of the fastest selling games of all time, selling 4.5 million copies in five days. While most of the versions of the game are being lauded as great improvements over FIFA 12, the owners of the Wii version of the game probably thought that they had put in the wrong disc when they started up the game. It seems that the Electronic Arts (EA) decided that fans would be happy with the same gameplay as long as character stats and uniforms were updated for this year. You can see in the screenshot – don’t worry, the socks and shoes are accurate to this year’s standards. The only other change to the game is the soundtrack, which is the same as all the other 2013 iterations of the game. So why is this acceptable, why can EA basically change the skins, a couple of stats, add a new soundtrack, slap a ’13’ on the box and demand $60 from consumers? I don’t know – what, did you expect me to solve this problem? I just want to incite a small rebellion.
Basically, these are the issues I have with the disparity between long and short development cycle games. While both have their issues and can sour a franchise, at least the long-term developers generally try to change things significantly from iteration to iteration. It may be a new world or gameplay mechanic, or an entirely new take on an established brand (like the Fable II Pub Games for Xbox Live Arcade), and it can be viewed in both a positive and negative light – but at least it is something new. Now, I realize I’m going to probably get a lot of complaints about putting down yearly sports games, but I have two points to raise in my defense. 1) I’m on co-op in Alberta so I can avoid most people until next term when the angriest people will have forgotten. 2) Just think of the improvements and new features that could be in each of these games, if they came out even just two years apart – would you be willing to pay $60 for that better game and maybe instead have the yearly updates come as downloadable content for a lower price? Until next time, Keep on Gaming.
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