Are gamers experiencing industry-wide franchise fatigue?

Something that has been in the back of my mind for the longest time, and has surfaced quite hard since this year's E3 and the reactions to it. These days, when we talk about franchises (like Mario, Zelda, Call of Duty, etc.) in the general sense, gamers seem to talk down on them a lot, often calling them "rehashes", "glorified add-ons", "same game repainted" and the like. Even when we talk franchises that have large gaps between installments (like the Smash Bros series), and even dormant franchises (like Metroid or Crash Bandicoot), we often talk down to them when we bring them up in conversation, saying that their new installments would end up as just "rehashes", and lament about the idea of getting new IP. Even if said new IP end up being So Okay, It's Average or worse, they often get some sort of praise as being new IP, and if the new installment gets 9s and 10s across the board, gamers tend to praise the new IP for being new and slam the new franchise installment as "more of the same".

So does the gaming industry just hate franchises and everything they stand for? If franchises took larger gaps between installments, would gamers at large be less abrasive towards them? These are the questions that I've wondered for a very long time as a gamer myself...

If they hated it so much, they wouldn't spend the money on them to keep the entire companies going on.

I think people just like to have something to complain about.

The talk from people complaining about "rehashes" are either people who grew up on gaming for years and are just sick of games in general or are people jumping on the bandwagon to be cool. People want new stuff, but they don't want something that is unfamiliar. People blast Nintendo for "remaking the same games a billion times", but no one seems to acknowledge the fact that Nintendo actually tries to change things up a bit in their core franchises so that it feels new, yet familiar.

Not to mention successful franchises are successful for a reason and you don't go doing complete changes within them just for the sake of making the "rehash" complainers happy.

The thing is that one can't make a blanket statement that Nintendo does switch things up, either. New Super Mario Bros games are certainly further on the rehash side of the spectrum than, say, Atelier or Tales, which are yearly series that still manage to play completely differently under the same base systems. Most of the adjustments made within a single generation of Pokemon only matter to the competitive end of things, also.

edited 4th Jul '14 10:18:45 AM by burnpsy

It's the yearly rehash ones or all-too-similar and frequent ones (Call Of Duty, the New Super Mario Bros series) that folks are tired of.

No, it's just the older veteran players are complaining. Most people don't even seem to experience the "fatigue" in the way hardcore gamers do at all; to them it's just a phase, and when they get tired they simply buy a new game or buy the latest iteration. The others that do get tired may end up tiring of the entire hobby in general and move on to something new in their lives.

We're the only group that actually complains about it and makes a point to find and experiment with new genres and such to play with as a means of keeping our pastime going.

On that level, I understand the franchise fatigue. However, like I said in the OP, franchises with large gaps between them like Smash (which between Brawl and this year's 4 is a 6 year gap) and dormant ones like Metroid get hit with this too.

edited 4th Jul '14 10:21:38 AM by nigelstack345

yeah but the differences between each generation of pokemon are fairly significant, id say.

a lot of people ive talked to who've actually had this kind of viewpoint invariably dont care about any real changes. they're ignore them. what they do care about are massive, genre shifting changes that make the new game not even resemble the series it belongs to. which i honestly cannot fathom because in many cases we're into the series because we like the way it plays so why would we want such a massive, "in name only" kind of change? you might as well just make a new ip or make a sequel to something else entirely.

zelda especially is always hit with the "it doesnt change" accusation, and every time they seem to be willfully ignorant of what did change, so they can harp on the fact that it follow the formula or style of gameplay that made the series what it is. thing is though, people like how these games play, and while the formula could very well do with a change every now and then, different dungeons, different items, different overworlds, npcs, quests...how is that not enough to shake off that fucking "it doesnt change" accusation?

The thing is that what people are tired of and want changed (and alternately, what they want to keep) is going to vary from franchise to franchise.

To take the Zelda example: it's hard to get around the fact that most games in the series use the basic plot structure of "collect first set of Mac Guffins, big plot reveal happens, collect second set of Mac Guffins, confront the Big Bad". While the games may put new mechanics, new characters, and new ideas into play, that core remains the same, and that's what people find tiresome.

Another example is the Might and Magic RPG series. X recently came out, after the series was on ice for many years, and got a mixed reaction. The reason why is that they based the combat and movement mechanics off of IV and V, which used very different systems than later installments. (The character leveling system borrowed more ideas from those later installments.) This shows that there were two groups of fans at work, both who had different ideas about what direction the series should take.

Ultimately, I don't think it's something that can be described as "industry-wide", because the reasons for disliking each franchise are so very different.

Mega Man. 'nuff said.

Seriously, some people say that these long running series should just die. Now do you see what happens when people think a series does die?

However, the fundamental complaint when it comes to franchises still exist throughout the industry. Gamers see new installments in a franchise as mere "rehashes" with nothing new added to them. Complaints still may vary from franchise to franchise, but this is the chief complaint regarding them all.

I remember that. It's both hilarious and tragic that Mega Man got hit with fatigue and then after Capcom did what it did and shelved it indefinitely, people started to call for Mega Man back.

And that's why fan complaints should be taken with a satchel of salt.

^ A dump truck worth actually.

Why people complain about game series like that is really simple. They don't like that game series. They complain about it being rehashes and such because there's very little chance that series will change the way they want to the point they will like it, so those series' lots of releases basically clog things up in their view, making it a bit harder to find games they do like.

When people say they want more IP's, they mean they want new IP's they enjoy. People cheer when new IP's are made because more IP's means a higher chance new games they like will come out, whereas more sequels to series they don't like means more games they don't like.

Since when are gamers a monolith anyway? Gaming is a big, global industry, so no matter what you do, you're going to run head first into a wall of complaints. And if you do a good enough job, you'll be lifted over that wall by a Tidal Wave of fandom. Which will promptly drop you head first on top of the wall when the fans don't get what they want next time.

It's the way business works, period.

Fans — people who create or interact with fan works, or discuss the object of their fandom in any kind of in-depth way — are a pretty small minority of the audience of any work (though they can be a lucrative one), and vocal fans are a minority within a minority.

So, yeah, what fans say they want, even if it's truly what they want (it probably isn't, though), will never be representative of your whole audience, unless you've reached the point where only fans buy what you're selling — but the solution to that is to reach more people rather than engage in the fan-indulgence death-spiral.

Case in point, CAVE.

Franchise fatigue, no? (Unless its Nintendo, then probably yes).

I'd say more like a crave for something new. Not so much "never do this again" as "how can I miss you if you won't go away."

The mega man example is a good one. People didn't want the series dead, they were just annoyed by Sequelitis, Capcom Sequel Stagnation, the fact Capcom sat on a lot of other things that could get sequels (Red Earth) and were eager for something Capcom had not done yet. Yeah, there are some people who are like "Never do Megaman again" but honestly, even Splatterhouse had people asking for a sequel. Just not a sequel every year, or a string of sequels that added nothing substantial since the fifth or an In Name Only sequel. See, there used to be a time when games did not take quite so long to develop and budgets were not quite so big, so a larger variety of titles were put out. Then came this thing called the NES Famicom.

Entry to the market became a bottleneck, prices shot up, work time increased, creativity went down. (On the plus side, stuff that didn't work also went down, Nintendo wasn't all bad)

The only fatigue I get with franchises is that which comes with NOT getting games in the ones I follow in a timely enough fashion. I'm looking at you, Valve and Bethesda. There's no way in hell that the next part of the Half-Life series should be taking this long to make an appearance, especially since Valve sold us the lie that episodic content would mean new stuff comes out quicker.

Same deal for the Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises. Yeah, you can stand there and spout stuff like "ESO doesn't steal time away from a single player game in the Elder Scrolls franchise" til you are blue in the face but I don't buy it for a second. Sorry. And I just want to know what the canon result to the Capital Wasteland and Mojave Wasteland wars was, dammit.

If they rolled out games in those franchises every year, regardless of quality like what seems to have happened with Co D and Battlefield, I would be equally annoyed.

...I am trying to figure out your logic here, but am drawing a blank. It's a different developer who handled ESO, how does its existence change anything at all?

You are assuming that the "different developer" stuff means anything to me. It doesn't. I have had this argument before and I'm sticking to my conclusion that it is the case that ESO is syphoning off funds and developers from the mainline Elder Scrolls games because it is in a heckuva lot of trouble and needs shoring up fast or else it will inevitably end up free to play.

And since the developers for ESO and the mainline games are owned by the same company and answer to the same bosses the "different developer" argument holds even less water than you may imagine.

Okay.

How does this equate to Bethesda definitely not working on TES 6 at the same time? I mean, you're working under the assumption that they only have enough money for one or the other, but entries in that series seem to have a slowly-growing gap between main entries. Is it not normal to have not heard anything by this point?

It just sounds like you have half the information and filled in the rest from assumptions so you'd have something so complain about. Yes, there's a long gap between entries. No, that does not mean that TESO is delaying the next game.

And no, I'm not assuming anything means anything to you, but facts are facts and we don't have enough of them for you to claim what you're claiming.

But what do I know, right?

edited 6th Jul '14 1:39:20 PM by burnpsy

There's a four to five year gap in between Elder Scrolls games. Make of that what you will.

If that's the case TES VI will most likely be announced next year at the earliest.

The only "creativity" that took a hit when the Famicom came out was the porn game market like Custers Revenge. If anything creativity went up because it forced everybody to not be porn games, Pac Man clones and generic Galaga style shooters.