DLC v Episodes v Sequels

Game developers have now caught on the IP craze that Epic Games and Bungie popularized (not started, but made it insanely popular) with Unreal Tournament, Gears of Wars and Halo. Games are developed to become IP, to become a series. So why are they continuing to be sold as stand alone full priced games if they are not?

I don't understand why there are so many sequels now a days. With sequels, I think the players are getting the shaft. For majority of them at least.

Why?

Sequels are often made with the same engine. The style of animation, drawings, gameplay remains the same. There are exceptions such as Crysis 2 (whole new engine, changes to gameplay, not necessarily for the better).

But let's look at some big blockbuster sequels. COD MW and COD MW2. MW2 brought nothing new, the game engine was slightly updated, but it's the same. L4D and L4D2. I am among those who believe L4D2 should have been a DLC, not even an episode. Batman AA and Batman AC. Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas. Assassins Creed Series. The list goes on and on.

I don't think those games are small enough to be a DLC though. But episodes? Yes I think they should be episodes. Instead they are sold as full games with full game prices.

I'm surprised when Valve decided to release the HL2 series as episodes, more game developers didn't catch on to that. Cause I believe all the games I mentioned above should have been 1/3 priced episode released.

What do you think?

I started thinking about this after I saw the trailer and screenshots for Borderlands 2. I liked that Borderlands had so many DLCs. Borderlands 2 definitely seems too large for a DLC, but that should be an episode. Not enough new is brought to the table where I think the game warrants to be sold and marketed as a new game, it's not. It's just another episode in that new IP/Franchise Gearbox has created.

 

Hrmm...I disagree. We've had series of games forever. Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, etc - the graphics were hardly upgraded if at all and we used to see sequels 3+ times per system generation. If anything, over time we are getting less and less of this because of cost/return value. Lets face it - a game has to be pretty great in order for an company to even consider a sequel or the game series is back by the system developer itself (Halo, Gears, LBP, etc). If anything, we are getting more these days with DLC. If we were talking about the pricing of most DLC, I may concur with this argument but if we are talking about stand alone games being crafted in to a series...well that's no different than anything I've seen in my life time thus far.

 

I think he's onto something here, but I think what we're seeing is a fundamental shift in gaming. We now have a class or classes of games where SP is an afterthought and MP is the core of the game. I'm thinking mainly of the CoD series here (of course, the single player is pretty good, but there's no denying that multiplayer is the meat and potatoes of the series, especially MW/BO). Given that, I agree that there was almost no point to MW2 as a separate release, since it was essentially a new campaign (which could be an episode) and a map pack with a handful of new weapons.

Unfortunately, the sales figures for games like MW2 ensure that such releases will continue to be in the form of a full priced separate pressing. If they can collect $60 a copy, why trim the price? If sales figures for AAA sequels begin to fall off, I think we can expect to see more episodic content and bigger DLC packages.

 

I would say that a DLC is a small chunk of game that's tacked onto an existing game, an episode is a medium-sized game that continues a given story-arc, and a sequel is a full-sized game that is developed to continue a series or story-arc.

I would agree that a lot of sequels that come out these days (particularly the Battlefield/Call of Duty franchises) look a lot more like annual remakes than legitimate new games, more like what sports game franchises do than what a real sequel should be, but they are full-sized games in their own right, with an amount of content and a development cost that justifies their price. The biggest problem with games like that is that they have already achieved their goals as games and there isn't really anywhere else to go, so they have to keep refreshing the series with the same stuff in a prettier box to keep making money.

Which emphasizes your point about what many top-tier games are developed to be: IP's. The guys who count the money realized a while ago that developing new content for a brand new IP is not only harder, but way riskier than continuing something that has paid off before. Therefore a great deal of the top-level development dollars are spent not on creating new experiences that push the boundaries of what has come before, but on cashing in on what is tried and true. Exceptions exist, of course, with probably the most poignant of the last year being LA Noire, but very few big budget developers are willing to risk profit for innovation or art.

As the dead horse neighs: those who would seek innovation and art in video games need look no further than the vast indie gaming market. While there's a ton of chaff to sort through, games like Gish, Braid, Sanctum, and Amnesia push the envelope of gaming while delivering not just an innovative, but a compelling and enjoyable game experience.

If you ask me, the current state of the gaming industry is like this: Top-tier developers are pushing the technical aspects of games, particularly graphics, into new ground, while largely standing pat on the rest of the game experience. The indie scene as a whole, on the other hand, is pushing the envelope of the video game as art and innovative gameplay possibilities, as well as sometimes pushing the boundaries of game sound design or physics, though rarely with graphical complexity. It would be great to see the funding of top-tier games in the hands of more innovative indie developers, but one or two games later they'd be the fat cats themselves and the cycle would start all over again.

The bottom line is this, though: you can talk and rally people one way or the other, you can write letters to the developers you think are going wrong, but the most effective way most people can influence the state of the game industry today is to determine where they spend their money. It's easy to think that abstaining from buying the next Call of Duty or Battlefield game isn't even a drop in the bucket for the publishers and the developers, but if a fraction of the disgruntled gamers who feel gypped by the refresh actually keep their money, the developers will feel it, and they will be more likely to listen to the money that didn't come their way than to a disgruntled fan who paid his $60.