If you could kill one gaming franchise what would it be?

[krissy]

FINAL FANSTY

[Yeargdribble]

Part of me wants to say CoD. Full disclosure, I've never played one. It has more to do with the element it brings to gaming sort of like sports games, but worse. Honestly, it's the types of people who harassed you for being a nerdy gamer now buying an annualized game, many of which still think people who playing non-CoD are nerdy. It's helped make gaming more mainstream, but it's also slowly destroyed the variety that games have by making a clear money-making mechanism for other companies to copy ad nauseum.


I also sort of think Final Fantasy may need to be put down for its own good.

[Jinx]

Guys, we should start a thread on KH and the impact of having it spread over multiple consoles. I want to chime in, but I don't want to take things off topic.

Also, I want to kill Modern Warfare. I hate FPS. I can't play them, and they make me nauseous. And driving an hour to see friends you haven't seen in a year and having them play Modern Warfare 2 the entire time hurts your feelings.

[Quindiana Jones]

You know what they say: if you can't beat them at their own game, just beat them.

[Wolf Kanno]

Guys, we should start a thread on KH and the impact of having it spread over multiple consoles. I want to chime in, but I don't want to take things off topic.

Actually there is thread already for this discussion.

[Psychotic]

Mario or Zelda. Come up with something new already jeez.

[Jiro]

I'm just sick of those obnoxious Call of Duty fans (and the haters too) so I would kill that so we all have to find something else to talk about. So what if they're generic war games? Don't bitch when there's more generic trout out there as well/ it's nothing special don't think you're some all class gamer just for playing CoD.

[Del Murder]

The 3D Castlevania franchise so Konami has to go back to making 2D.

[Bolivar]

Well I would never want to cancel a game if there are people who are enjoying it. I enjoy Call of Duty immensely, it's my bread and butter throughout the gaming year, without which I'd probably be forcing myself through mediocre RPGs that I'm only mildly enjoying. The way the challenges, unlock, Create-A-Class and Prestige systems intertwine makes for such a limitlessly playable yet incredibly accessible experience. And when that same game also has, year after year, more maps than any other shooter, more game types and variants on them, and the most robust Add-On content to keep you going, well it's just like a perfect storm and it's understandable why it's the most popular franchise right now. It deserves to be.

But on the other hand, maybe we could kill a franchise that isn't doing anyone good and is only harming the companies producing the title, and possibly the indstry as a whole. The whole franchisization of Final Fantasy XIII should be put to bed. I liked FFXIII, sometimes I liked it a whole lot, but I don't think anyone wants anymore Lightning stories. Get back to what made Square great, different titles and series all the time, year after year, lots of experimenting, even in the flagships.

[Bubba]

I suppose every franchise has it's market otherwise it wouldn't be a franchise. Personally though, I would be fine if FPS's were no longer a thing. Any game that uses this perspective I just find incredibly frustrating and uncomfortable to play. The lack of peripheral vision is extremely irritating. I like to think that if someone was stood two feet away and 90 degrees to my right... with a shotgun pointed at my head... I'd be able to react in a way other than just standing there and having my head unceremoniously detached from my body.

Don't get me wrong, games like Call of Duty have their merits. They look fantastic and are very well put together. I just have too many memories of running (but not moving) into walls while I'm continually getting shot in the back... maybe I just suck at these games.

[Laddy]

Warning! Nonsensical butthurt "I'm old-school and I'm totally right" rant that maybe two people will appreciate (and you know who you are):

I agree with many people that many FPS's aren't "bad" as much as their popularity keeping companies afloat in a less-than-ideal economy has contributed to one of the least impressive console generations in a while. Creative bankruptcy is normal, but never before have I been so overwhelmingly unimpressed with the lack of real and constructive innovation in the medium.

For example, the RPG as a genre cannot be marketable anymore without becoming either a hybrid or an MMO. Fallout is an excellent example. While Fallout: New Vegas is probably one of the three best RPG's that came out this generation, both that and Fallout 3 feel somewhat stripped-down to accommodate a new generation of FPS-players with a much lower attention span. Did it work? To a degree, but it still feels different in a lot of bad ways. Oblivion, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy XIII, Skyrim, and Fallout 3 have completely lost a large portion of what make RPG's so great in a variety of fashions, and it's upsetting to watch my favorite genre and franchises cave in to a supposed less friendly market.

Should games evolve? Of course, many of the greatest games are held in such a high regard due to an evolution in ideas and mechanics. However, taking a genre and blending it with a totally unrelated genre is baffling, and I can't help feeling insulted as a loyal fan when my favorite developers consider me as an afterthought.

Of course I realize that this is merely smart business. In a poor economy, people are less inclined to be a risky consumer by playing games they may not enjoy. Naturally, FPS's have a broad range of appeal, so they can keep companies financially stable. I just hope the increasing jumps to the bandwagon doesn't slow down the hike.

[Pike]

Farmville because I want Zynga to die so Brian and Soren can come back to us

[Slothy]

But on the other hand, maybe we could kill a franchise that isn't doing anyone good and is only harming the companies producing the title, and possibly the indstry as a whole.

This is kind of why I want COD to die at this point. At best it's impact on the rest of the industry since COD 4 has been mildly annoying to me. At worst it's absolutely atrocious. I agree with Laddy that iterating on ideas and evolving them slowly has its place. But I don't see a lot of that from what I've seen and played of COD's since COD4. I could forgive someone who's only casually played them for not being able to tell the difference between any of them actually. They may be changing slightly from one game to the next, but it's not nearly enough if you ask me.

Which is made worse when you consider they're doing yearly releases. Which means every other company is trying to do the same thing. Find something that works then beat it to death year after year. It's what killed Guitar Hero and Rock Band. It's the absolute worst thing about the Assassin's Creed series. There is absolutely no need to release one of these titles every year. Especially when they change so little from one year to the next. I do believe it's harmful to the industry in the long run because it changes the focus from "how can we make a good game that's going to sell well" to "how can we exploit something that's popular for several years to make us some easy money?"

Even worse, because it's so popular, everyone tries to ape that success. So now we have a lot of other games which have to be about modern warfare. Which isn't exactly a new trend mind you since 5-10 years ago it was WWII, but it wasn't quite as bad as it is now considering we have games trying to ape their formula in other ways. One of the reasons stated for why FFXIII was so linear was because they were trying to ape these really successful western formulas (I think it was more because they did dick all for several years then needed to get it out the door, but trying to appeal to western audiences probably did play a role too).

I just look at the industry now and I see a whole lot more me too titles out there trying to take what works for a really popular title and do the same thing. Granted, there's more to it than just COD being popular. There's also a troutty economy and absurd development budgets which probably exacerbate things quite a bit more than would normally be the case. But there's also COD making record amounts of money every year. That's a hell of a big carrot that a lot of people are trying to chase instead of finding their own damn carrot.

Farmville because I want Zynga to die so Brian and Soren can come back to us

If their IPO and (I'm pretty sure anyway) falling user numbers are any indication you might get your wish someday. The sooner the better.

[maybee]

The 3D Castlevania franchise so Konami has to go back to making 2D.

Can I love you ?

I love and adore the 2D Castlevania games and the 3D games are just not the same as the 2D games...

I was going to say either Halo or Final Fantasy. Make Final Fanatsy 15 good, really good and go out with amazing fireworks and then start with a new fresh plate.

And Halo is overated. Ducks quickly under the table.

KH needs to die too, just create KH 3 and again like they should with the future FF15 go out with a good end. Again SquareEnix needs to make a new Final Fantasy and KH.

[Bolivar]

You guys are getting very emotional with arguments using flowery words like economy and iteration. The simple fact is last generation had the hack-n-slash, 32-bit had the RPG, 16-bit had the beat-em-up and 8-bit had the platformer. And yes, people tried to make games more actioney after the hack-n-slash and RPG elements proliferated in the generation after the 16-bit console.

Vivi, I'll only mention 2 things. 1) I have no clue what you're talking about with Assassin's Creed, as people have loved the series since it moved to annual releases, especially Brotherhood, which was the first to be released after a year. Now people are losing their minds over how awesome ACIII looks.

2) You keep going on about CoD4 as if it's some kind of credibility-badge for you, when in reality I have to question what your relationship is to this series considering you said it looks better than FFXIII multiple time (you're blind). I would agree that MW3 had too little evolution; it was a placeholder title in a year that they had to get a game out after switching teams well into development. It would've been better if they dropped the series for a year and focused on another shooter like James Bond and that would've built more hype for the next one.

But just the previous game Black Ops introduced so much to the series. It was the first with theater mode, for players to record and share their games. It introduced Combat Training, for console players to play and host private games against bots to practice. It destroyed and rebuilt the unlock system, by implementing COD Points. It took a unique take on the challenge system with Contracts. It implemented gametypes based on famous PC mod gametypes like Gun Game and One in the Chamber which then allowed you to gamble your unlock points against other players, which then had a crazy impact on unlocks, contracts, and challenges. It was the first game in the series with interactive multiplayer maps, such as the rocket in Launch sitting over an objective actually taking off mid-match, or the ability to close off certain routes on Radiation. But for the most part it went in to all of the systems of the previous three CoD games and masterfully tweaked each and every one of them to make not only the best balanced game in the series for a while, but also the most robust. It had more maps than any other shooter that year. It had more equipment and cutsomization options than any other title. While all the shooters in the genre try to emulate these systems as well as the whole XP and Create A Class system, they all fall short for one reason or another. It's the best one doing it yet they still add in such a ridiculous amount of content. We had the single player, MP, and Zombies, which were like three games unto themselves. Then it had Dead Ops Arcade, which could've been a full $15 PSN/XBLA title. Then it had Zork, one of the earliest text-based adventure games, hidden like a wonderful easter egg.

So don't tell me about "easy money" because Treyarch probably puts more into their games than almost any other developer.