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

[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.