The Misdiagnosis Of Franchise Fatigue

            Is the annualization of videogame franchises really to blame for franchise fatigue? It is a plausible answer and one that I have heard told repeatedly from much of the gaming press, so, for a while, I believed it. However, just because everyone keeps saying it doesn’t mean it’s true and recently I’ve started to seriously doubt this explanation.

            Let’s hop back a bit and think about last generation (the PS2’s). I don’t know about you, but for me personally there were a bunch of games that I would have been overjoyed to only have to wait one year after having beaten their predecessor for. In fact I would have probably beaten the games faster in hopes of getting the follow ups sooner. How many of us would have loved to have gotten Kingdom Hearts 3 back in 2007 (one year after KH2) instead of still waiting for it and complaining about it online as I am inadvertently doing right now? I know I would have. Here is the specific personal example from that era that makes me question the idea of annual releases alone being responsible for franchise fatigue.

Jak and Daxter was one of my first PS2 games and because of that I played a lot of it, even though I didn’t love it. I eventually beat it and when Jak 2 came around I passed on it. I heard some really positive reviews for it and for its follow up Jak 3, but continued to ignore it for months. I eventually found it heavily discounted and decided to give it a try. I beat it in three or four days and eagerly went to the store a few days later to get Jak 3. I took it home and beat it with in roughly the same amount of time as Jak 2. I had a half week break rather than an entire year in-between the games and yet I loved Jak 3 even more than Jak 2. After beating Jak 3 I was conflicted because even though I had an awesome time playing both games I knew from the way the story ended that there would not be a Jak 4. I really wanted a Jak 4. If Jak 4 had released that following week, and if I had the money for it, I would have ran out and bought it. So, how does it make sense that when Assassin’s Creed Revelations was announced I, a fan of the series, wasn’t the least bit excited for it to be coming out less than a year after I had beaten Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood?

            Blaming the time frame of the releases alone doesn’t make sense to me. Let’s look at it from another angle. How many times have you heard people say that before the latest installment in a franchise they love comes out they intend to replay either the previous game or the entire series? If the one year gap between Brotherhood and Revelations was assumed to hurt the experience by not allowing enough breathing room between games then, by that logic, playing Halo 1, 2, 3, ODST & Reach over a few months leading up to the release of Halo 4 must have destroyed that experience for anyone who did so. And yet I haven’t heard one complaint about this and I know multiple people, including myself, who thought to do this. Why on earth would anyone want to play catch up on or revisit a series before its latest installment comes out if this were the case? Are they getting ready to ruin the experience? And if this can hurt the experience how and why does it do so?

            Some might say that it isn’t the close proximity of the releases per se that are responsible for franchise fatigue, but the one year development cycle brought about because of it. Most big games both this generation and last took between two and three years to develop, so restricting the team’s time to work on the game in order to get a title out every year hurts the quality of the game. There really aren’t enough big games that get made in one year to be sure of this; after all, they could allocate enough resources to the project to make sure that they can put out a great game in a shorter time span (especially if they choose to use the same and engine and assets). Jak 3 is my personal favorite in its series and it was built in only one year, while Jak 2 was built in two. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and Revelations were both well received in spite of the short development time. Whether they are the worst or best games in the series is up for debate as there are advocates for each game in that series. Also a number of annualized games like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed 3 spend at least two years in development as they have multiple studios working on different titles concurrently.

            What I think is far more responsible than annual releases or faster development cycles for franchise fatigue is a lack of innovation or real sense of change. I think the two best ways for developers to prevent or counteract franchise fatigue is to either experiment with distinct, new ideas or to continue on with a story or set of characters that are interesting. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and Revelations felt way too similar to Assassin’s Creed 2, so they became more and more boring as I went through them. They didn’t change up the environment or the gameplay enough to keep things feeling fresh and the story wasn’t really moving forward as you were still Ezio and still not dealing with the present day threat of Abstergo. The only times I liked Revelations was when I was going through the Masyaf Key levels. When getting the keys you were going through really well designed and interesting levels and once you used the key you would play as Altair with the Apple of Eden, which is quite different from your usual weaponry. These sections kept me playing the game and the ending was strong enough from a story standpoint that I was actually excited for the (at the time) yet to be announced Assassin’s Creed 3 that I knew would only be a year away.

            If developers want us to keep being excited by and enjoying their games they have to be willing to give us new experiences within them. It is hard to get excited for a nearly identical gameplay experience three or more times in a row. If they can’t do enough with the gameplay systems, either because it only caters to a very specific set of actions or because they feel it is so good that messing with it would upset fans, then they have to give us something to latch on to. That can either be really unique and interesting worlds or a good story that gets us invested. I know that if they can keep me invested in the new gameplay experiences, the evolving story or the world then they can keep me investing my money in them even if I have to pay every year because the more interesting and enjoyable experiences I can get, the better, regardless of when they come out.