There’s a lot of things I don’t fully understand in this world. String theory, quantum mechanics, what the fuck the appeal of Fanta is, and so on. What I can’t understand the most is why good ideas become horribly crappy over time. This mostly involves the “movie trilogy paradox” and the “franchise game problem”. Why do the second movies in trilogies suck? Why is Madden (insert current year) never as good as Madden (subtract 5 years). Why do marketing departments constantly tell us that the latest iteration of something is the “best ever”? Obviously the latest Ford Mustang is not as awesome as a classic Mustang. Any car collector on the planet will tell you that. This theory follows in nearly every category of popular culture, at least, until the next one is made. Of course, it’s all relative if you look at the larger time lines. The 2007 Ford Mustang may very well be making up for the horrific 1980’s Mustang. Maybe National Treasure 2 won’t suck. Maybe EA Games “Battlefield Bad Company” isn’t the most ripped off idea of the century.
About that…
I doubt any of you guy care, but it irked me to see the new trailer for BF:BC. It’s a complete and total rip off of the classic war movie Kelly’s Heros. If you don’t believe me, take a look.
What on earth could possibly influence a company to single handedly kill off a major gaming franchise AND rip off an old movie plot at the same time? Not only did they bastardize Battlefield 1942 into it’s ugly step sisters BF:Vietnam and BF2, but now they’re killing the one things Battlefield had going for it… the fucking battlefield. They’re taking a new engine that shows a lot of promise and creating, given their track record, a crappy single player game set in war torn Europe. Wow. Way to be really 2001.
Maybe they’ve realized that they’ve been beaten on all fronts and they’re not sure what to do next. Call of Duty has completely trumped them in both the “modern combat” and multiplayer categories. Their former, and now disgruntled, employees are creating what will be the next level of “squad” combat games. People are no longer interested in WW2 combat games, so they can’t really go backwards in time, and their horrible cluster-fuck of a futuristic game, BF2142 received horrible reviews from players and the media alike. They are in deep deep crap and they’re trying to keep their heads above water. By the time the new game ships next year, there will be a dozen games, on a dozen engines that look as good if not better than theirs, so they can’t even fall back on technology.
It’s really sad when you see a franchise dismantle itself as it tries to stay a float. It’s a definitely George Lucas style problem. You had something so awesome that everyone hailed for its innovation and entertainment. Then you try to out do yourself. You fail. You switch gears and try something else. You fail again. You kinda sorta listen to your fans and try something completely different. You fail a third time. Now what do you do? People love your original work but can’t stand your newest stuff. In the case of old George, really the only way to save himself is to make Episodes 7-9, and to bring it back to the way it was, good vs evil, some sword fights and that’s it. None of this deep emotional conflict bullshit. Sword fights and space ships George, that’s what we want. EA, same goes for you. We want a WIDE OPEN game with a shit ton of vehicles, features, stuff to do and we don’t give one single damn about unlocks, achievements and tactical satellite bullshit. Bring it back home fellas, it’s the only way to save yourselves.
It’s that, or people will move on. In some cases it’s already too late. In some cases we had forgiven you of your “sequel sins” when you rocked us with a third installment. So, ask yourselves, is Indy 4 really necessary. Was Die Hard 4 somehow an improvement? Does Bad Company bring anything we haven’t seen already?
NT2 probably won’t totally suck, as NT1 wasn’t a great movie to start with.
The trilogy problem in modern film and video gaming is simple, I think. Trilogy idea gets pitched to production company, production company says “sound okay, do the first film, we see how it flies, maybe you get to make the other two.” So, they go out and make a great first film, it makes tons of cash, the sequels get greenlit. Movie two gets thrown together, nobody needs to make it awesome, because they know the third one is getting made. It makes a respectable amount of money. Third movie needs to not suck, since everybody working on it wants to get signed to something else when it’s done, so they actually put effort into it again, and if we’re lucky, we get an okay movie and they go on to start the cycle again with another trilogy.
Sounds like a solid theory to me.
What about franchise products though? What would motivate people on something like Madden? That franchise has been around since the NES. Every 3 or 4 years it’s apparently the “best ever” and all the years in between are crappy repeats. I would venture to guess that something like that follows the technology as it updates.
Computers are a little more tricky though, since it’s technology is always evolving. In those cases I would actually tie a computer games success to it’s development team. For example, Bioware, the dev team that made Knights of the Old Republic was kept mostly together and just completed Mass Effect. They’ve moved on to Mass Effect II (it’s a trilogy, interestingly enough) and won’t be responsible for KOTOR 2, so I don’t have high hopes for that like I do for ME2.
I feel that companies that keep teams together (like Valve for example) consistently have a good product, compared to companies that get bought, sold, merged and have their teams change on a daily basis like at EA. I have no doubt that 99% of the people working at Dice (battlefield’s development studio) are EA drones instead of the original BF42 creators. They’ve all moved on to other things. I’m excited for those other things and no longer for the franchise they left. I guess that’s the nature of that industry though.