Franchises Changing Genre

[Cfrock]

This is somehting I've thought about on and off for some time now. There are certain franchises which ocassionally switch genre or experiment with a different genre in a one-off kind of way. Two examples would be Resident Evil and Halo.

Resident Evil started off as Survival Horror (literally defining the genre; the term 'Survival Horror' did not exist before Resident Evil) but has since transformed into Third-Person Shooter. This wasn't a gradual change either, RE0 was Survival Horror and then a couple of years later, RE4 was a Third-Person Shooter.

Halo shows the one-off thing I was talking about. The genre is a First-Person Shooter but they had a one-off Real-Time Strategy game in the form of Halo Wars. Resident Evil also kind of does this with On-Rails Shooter but it does this fairly often.

Warcraft is another example, going from Real-Time Strategy to MMO. Fable, also, went from RPG to Massive Pile of Turd (just my little joke ^^ )

Question time! Do you like or dislike when a franchise does this kind of thing and why? What other examples can you think of which have done this in the past? If you were to pick a franchise to do this with, what would it (they) be and which genre(s) would you have them dabble in?

 

[Dan]

I'm actually a big fan of franchises switching genre just to experiment a bit. I know the result may not always be great but it at least shows the developer isn't afraid to experiment with changes. Although I prefer it if the change isn't solely to do with money money money. We've gotten some great spin-off games because of it. Crash bandicoot has had some kart racers. To me, crash team racing is one of the best kart racers around still to this day. Command and conquer (an RTS series I enjoy) made a shooter (also note this was before the let's make loads of shooters era, while It wasn't really too impressive I'll admit I had some fun playing it online and I think there were some great concepts retained from the rts series itself. For instance you still had bases but now you drove the tanks and were the solders, and you had to defend/attack bases.

I think the best way to often handle genre changing, is if you make sure it carries on as a spin-off series, with an individual development team. I know how many people that love warcraft must be pissed now that blizzard haven't done a warcraft game in years because of WoW. Not to mention the amount of people that got fed up with those raving rabbits. So glad we got another rayman game though after so many years.
Permanent genre changing is where I see it can often be risky, it can also split a community apart. A good example of this is fallout. Fallout 3 the majority seem to love, but a lot of old players hate it with a passion. So I imagine those people would be the ones putting there middle finger up to genre changes.

I myself have never experienced a franchise changing genres permanently that I didn't like so perhaps maybe that's why my opinion is as it is. Except for the pesky rabbids but I'll admit I didn't mind them at first, and i got my rayman back in the end. ;p

Some more examples of franchises changing genres however.

Permanent genre changes.
Toejam and earl(not sure what genre you would call it) went to a platformer the next game, as much as I like platformers it was sad to see the developers didn't make a second game building on success of the first.
Fallout (Turn based RPG) > (Real time RPG) - I guess you would call it that ;p
Bubsy platformer > a piece of **** with no textures, most likely coming from ms paint.

Eh that's all I can think of for now. :I

 

[Sir Quaffler]

The only other one I can think off the top of my head is Metroid Prime. Before it (and Castlevania) defined the platforming-adventuring-whatever type of genre they've named (Metroidvania). With the switch to Prime they, again, defined a whole new type of genre, first-person adventure, which carried on the spirit of the Metroidvania and translated it into the 3D realm in the viewpoint of Samus herself. I am a huge fan of this particular genre change.