Wherein Lies The Appeal Of A New Franchise?

[A Link In Time]

Every videogame generation naturally brings with it a plethora of new IPs. In the past six or so years we've seen the likes of Gears of War, Resistance, Uncharted. Bioshock, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, and more emerge from the shadows. In a world of economic woes where it becomes increasingly difficult to find an audience for new products these franchise among many blazed an ambitious new frontier. If you look closer, however, all of these big name titles are produced by major publishers like EA, Ubisoft, Micrisoft Game Studios or Sony Computer Entertainment.

And what of independent developers? Creative ideas are required in order for games to shine on this front. We've seen plenty already including Limbo, Flower, and Journey, to name a few, and many more are on the way. These aren't the longest games but they manifest their true potential by bucking the norm of factors considered to make a videogame popular-both in terms of commercial success and critical reception.

All of these games share the common element of being introduced to a saturated market which is overflowing with sequels as well as new ideas every day. This is no longer the post videogame crash world where titles like Super Mario Bros. were considered gems and considered to be the blissful basin among the drought. All classifications accounted, there are nearly 20-30 different genres each with their own niche of the market to dominate and expand. How do new franchise manage to compete with established behemoths? If you see a game in a franchise you've never experienced what factors do you consider in purchasing the title? Is it reliance on a certain business name or love for a specific genre? Discuss.

 

[Lamphobic]

Fun value. If I loike and find it fun and enjoyment is to be had then I'll get it. I'll usually try a demo first to test the fun values.

 

[Ventus]

How do new franchise manage to compete with established behemoths?
Heh, I ask myself this question many times. How DO those new IPs manage to compete with the likes of Mario, Call of Duty, Zelda, etc? This isn't a one-size-fits-all answer, but what it is FOR ME is gameplay/story that is completely different to what I've been conditioned to think of as "normal". So, let's compare Zelda, a well-respected action adventure series and Star Ocean, a lesser known JRPG series. If I were conditioned to think Zelda is normal, and seeing Zelda is a completely stale series as far as gameplay and story go (changes in controls don't really change the playstyle...to understand what I mean here you'll have to do dedicated runs over and over again)...playing any game of the Star Ocean series would give me a breath of fresh air. You just don't play SO like you do Zelda, lol.

If you see a game in a franchise you've never experienced what factors do you consider in purchasing the title? Is it reliance on a certain business name or love for a specific genre?
Factors: does it look cool? Is the main character--assuming it is a girl--hot/attractive? How long is it? What degree of difference as far as the gameplay is concerned exists (meaning, how far can we stray off the beaten path)?

Business name: Nope. Not anymore; Nintendo proved to me that all companies can disappoint. I used to stay true to Nintendo, but they just haven't done well. Gimmicks everywhere, they even plagued my once favorite series The Legend of Zelda.

Love for a genre: Nope. I play many types of games; I get my puzzle fix from Tetris, I've played aRPGs and JRPGs, shooters both FPS and TPS, Real Time Strategy games, turn-based strategy...tile strategies.

 

[Cfrock]

What appeals to me is just does the game look interesting. Three prime examples of this are Assassin's Creed, Bioshock and Dishonoured.

Assassin's Creed

I was drawn to the historic setting. One thing we often forget about Assassin's Creed is that we all thought it took place entirely during the Third Crusdae. Not one of us knew or expected the game to start in the modern day, strapped into a strange machine called an Animus. I was attracted to Assassin's Creed because it took place in specific part of history and attempted to capture some kind of sense of the time.
It also helped that it came from Ubisoft. Ubisoft are one of my favourite developers and I am often inclined to pay more attention to games they make.

Bioshock

What attracted me to Bioshock is what has prevented me from playing the sequel. The appeal of Bioshock was Rapture. I didn't care about gameplay or story or anything else, I just wanted to explore Rapture, look at Rapture, experience Rapture. The city itself was what made me play the game.
I never played Bioshock 2 because it returned to Rapture. For me, that would have diluted the magic of that first visit and denied me the very reason why I enjoyed the first game.

Dishonoured

It's harder to pin down what made me want Dishonoured. The city of Dunwall never appealed to me (still doesn't), the graphics are laughably terrible and I didn't think I would make use of most of the powers. What appealed to me was being an assassin. 6 years since Hitman: Blood Money and only Assassin's Creed had really attempted to make me an assassin. Anyone who's played Assassin's Creed knows that 'assassination' in that game is 'jump on a man from a rooftop then battle 150 guards through the streets for the next 20 minutes'. There was a void which Dishonoured looked like it would fill. And it did.
Having the name Bethesda attached to it certainly helped too.


Other franchises like Gears of War, Resistance and Uncharted haven't appealed to me. In fact, the only other major new IP I can think of is Mass Effect which committed a very messy form of suicide in my eyes earlier this year.

Mass Effect appealed to me because I thought it was going to be the spiritual sequel to KOTOR (I don't count KOTOR II because it was awful. Obsidian need to stop making games because they are bad at it).

For me, the appeal of a new franchise lies mainly in whether it looks like playing it will be interesting, either in terms of story, setting or gameplay.

 

[Castle]

Well, the fact that it's.. um... new, will be the first thing to draw my attention.

How do new franchise manage to compete with established behemoths?

In large part, they don't, because publishers are scared to death of em, and you need a big giant publisher because the cost to develop for the technology video games run off of now is so god awfully bloated you need the financial backing of a phat publisher. Publishers are the No. 1 reason why video games are in the rut they are in now. Whether it be their systematic rape of every lauded developer in existence or the way in which they dictate the same old tired design in every video game they crap out, or their obsessive reliance on sequels, big giant publishers (Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubisoft) are killing the games industry.

So, new IPs hardly ever happen, and when they do they're usually Trip As with the intention of sequeling the hell out of em.

Publishers think that recognizable brands will sell better. I think this is why reboots are so popular now. A franchise gets tired and dull so restart it and give it a face lift. No surprise, this has been met with severe backlash from gamers already. They think they can put something new in the same old package. This tends to offend series fans who lament big changes and hasn't had the effect of drawing in new crowds. If I am uninterested in Tomb Raider, simply calling it a "reboot" isn't gonna get me any more interested than I already am.

Besides, as popular series go on they become nothing but tired cash cows. We've seen it with Mass Effect 3 and Diablo 3 this year. The developers, and their publishers, simply got cheap and lazy and only interested in the return on the product, not the product itself.

If you see a game in a franchise you've never experienced what factors do you consider in purchasing the title? Is it reliance on a certain business name or love for a specific genre?

First of all, a brand new franchise is just that. It's new. Trying to do something "new" with the same franchise, unless you're really spinning off a title, doesn't happen, because the developers mindset is still firmly set in series conventions, and the nature of the game can't alter too much or it might as well be a different product. A new franchise is a new product. Developers of a new franchise have to start from the bottom up and provide players with something new and interesting so they'll play it. It's can't just look like Call of Duty. In fact, this is why so many MMOs fail, because they try too hard to be World of Warcraft when WOW already has a majority stake in the MMO playerbase. This is why The Old Republic was such a monumental failure, it tried too hard to be WOW, and thought that was all it took to sell. MMOs that have set themselves apart, such as Rift and Guild Wars 2, are actually able to compete with WOW.

Being new is enough to turn heads, but for me, I have a thing with films and video games. I can see a trailer and just know that it's good. It just looks good to me. I was unimpressed with the last James Bond and Pirates of the Caribbean films, but looking at the trailers for the newest ones was enough to convince me that I wanted to see em. I was right. Whereas I would have never given the first thought to playing a Batman video game, just a few seconds of footage for Batman Arkham City's trailer was enough for me to immediately get to Gamestop and purchase it new the week of its release. In fact, that is the only time I have been pleased with a video game that I have ever purchased new.

 

[Igos du Ikana]

It would take alot for me to buy a new franchise. The last new one I bought was Mass Effect. I don't see the need in wasting my money on something I'll regret buying 30 minutes after I get home.

 

[Honorable Hero]

They need to look fun to me, obviously. I'm all for indie developers and wish them luck. That said, most indie games do not appeal to me because I just find them weird most of the time.

To be honest, if a new IP happens to be an RPG, I'm immediately interested. I love RPGs. Just don't add any weird mechanics/gimmicks to it and I'm happy.