The Secrets Of Keeping A Game Franchise Alive

by AXIS of Reality

©2009 Alex Baldwin

Well, it’s that time of year again. E3’09 is getting ready to unveil what the gaming landscape will look like for another year, and with it shaping up to be bigger than ever, I started to notice something. Almost every game I’m looking forward to seeing in E3’09 is a sequel.

Mass Effect 2, Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Bioshock 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, it’s just getting crazy. Of course if a game is awesome you’d definitely want a sequel for more of what made that game great, which is why I hate articles that rant on about why sequels are evil.

However, it begs the question: how does a developer keep their series alive and successful?

It’s a hard point to directly answer – after all,  I doubt any developer plans for their series to go down the toilet. So instead of pointing out one failsafe method, here are some of the most popular franchise structures publishers and developers use to try and avoid ‘Sonic-itis’ infecting their beloved game series.

The most common of these is the good old fashioned trilogy.

Make one game; if it’s successful stick a second game in with flashbacks to the first to ‘change everything you though you knew’ (how many times have you heard that before?). At the end of the second, you’ll be left with an infuriating cliffhanger that’s resolved in the third and hopefully final game. And yes, you’ve probably already worked out that this is the exact scheme Halo followed.

This system works for a number of reasons, mainly because it allows hype to build for a sequel before its even entered development. After a successful first game fans are already flooding forums talking about their wishlists for features in a sequel. The publishers see the success and potential for a series and hand money to the developer for a second AND third game, everyone’s happy. And yes, it is at this point that the third game is already signed.

The third game needs to be given the green light at this stage before the second game is even developed so the second game can be carefully structured around ending on a cliffhanger and setting up small elements to tie into a third. Why?

Because once the second game is released, it’s no longer just a random game that came out of nowhere and blew everyone away. Expectations are already in place, so the game itself needs to start hype for the third. Halo 2 overdid this area a bit, but showed it already had a third game planned.

The third game must then tie everything together and end the story arc that only really started between the second and third games. At this point the series usually ends, though in Halo’s case it was too lucrative a property and hence we have ODST and Halo Wars spin-offs – but notice neither are set after the end of the third game. They simply fill in gaps without changing the overall trilogy structure.

Another method for franchises is the setting or story change in each game.

Call of Duty uses this pattern – each game is separate from the last with little to no overarching connection between them outside the fundamental gameplay. There is no loss from starting the series from the most recent game, as outside the main theme there is no overt connection or numerical order they should be played in.

This is very beneficial when one game in the series stumbles (eg: Call of Duty 3), as it doesn’t hurt the overall series as much because there’s no need to play it before playing CoD 4. If one game in the trilogy sequel structure explained before is bad, it reflects on all the games in that series.

Another franchise that has used this method is Final Fantasy with different characters and worlds in each successive title, but the genre, style and gameplay basics are kept consistent between them (with some tweaking, of course). This pattern has the downside of being at risk of milking the franchise after usually about 4 or 5 games, and will usually just fade out of existence eventually without any actual ending point.

Then there’s the elastic sequel structure.

Grand Theft Auto in particular has fallen into this pattern, involving a major game that is then stretched out over several continuations or ‘expansions’ before a another major change or ‘real’ sequel. In GTA, this started with GTA3 while Vice City and San Andreas used the same template in different settings. GTA4 then served as the ‘real’ sequel.

Many PC games follow this pattern such as The Sims and Guild Wars with numerous expansions and add-ons before a reinvention or major change in the series as the process starts again with more expansions before the next full sequel. This can be healthy for a series as it forces a complete reworking for each major sequel otherwise they risk boring the fanbase.

The yearly sequel is possibly the most hated franchise structure.

EA in the past was guilty of milking their EA Sports and Need For Speed IPs each year to, and due to the short development time all that could be done to the series were very small incremental improvements and additions.

The quality of these games can be hit and miss, as if the first is a decent game with such a short time to change anything the next will probably be just as good (or bad), but not worth purchasing for anyone owning the previous in the series. This is the type of franchise where you buy one in the series and stick with it. In the end, the series will only die when sales dry up. There is no predetermined ‘we’ll stop making them after the 3rd’ plan. They will only stop being churned out when you stop handing your money over.

Then finally, there’s the unplanned sequel.

It usually spawns from an extremely successful first game that hasn’t actually been created around setting the player up for a sequel. Often this can work best – without any overarching story to worry about or blueprints to keep churning out sequels in the same format, each game can be a large step forward from the previous with entirely new stories and gameplay.

Most of the time each in the series works as its own game that can be played individually in the larger context of the overall universe, a la KOTOR 1 and 2. A franchise in this style often stops at the end of a console generation, or it will simply keep going until the developer decides to move onto something new.

Which of these methods is best? I’m going to have to take the cheap way out and say that all have their place. But now you have something to think about in the coming weeks as E3 hits and (hopefully) a flood of new game announcements OXCGN will be covering as Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo set up what your money will be disappearing into for the next year.

Take a look at the sequels and even the new IPs and see which method the developers and publishers have gone for with each, and you’ll get a strong clue as to the future of the franchises and what the announcements will be for each in 1 or 2 years time as E3 comes around again.

©2009 Alex Baldwin

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