Almost ever piece of media, if it sells well enough, will warrant a sequel in some way, shape or form despite the very real underlying need for consistently new content. When Halo was originally designed, it was created as an RTS, for the Macintosh. Well, jump ahead a decade later and Halo has become a monstrous franchise that has brought gamers the world over to their knees and the RTS elements it was build on have gone into Halo Wars. But, when a publisher or developer decides that it is best to ignore new content in the form of original intellectual property, instead focusing on easily marketable titles that a decidedly large market within the gaming community is receptive, the content runs the risk of stagnating. Personally, it is always interesting seeing new titles that push the boundaries of the game experience, illustrating something that players may not have necessarily seen before. While it is fiscally understandable why publishers cling to the cash cow franchises in their respective development houses, however it is the companies that grant life to the untested IPs that seem to acquire a laudable place in the industry and greater player community. Therefore, while it may be enjoyable to have familiar experiences expanded on over time across several iterations, new content is what decidedly develops the medium as a whole.
Halo is understandably an outrageously popular franchise when compared to other intellectual properties in the video game industry. From the initial release, Bungie was bought by Microsoft and the game was developed for the company essentially to sell the original Xbox. Well, it succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of anyone at Microsoft or Bungie, since then giving birth to one of the greatest mammoth games in the history of the industry. Subsequently spawning a media empire that has since been comprised of books, comics, toys, a series of anime shorts, a location on Xbox Live and one of the utmost marketing campaigns known to man, it is without a doubt that Halo is a juggernaut when it comes to games. However, Bungie has clung to the IP so as to prevent the property from becoming stale and disenchanting to the gamers who have come to love the experience granted by Halo. By not releasing a new title every single year and keeping the lore of the universe rich, the potential for the series continuing to be successful remains assured. Thus, for all the media released under a Halo label, the series is yet to become sufficiently decayed to the point of shelving it until the Xbox 720 is released.
There are several franchises that have become devoid of any truly pioneering content that offers a groundbreaking game capable of reinventing anything in the industry. As incredible as the first three titles in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series were, the series has since gone downhill significantly since coming down with a near fatal case of constant release schedule syndrome. What set the first trilogy of the Pro Skater titles apart from other iterations of the series is that they encapsulates on what made skating fun. They allowed for free flowing movement between objects in some of the most memorable locales I can think of in a game. Prior to picking up a Tony Hawk title, there were few people who were fans of skating titles as a genre. It was these that have drawn players in and eventually subjected them to the disappointments of the Tony Hawk Underground, Project 8 and ultimately Tony Hawk: RIDE. Without truly bringing anything new to the table in regards to design and an ever consistent reliance on sales that Tony Hawk branding can hopefully bring to a publisher’s bottom line, it isn’t surprising that the latest iteration currently has a metacritic score below 50. It doesn’t matter who puts their name on a title, if ultimately the game offers little unique content that compels gamers to want to play the game. This factor is further proven with Clive Barker’s Jericho. A title that was supposedly worked on by one of the masters of horror, suffered from such terrible game design that there will, without a doubt, not be a Jericho 2. Guitar Hero is beginning to push into the same territory as it is on its fifth installment, not including the version created to compete with Harmonix’s Rock Band series. Keeping in mind that downloadable content is just as easy to produce and make available to the gaming population; there is little recourse then for repackaging new bundles of songs every twelve months with yet another plastic instrument. Thus, while there are some in the industry who believe that only series that can be exploited on a yearly basis are those that should be nurtured the most, there are publishers who stand apart in harboring fresh, new games.
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