Changing too much or too little?

General and high profile video game topics.
User avatar
pacman000
Posts: 1141
Joined: December 30th, 2015, 9:04 am

Re: Changing too much or too little?

Postby pacman000 » November 10th, 2017, 3:07 pm

"So, what kind of things would YOU put into a Call of Duty game to differentiate it from previous Call of Duty games while still keeping true to the Call of Duty name? "

Assuming the definition Stalvern pointed me to correctly describes the series, I'd try to make the story line branch.

Fail a mission? You don't get a chance to replay it; you're taken to a different part of the story.

Get separated from your group? There should be a branch where you have to survive alone.

Maybe they already do that; if so I'm not sure what the big deal is. With a branching story there should be enough variances between versions to keep the series from feeling stale.

Sonicx9
Posts: 1818
Joined: April 27th, 2015, 6:37 pm

Re: Changing too much or too little?

Postby Sonicx9 » November 10th, 2017, 4:01 pm

Stalvern wrote:I think the problem is more that there are three Dark Souls games and three million Call of Duty games.

LOL!

User avatar
Retro STrife
Posts: 2531
Joined: August 3rd, 2015, 7:40 pm

Re: Changing too much or too little?

Postby Retro STrife » November 10th, 2017, 5:30 pm

This topic could spur me into one of my anti-Zelda rants, but I'll spare you all!

I think you always hope a sequel strikes a balance between keeping what made you like the original, and adding enough new to keep you coming back. These days, my gaming time is very limited, and once I start a game I like to see it through til the end, so I have to pick my games wisely. Unless it's one of my all-time favorite series, I'm not going to play sequels or prequels unless they are different enough to show something new to make it worth my time. That's very very rare for me. For example, I played Uncharted 4 this year and really liked it. But I probably won't ever play another Uncharted game, because I got the point from that one game. Even if Uncharted 2 is a little better, that's not enough to make it worth the time to me. As another example, I haven't played another Zelda game since Ocarina of Time because they're all the same game over and over. ( ... my bad guys.. :oops: couldn't help it). But BOTW is the first one since then that innovated enough to get me interested again, and I will eventually play it. So that's my take.
Last edited by Retro STrife on December 7th, 2017, 6:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

DaHeckIzDat
Posts: 1997
Joined: April 9th, 2015, 1:41 pm

Re: Changing too much or too little?

Postby DaHeckIzDat » November 10th, 2017, 5:51 pm

Stalvern wrote:
DaHeckIzDat wrote:I'm hearing a lot of "You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong," here, but for every thing you say I'm wrong about, you don't provide any suggestions to back them up. So, what kind of things would YOU put into a Call of Duty game to differentiate it from previous Call of Duty games while still keeping true to the Call of Duty name? Keep in mind that if they deviate too much, people will throw fits and say they're ripping off other games like Halo, or possibly Battlefield.

My point, which I stated directly, is that it's not possible at this point. By the standards that the series has firmly set, "keeping true to the Call of Duty name" precludes substantive differentiation. And it seems that you're indirectly admitting this yourself.


I'm wondering what's wrong with that. Call of Duty is as popular as it is now because it found a formula that people liked, and still do like. That's what franchises are built off of. Call of Duty has cinematic run and gun action with a military theme. Dark Souls has hard as balls hack and slash RPG gameplay with a medieval fantasy theme. Mario is bright and colorful, and most likely will be jumping over pits and on turtles' heads. Sure there's always room for flexibility, but changing things so that they don't even feel like the previous games in the series is just stupid.

Back to Call of Duty, when they didn't change anything between games, a minority of their customers complained. When they tried to give it a new theme (futuristic scifi), that same small minority complained about that too. So now they're focused on pleasing the people who actually WANT to be pleased by their games, aka the people who are making them rich. As others have said, you shouldn't fix what isn't broken. You may think it's broken, but the fact that each CoD game makes billions of dollars proves otherwise. That is, unless you want to get on a high horse and declare your tastes in electronic entertainment superior to everyone else's.

I would like to point out, too, that I'm not even a fan of Call of Duty.

User avatar
Stalvern
Posts: 1952
Joined: June 18th, 2016, 7:15 pm

Re: Changing too much or too little?

Postby Stalvern » November 10th, 2017, 9:33 pm

DaHeckIzDat wrote:Back to Call of Duty, when they didn't change anything between games, a minority of their customers complained. When they tried to give it a new theme (futuristic scifi), that same small minority complained about that too. So now they're focused on pleasing the people who actually WANT to be pleased by their games, aka the people who are making them rich. As others have said, you shouldn't fix what isn't broken. You may think it's broken, but the fact that each CoD game makes billions of dollars proves otherwise. That is, unless you want to get on a high horse and declare your tastes in electronic entertainment superior to everyone else's.

Thinking that one has better taste than Call of Duty fans is the smallest "high horse" I can imagine. You might as well say that calling McDonald's crap is getting on your high horse.

Although, now that I think of it this way, I suppose that there's a perfectly valid place for Call of Duty as the McDonald's of video games. It's basic, it's kinda terrible, but you can depend on it to be it like nothing else. You always know exactly what you're getting with Call of Duty, and that's the entire point. Changing the formula would be like putting blue cheese on a Big Mac. So I shouldn't hold that against it.

Alucard1191
Posts: 476
Joined: November 16th, 2016, 12:55 pm

Re: Changing too much or too little?

Postby Alucard1191 » November 11th, 2017, 10:42 pm

It is very much the amount in a franchise that makes me interested or not. Which has already been said, so I am mainly echoing earlier parts of the thread. I feel this is happening across a lot of media though, not just games. Movies are doing this as well, look at Marvel franchises for example. They sign the people on for 3+ movies MINIMUM before even 1 movie comes out to see if people like it. Call of Duty, Halo, Gears of War, the Transformers movies, Star Wars, etc... these have all gone on for so long that I have lost all interest in them over the years. Final Fantasy is another. I've played every American released Final Fantasy (including the playstation ones) from numbers 1-10... and I've completely tapped out on that series. 9 and 10 (and 10-2) iritated me so much that I didn't care at all about the rest of the franchise. The transformers movies are the same way... first one is fun and cute, stupid but enjoyable. Every one after that? Idiotic, stupid, nothing but explosion and T+A shots of Megan Fox or whatever young woman was cast to replace her for the later films.

I feel like the entire media industry has become so corporate and formulaic that the vast majority of what is being put out, whether it is music, video games, or movies, is absolute crap.

/Two movie exceptions: Major film, Logan. Best comic book movie ever. And Nun of That. A fantastic low budget indie flick about a sect of undead warrior nuns. With a rapping Jesus.

User avatar
pacman000
Posts: 1141
Joined: December 30th, 2015, 9:04 am

Re: Changing too much or too little?

Postby pacman000 » November 12th, 2017, 10:24 am

Media franchises are nothing new. There was an 28 film series based on the Blondie comic strip in the 30's, 40's, and 50's. Universal had their series of monster movies, and other studios would make franchises of actors; Abbot and Costello, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, etc.

Going back a bit further, there were series of books, like Sherlock Holmes.


Return to “Video Games General”