Annualization of Games

     It seems like one of the hot new trends in games these days the tendency to make sequel installments an annual affair. I lose track of all the sequels that are churned out of the fun factory every holiday season, and one can quickly become cynical in regards to glut of incremental sequels every year. So, let's do an autopsy on a few examples of franchises (alive and dead) with annual installations, and see what we can learn.

Case One: Guitar Hero

     There's no arguing that the influence Guitar Hero was a very important event in this cycle of consoles. What started out as a novel party game where the player pretended to be good at music became a shambling corpse of its former glory with each new iteration. Not counting the mobile versions of the game, between 2005 and 2010 there were twelve installments in the main series of the game.

Open your eyes! You're not even on the buttons!

     Naturally, people got fatigued of drinking the stale milk from one of Activision's many cash cows, and eventually critical opinion and sales numbers began to favor the fledgling Rock Band series, until people stopped caring about plastic instruments almost altogether. So what spelled the death knell for the most successful rhythm-action games ever?
     In my interpretation of events, the reason that people started to drift over to Rock Band was because of Guitar Hero's failure to innovate. Rock Band brought a unique social element to the rhythm-action genre that Guitar Hero could never quite catch up to. No matter how many technically demanding, face-melting, steel-shredding guitar solos the game could muster up, Rock Band would eventually prevail as the leader in the Great Plastic Instruments Race for one reason: playing with toy instruments is a lot more entertaining in a group setting than trying to memorize the intro to Cliffs of Dover on a Fisher-Price toy in solitude and sadness.

Case Two: Call of Duty

     Don't get me wrong: Call of Duty games are fun. They are the best approximation to a Hollywood blockbuster thrill-ride that video games can accomplish. They have big, dumb characters, big, dumb cinematic setpieces, and big, dumb guns and explosions. And at the end of the day, like any Transformers or superhero movie, it's all about turning off your brain for a few hours and having fun by watching gratuitous amounts of violence.

AGH GOD MORE JELLY

     So why all the hate? Again, like Guitar Hero, it all comes down to the fact that there isn't enough innovation to keep many hardcore gamers satisfied. I played Modern Warfare and thoroughly enjoyed it. I also played World of Warcraft for two years and enjoyed it. But will I ever go back to them?
     In a word, no. I played both games to death, and while I enjoyed my experiences with them, I played them to death. From what I see, new iterations on Activision's swollen, gushing cash cow aren't different enough from one another to generate interest to me and many others. The series enjoys incredible sales numbers to be sure, but it comes from the same people that only buy the yearly installments of Madden and Call of Duty every year.
     But this doesn't explain the extreme backlash that the series feels. There are plenty of franchises that iterate on an annual basis, like every Madden, FIFA or MLB. So why do gamers erect the Modern Warfare games as their lightning rod of hate?
     Because it's popular, of course. You can't escape the marketing assault that surrounds each game. It's everywhere from your Mountain Dew bottles, to your TV commercials, and to your YouTube ads. Call of Duty's success and criticisms both come from the prevalence of advertisements that are experienced around the games, rather than the merits of the game's quality (or lack thereof).

Case Three: Assassin's Creed

     Assassin's Creed has been an annual series since 2009, and has garnered equal amounts of praise and criticism for doing so. On one hand, people soon get fatigued from Ubisoft's largest revenue generator. In contrast, many gamers (including myself) look forward to every year's chapter in the epic conspiracy story that Ubisoft has created.

Pictured: History

     The reason Assassin's Creed holds a special place in my heart is because of its originality.  The setting uses times and places no other games come near to exploring, and the gameplay combines an open-world philosophy to conventional stealth, action, and platforming.
     If this was all the games offered, however, they would not scratch the itch of the gaming community. They blend the emergent gameplay opportunities with a story arc that spans centuries and pulls on strings that don't go unappreciated by history nerds like me.
     Everything in world history is a complex conspiracy that traces its history back to Templars, Assassins, and aliens. Normally this kind of pseudoscientific drivel belongs on Ancient Aliens, but Ubisoft blends these themes with the interpersonal character stories that we associate with more often. In this way, Ubisoft makes me look forward to the annual installation in the series, rather than dread hearing about it every fall.

The Verdict

     So, what have we learned? In my opinion, annual games need to do a few things to make me care about them. They need to iterate on the core gameplay each game, rather than let the games spiral into monotony and repetition. They need to make the different games easily recognizable from one another, and take risks with each franchise instead of rehashing the same tired story, skeletons, and gimmicks.
     At the end of the day, if you are against these annual games, vote with your dollar and simply don't buy them. It's more productive than making petitions or complaining on message boards.

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Medal of Honor Warfighter Gameplay Trailer

EA just posted the first trailer for Medal of Honor Warfighter. It looks like it will have quite the amount of "set pieces". Tell us what you think in the comments below!

Boobies are Better than Bullets

     There have been three major controversies in gaming since its inception. Everyone should be familiar with them as they are normally spurred by a controversial game that leads non-gamers to believe something that traditional gamers must either attack or defend. Are video games art? Are video games too violent? And, is there too much "sex" in video games? These questions are circular dichotomies because they are based on opinions, so never ending in nature as it were. But I offer this, are boobs really that bad?

Don't hate us because we're beautiful...

There's 2 in Every Argument
     Sex in video games has had its fun much like co-eds during spring break. Games like DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Leisure Suit Larry, The Guy Game, and BMX XXX show up every once in awhile and flash us some nips and wiggle their booties until we giggle like 12-year-olds in our uncles' skin bin. Some times these games pass us by as innocently as our memories of college while other times they result in controversies that make you wonder what the hell people are thinking, as in the famous Fox News fiasco with Mass Effect.

     I find it amazing that with all the games that display gratuitous amounts of deplorable violence on a regular basis that skate through the cable news channels, one nipple bared during the Superbowl and congress gets involved. Is the female form really so dangerous to our nation's youth that we should abstain from the mere digital image of it? Is a pair of bountiful bouncing breasts more damaging to a male's mental function than the whole of drugs, crime, and violent decapitations?

Fox News didn't cover this 

Pressed Against the Glass
     Video games, as with all art forms, are a reflection of reality. The making and breaking of worldly events inspire their creators in ways that help develop the medium that we cherish so dearly. Modern Warfare didn't create war as much as Grand Theft Auto created proliferating with prostitutes. Blaming games as a mischief training ground is like yelling into a mirror and blaming the image with a total disconnect of the refection within.
     I can understand some of the arguments about objectifying women as sex objects and find my self laughing at the lingerie that passes for heavy plate armor in some games. But allow me to be offended that anyone who would assume any male (let alone myself) would be shallow enough to treat all women like sex objects to be used and discarded simply because of a few hours spent with a video game. We cannot help the chemical reactions in our brains that turn us into babbling idiots when we see an attractive image of a woman. Furthermore, most men have mothers, sisters, daughters, ect. and we are fully capable of understanding that they are respectable females and are in no way sexual objects. Just because I find something beautiful, doesn't mean I want to treat it poorly and definitely have sex with it. That would make trips to the arboretum very uncomfortable and itchy.

In the Russian Version she actually gets naked.

The Call of Boobie
     So as the bridge across the uncanny valley nears completion, the realism of our digital entertainment will reach the point where the dreams of designers and visionaries will soon shine into our retinas. Those moral crusaders who hold tightly to their beliefs will surely cry out loud against everything from violence to drugs, and crime to nipples.
     The only thing we can do as gamers is to hold our ground with intelligent arguments to the contrary and put our money where we believe it to go. I personally not only buy new games to support developers, but ones that stand with my principles as well. When NFL 2K 5 released at $20 I was all over it. Not only because it still stands as one of the best football games ever made, but I wanted to encourage yearly releases to be 20 bucks. I did not purchase Manhunt new because I don't believe violence to be a selling point. And you can bet dollars to doughnuts I will always buy a game that has cheeky sexual themed fun just because this world needs more of it desperately. I will end my argument with a simple question: If you were walking down a beach on vacation with your family, what would be more harmful to witness? A beautiful woman tanning her naked breasts or a helpless captive being decapitated? Think about it...

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Editorial: I'm done with the "Modern Warfare" era

I want to start this article by saying it has been at least a year since I last “traded in” a videogame. I personally enjoy the look of having a bookshelf filled full of interactive journeys (like what I did there?) at my fingertips. Where is this headed? I traded in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 last week. No, not because I got “p0wned” by some “noob” in multiplayer. I just don’t think it’s good. ..Let me tell you why.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the argument about the Madden franchise that as of late it is the same game with a new roster. I have several friends that don’t even buy the most updated versions, because unlike me, they don’t want to be duped again. Folks, that is just what the Call of Duty franchise has done. It slaps the same thing in front of you with a new coat of paint and doesn’t even need to beg you to make it the highest selling form of physical media to date.

I guess the other reason is that like my taste in food, clothing and woman…my taste in videogames has “matured”. I like the next triple A title like the rest of you. I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into the new Mass Effect (Which was amazing). If there is a new Gears I’m the first in line. Bioshock Infinite?  Don’t mind if I do…These are games that are constantly pushing the envelope, reinventing themselves. Fans of these franchises would cry bloody murder if it weren’t the case.

I don’t want to hear the old, “Well if it’s not broke” argument either. Those are the people that are fine with their substance- less dribble, screaming into their headsets about how much I “suck”. Maybe that should be my next point. It’s the fact that Call of Duty seems to have brought together every juiced up jock that feels that they need to prove how big they are fumbling with their joysticks and raging into a microphone. The online landscape is nothing short of a vulgarity laced wasteland where the 14 year old is king and practices using all the new 4 letter words that they’ve learned from their friends. Online gaming use to be about making friends that you would play games with, I can say myself I don’t even plug in my headset any more.

Agree with Matt? Don't agree? Let us know in the comments!