In looking over the lifespan of the gaming industry this saying is pretty much spot-on. Rarely does your average company recover from a bad game. It's not impossible, but it is rare. In this blog I want to take a look at what makes a franchise stay successful vs what makes them fail. There are plenty of examples to work with so I'll start with some examples of companies that have stumbled and try and figure out what went wrong.
There were several clear cut cases of a developer failing on a series that they created. One of the more famous has to be Core Design and the Tomb Raider franchise. After numerous missteps and even a killing off of Lara, Core released Angel of Darkness which, though a financial success due in part to a huge marketing campaign, was a critical failure, therefore paving the way for Crystal Dynamics to take over the franchise. So what went wrong? Core tried to push the formula, and ended up pushing too hard. The biggest complaints were the revamped controls, the city setting, and the small amount of actual tomb raiding. So not only did they mess with the core of the game (tomb raiding), they also messed up the controls. The game had other issues but I think it's safe to say that those are the two that did it in.
An example of a developer that dropped the ball in a different kind of way would be Factor 5 and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike. Factor 5 had garnered big praise from their previous effort, Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader. While Rogue Leader was praised for it's spot-on flying mechanics, Factor 5 saw fit to cram as much into Rebel Strike as possible. In the end Rebel Strike's great flying missions were watered down by mediocre missions involving the player piloting and driving just about every vehicle to ever grace a Star Wars film, not to mention the outright bad on-foot missions. Rebel Strike ended up being the last in the Rogue Squadron series.
And there are many other examples like these. But in all of these cases the problem occurred from an attempt by the developer to push the series past what it was known for. Most developers aren't content to simply do the same thing over and over again (nor should they be) and so want to challenge themselves to push the envelope. The problem with this is that when it's done in an ongoing and successful franchise, it usually ends up alienating the core audience. There is a very limited amount of examples of the same team working on a franchise over a prolonged amount of time and managing to keep the fans happy, but there are examples.
Nintendo has managed to keep some of the oldest franchises in gaming successful over a very long period, which is the exception rather than the rule. But Nintendo's formula for success is actually pretty basic: innovate while not mucking up the core gameplay. Super Mario64 and The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time managed to take two of gaming's oldest franchises and put them into the 3rd dimension while still feeling like the 2D games of the past. Even Metroid Prime, which took a 2D action/adventure game and turned it into an FPS was a massive success. Why? Because even though it looked like an FPS, it wasn't. It was still an action/adventure game, except now you were seeing the world in a whole new way. But all the things that made it Metroid were still there. This design philosophy is the reason that Nintendo is still placed at the top as one of the industries best in game development.
Arguably the hardest job a developer can have is in taking over an existing franchise with a strong fanbase; just ask Slant Six Games (Socom Confrontation). Two examples of this that come to mind are 343 Industries and Team Ninja. Bungie has one of the strongest fanbases of any developer out there, making 343's job of carrying on the Halo series nothing short of a monumental task. Team Ninja's ex-head, Tomonobu Itagaki, was the face of the company and his status as mastermind of all of Team Ninja's games was unquestioned. So when he left the company and took much of the senior staff with him, many thought the worse for Team Ninja. But I don't think so.
The strength of having fresh eyes on a series depends soley on the eyes. The successful formula as of late has been to have a team of developers that also happen to be diehard fans of the very game they're working on. A couple of examples of this would be High Moon Studios; developers of the recent Transformer games, and Rocksteady Studios; developers of Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. This is also why I'm confident in 343's ability to deliver an amazing Halo game; because they themselves are fans and know what to mess with and what not to mess with. The same goes for Team Ninja. Team Ninja is now run by what was essentially the "junior" team, responsible for the PS3 "Ninja Gaiden Sigma" games. They are now getting their chance to make their mark on a proper entry into the Ninja Gaiden franchise and from I've seen so far, they seem to know what the fans want.
The conclusion? Developing new entries into an ongoing gaming franchise is a masterful balancing act of innovation and core gameplay fundamentals. Being able to find ways to push a series forward while keeping the things that made the series great is key to success. Sounds easy enough, but game companies are not the Borg. They are filled with varying opinions of what a game should be and where it should go, therefore leadership is key. The most successful companies in gaming are the ones with people at the top that understand what their games are about and get to make the important decisions on what does and does not go into the game. Having a strong understanding of the core tenets of a franchise, and not messing with them, while simultaneously adding new features that don't interrupt those core tenets, but rather enhance them, is the key to a successful sequel.
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