Gamer Unit

The gaming industry has always believed in sequels which have been around since the inception of gaming. Sequels are safe, they don't deviate much from the formula, and are able to garner huge sales. In the eye of a financial backer or an invester, Sequels are a god-given gift, they have minimal risk as the franchise already has a firm fanbase to count on. The invester has little to nothing to worry about. The current trend however is worrying, most of the games coming out are sequels of a (relatively) old series. Even this causes no problem assuming the series is  innovating and reinventing itself periodically to remain fresh yet familar to the loyal fanbase. A great example of such a case is Nintendo's Mario franchise. Starting from the humble beginnings of "Donkey Kong"which hit shelves in 1981 which was a 2-D game, Mario evolved to full 3-D with Super Mario 64 (1996). Mario didn't stop there though, "Mario Party" , "Mario Tennis", "Mario Golf", "Paper Mario" are all smash hit spinoff series which ennure Mario never gets stale and repititive. This is an inspiration to all developers who wish to progress their series and make it endure as time passes. However, what about those series which simply make a few minor changes and release it as a new game? Although, I don't wish to take any names, Shooters and Sport Franchises are common offenders of this. To make matters worse, new and original games do not get the reception they deserve, simply because they are a new I.P. Rayman Origins and Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning are two examples I can think of, of the top of my head. Kingdom of Amalur was a perfectly decent RPG, although it was no Elder Scrolls or BioWare, it deserved more than its current treatment. 38 Studios who developed Kingdom of Amalur went bankrupt and the I.P was not bought by a single developer or company. It is simply lying there, waiting to be bought by someone who believes the franchise has potential. Rayman Origins would have suffered the same fate had it not been developed by famous developers Ubisoft, who also developed "Far Cry 3" as well as the "Assassins Creed" series. Another great new I.P was "Dishonored" which was developed by Obsidian Studios but was published by Bethesda Software. 

 

This is a promising trend where big companies produce the original I.P's so that those games will be made available to the general public. They too deserve a chance to showcase their games and have a chance to make it big. Or do you wanna play "Generic Military Shooter 18 : insert cool name"