The true fear within the industry!
There are hundreds of lists out there. You know the ones I’m talking about; video games people want to see made, continuations, sequels of very old discontinued games, what have you. There are so many real no brainers out there but why haven’t we seen some of them? Reality is, we’ve seen one too many.
Companies will tell you that they may have thought of them already, but are already too involved in other projects. Others will tell you that the idea didn’t test well with audiences.
Thank God some of these games out there don’t have sequels! So many companies are afraid of taking chances these days. Why spin-off a new IP, or take something in a completely different direction when you can just shovel off another sequel that will certainly grab you some more fat cash? Risk. It sucks, why bother with it?
Just to ramble off a few for those doubters that are reading this: Resident Evil 5, Final Fantasy XIII (and all its components, see Versus and Agito), the 101 Kingdom Hearts sequels coming out for every god known platform, every iteration of Megaman ever, Street Fighter 4 (Which is really something like, StreetFighter 17?), God of War 3, GTA 4, Metal Gear Solid 4, Soul Calibur 4. Wow, that’s a lot of 4s out there in recent times.
Plenty of studios are guilty of it, particularly 2 stand out to me: Nintendo and Capcom. I love them both, but the number of remakes between those two trumps just about any other company out there by a landslide.
Oh yeah, I forgot one new “risky” project: Halo Wars.
Halo Wars is a game that despite its new take on the series lacks all real risk. Bungie had originally wanted to create Halo as a strategy game but scrapped it and rehashed it as an FPS 
because they knew it would sell better to audiences. So why isn’t this game risky? Simple. Thanks
to the wonderful marketing geniuses at Microsoft Game Studios (MGS),
they understand the wonderfully simple concept of that if you attach
the name “Halo” to any video game these days it’s bound to sell like
hotcakes. Even though this new take on the
universe of Master Chief isn’t being developed by Bungie, instead it’s
being run by an already-closed-before-its-over studio known as Ensemble
Studios, no one is going to care.. Halo Wars, while looks entertaining,still lacks any true risk. Any fan of the series, be it for the storyline or characters, will pick up this game in a flash. We won’t even go into Bungie’s little project (see: Halo 3: Recon).
So what constitutes a risky project, something new, and fascinating? Don’t get me wrong, there are a handful of companies that truly try something new, like Media Molecule and their lovechild, “Little Big Planet,” which many (including yours truly) are affectionately waiting for. That is a game that truly tests the boundaries and breaks into something new, beyond just a simple 2-D platformer. It takes a chance, gives a strong amount of creative content (which so many people bastardize, see: Sporn).
Maybe I’ll even go so far as to say EA’s “Dead Space” is relatively…risky. But
then again it is a survival horror, we’ve seen the concept before,more
or less cut and paste from modern world/zombie-apocalypse to futuristic
Sci-Fi alien zombies. Wait… That sounds familiar too. But it is unique I mean the main character isan engineer, not really a soldier. Wait… Something’s still not 100%right… What’s the main character’s name? It’s NOT Gordon Freeman?! This is all highly preposterous. Who is this Isaac!? What have you done with the good doctor? Somebody get Valve on the line. Oh I see, he’s in space. That makes all the difference… That’s fine; Valve is busy with an actual unique idea anyway, something by the name of Left 4 Dead?
Now what’s the point of all this for me to write you may ask? Well look, I’m not going to tell you to forego your love for the universes some studios have made up. God knows I’ll be buying every future Halo/SmashBros/Crack iteration myself like an addict to morphine waiting for their next fix, so for me to tell you not to would make me a hypocrite. The point here is we should make the voice somewhere along the line, and demand something new. A new universe, a different IP, or if the companies are that afraid to take the chance, then make a completely different stylized version of the game with the same brand name. Hell, I’m still waiting for when Nintendo announces a Pokemon based MMO. We are seeing some new breakthrough companies take chances on small scales (Braid). Creative games are a dime a dozen, and we shouldn’t sell our soul because a game company doesn’t want that risk.
Author's note:
I should include that I realize the story is vastly different between
Dead Space and Half-Life, its just some amusing overlaid connections.
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