Gaming Trilogies

[TheChefO]

After the announced trilogies of Too Human and Mass effect I started thinking how this may be beneficial for MS.

In the movie business with the Lord of the Rings trilogy it obviously cost a lot more than one movie to make but significantly less than three epics but how does this work for the games industry?

Are there significant savings to be had by this method? Perhaps more efficiency with the staff you have on hand which may vary at diferent points of development with one game but could be more useful in a "manufacturing line" type of work output. But are these positives going to limit the games from taking advantage of software efficiency which typically make significant strides over the period of a few years. Perhaps using a new engine for a traditional sequel would be out of the question for an efficiency planned trilogy?

Any devs here that might be able to give us some insights on potential pros and cons for planned trilogies on next gen systems?

 

[Johnny Awesome]

It's a good way to control costs as long as the game actually sells. There's more risk involved, because if the first game bombs you just wasted a lot of money. Right now it looks like Mass Effect is good and Too Human is crap. Hopefully they can pull it together on Too Human. Both games will not ship this year IMO. Neither will Crackdown.

 

[TheChefO]

It's a good way to control costs as long as the game actually sells. There's more risk involved, because if the first game bombs you just wasted a lot of money. Right now it looks like Mass Effect is good and Too Human is crap. Hopefully they can pull it together on Too Human. Both games will not ship this year IMO. Neither will Crackdown.

I don't think they have any option but to make "too human" more polished than where it is now with the amount that is being invested.

Can you give some specifics on where this risk/reward has it's potential ups and downs?

 

[aselto]

Personally I hate when a game trilogy is announced. There's a probability that the game will be great, but will bomb anyway and sequels will be canceled. Anyone remembers the disappointment after finding out that there will be no more Shenmue or Beyond Good & Evil?
Hopefully these games will appear on next-gen platforms after all..

 

[PeterT]

I think this model can work out really well, as demonstrated by Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 for example, two games (or rather one really long game) I would easily rank among the best of their generation.

It can also fail horribly, see .hack 1 to 4...

Or the games can be quite good, but market forces cause an early end to the series (ie. Xenosaga should have been 6 episodes, but it seems only 3 will be released)
This is easily the most frustrating case.

 

[TheChefO]

I think this model can work out really well, as demonstrated by Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 for example, two games (or rather one really long game) I would easily rank among the best of their generation.

It can also fail horribly, see .hack 1 to 4...

Or the games can be quite good, but market forces cause an early end to the series (ie. Xenosaga should have been 6 episodes, but it seems only 3 will be released)
This is easily the most frustrating case.

I think when I big company gets behind an IP with a trilogy in mind they CAN have great success by budgeting well for it and let the creative minds take control and not try to put thir hands on too much. Basicly act as enablers not inhibitors. But thats another conversation.

I'm trying to see what you guys can see are the positives and negatives with trilogies specificly. Crap games can come along with any medium along with great ones. Thats not really what I'm trying to spark here. More like: why is this good? why is this bad?

 

[PeterT]

I wasn't giving these examples just on a whim you know

They are all games that are more closely intertwined than most of those seen previously (ie. earlier generations), even in the same series. They share both assets and the game engine. Is this not what you were talking about WRT savings? So that would be why it is good: it saves the developers and publishers time (and thus money) on assets and code, things I consider secondary, and lets them focus on story, content and gameplay.

The bad part is also quite obvious, and that's why I gave my second example: The gameplay and overall style/environment can get very repetitive, and if the games are short for their specific type the whole thing starts to scream rip-off to me. Another problem already alluded to is that, due to changes in the corporate landscape and/or varying financial success we (as the gamers) might never get to see the closure of the story.

So overall I think it can be a good thing to do such game sequences (why limit yourself to trilogies?), however only if they are well planned out from the beginning, don't degrade each individual games' enjoyment factor, and actually keep enough content per game to justify the cost (or lower the retail price, but I don't think that's viable).

 

[TheChefO]

I wasn't giving these examples just on a whim you know

They are all games that are more closely intertwined than most of those seen previously (ie. earlier generations), even in the same series. They share both assets and the game engine. Is this not what you were talking about WRT savings? So that would be why it is good: it saves the developers and publishers time (and thus money) on assets and code, things I consider secondary, and lets them focus on story, content and gameplay.

The bad part is also quite obvious, and that's why I gave my second example: The gameplay and overall style/environment can get very repetitive, and if the games are short for their specific type the whole thing starts to scream rip-off to me. Another problem already alluded to is that, due to changes in the corporate landscape and/or varying financial success we (as the gamers) might never get to see the closure of the story.

So overall I think it can be a good thing to do such game sequences (why limit yourself to trilogies?), however only if they are well planned out from the beginning, don't degrade each individual games' enjoyment factor, and actually keep enough content per game to justify the cost (or lower the retail price, but I don't think that's viable).

ah - sorry didn't realize they were directly related (shared assets/engine etc) to my initial post. Do you have a link or specific numbers for how this series did cost vs profit?

Also WRT potential of not seeing the end of the story etc. I would hope with a big company like msft behind the mentioned series that we would see the series to the end.

Any other pros/cons?