I don't understand the hate against annualized series.

[Tech614]

The problem is that when people buy these annualized games, it tells the developers to keep making them. So instead of moving the industry forward or making new games, they're still spewing out the same shit that they've been spewing out for the past 10 years because suckers buy it to have their football players jerseys with a different number.

So wait, you think Tiburon would be making something other then NFL games if Madden suddenly stopped? The team is basically half ex football players turned programmers who are trained specifically to make football games. The same is true of mostly any sports dev team. These are not guys who are going to make you some epic RPG.

Also if you're not a fan of sports you shouldn't be judging the perceived quality of sports games at all. I will always take criticism of sports games from actual sports fans serious some of it is real, but when you have random gamer who doesn't play or understand sports claim "it's a $60 roster update" it shows a clear lack of knowledge of what is going on. Madden 25 and NBA 2k13 where both crap and phoned in by sports game standards but they where still far from just being "a roster update" if you understand the sport and the changes that occur from year to year to make the game more accurately play like the sport does in real life.

[Kelimbror]

Also if you're not a fan of sports you shouldn't be judging the perceived quality of sports games at all. I will always take criticism of sports games from actual sports fans serious some of it is real, but when you have random gamer who doesn't play or understand sports claim "it's a $60 roster update" it shows a clear lack of knowledge of what is going on. Madden 25 and NBA 2k13 where both crap and phoned in by sports game standards but they where still far from just being "a roster update" if you understand the sport and the changes that occur from year to year to make the game more accurately play like the sport does in real life.

I play sports games and this is a load of hogwash. The games hardly add noteworthy features or any innovations over the course of each 5 year period. There's a lot of flashy buzzwords and promo videos they put together, but ultimate it plays like the exact same game. If you enjoy it and spending money each year, that's fine...but at least be honest and don't embellish what you are paying for.

I'm getting some of this years titles, but I'm not going to need another one until at least 2020 as I don't expect anything radical to happen before then.

[kail]

It's not the timing. They can release a sequal 3 months later for all I care, so long as it's finished and worth the money in its own merit. Anualized games tend to release every year due to dedicated time frames set by the publishers. If the game isn't finished, it may still release as scheduled regardless of quality.

Devs that I prefer will delay the game to make sure that doesn't happen. Nintendo devs and CDR are decent examples.

I don't play sports games but I seem to think the series just needs one game with patches & DLC updates instead of entire game releases.

[Tech614]

I play sports games and this is a load of hogwash. The games hardly add noteworthy features or any innovations over the course of each 5 year period. There's a lot of flashy buzzwords and promo videos they put together, but ultimate it plays like the exact same game. If you enjoy it and spending money each year, that's fine...but at least be honest and don't embellish what you are paying for.

I'm getting some of this years titles, but I'm not going to need another one until at least 2020 as I don't expect anything radical to happen before then.

They have an 8 month dev cycle before the game has to enter QA with sports games. What they add in 8 months is what you would expect out of 8 months. Like in this years Madden for example, the new passing/receiving mechanics and the way the DBs play more natural is far from just being "a roster update", or in 15 with the complete revamping up the OL blocking AI, it completely changes the way you play the game to more closely mimic real life. There are stinkers every now and then but for the most part sports games accomplish what they should accomplish in 8 months.

People that don't fully understand sports don't understand these changes or what makes it different from last years versions. They should not be trying to pass judgement on anything in that situation. That is a fact.

[Kelimbror]

People that don't fully understand sports don't understand these changes or what makes it different from last years versions. They should not be trying to pass judgement on anything in that situation. That is a fact.

I find this entirely laughable. Understanding sports has nothing to do with technical aspects of a video game and v/v. I find it both insulting that you feel the need to seek an ad hom appeal to intelligence on top of no true scotsman in relation to qualifying who can and can't critique these games.

I watch sports. I play and have always played sports. I understand sports. I play sports games. They are personally a waste of money because these improvements you find worthy of your money aren't recognizable as an impacting difference on a yearly basis. Now, note that I am not critiquing your subjective view that it is noticeable and worth it.

You can choose to disagree, but you aren't qualified now empowered to say who can and can't disagree with you. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

I find this entirely laughable. Understanding sports has nothing to do with technical aspects of a video game and v/v. I find it both insulting that you feel the need to seek an ad hom appeal to intelligence on top of no true scotsman in relation to qualifying who can and can't critique these games.

I watch sports. I play and have always played sports. I understand sports. I play sports games. They are personally a waste of money because these improvements you find worthy of your money aren't recognizable as an impacting difference on a yearly basis. Now, note that I am not critiquing your subjective view that it is noticeable and worth it.

You can choose to disagree, but you aren't qualified now empowered to say who can and can't disagree with you. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

I think he meant that the new rosters, the new tweaks and amelioration makes it worth the 60 bucks. I don't play sports game so I can hardly comment on this particular area.

But I guess it's the same principle as other yearly releases. Take assassin's creed, for instance. Every years, there's a new city/area to discover and to me, it's 60$ worth. It might not be perfect, but I'd rather spend 60$ on a 12 hours game than 20$ for a two hours movie. It's not as if the game was horrible either.

[Jester Joe]

People just hate because they look at annual games as the reason for "lack of innovation", despite whether that's accurate or not.

Also of course you praise the yearly shovelware of monster hunter while putting down all the western AAA games that are far superior to that garbage. I would rather play CoD or AC every year as my only game and be bored to tears then only play the shoevlware known as Monster Hunter.

Monster Hunter Tri(Which is 3) was released in 2009, Monster Hunter 4 was released in 2013 in Japan for both.

US was 2010 for Tri, and 2015 for 4.

How that's yearly is beyond me.

[Yunru]

I will just place this here:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comman...erian_Twilight

Oh wait guys...making new stuff is pointless, lets just copy the group control and say its a new game so we can milk those suckers.

[PuppetShowJustice]

It was one of, if not the, first 3D action game that made it PUNISHING if you did not learn to dodge and read your enemies movements.

...are you actually suggesting that difficulty was an innovation developed by Monster Hunter? And that no other 3D game before it punished you for not dodging a telegraphed attack? Because I distinctly remember games like Devil May Cry requiring that skill set years earlier.

Lets not pretend that Monster Hunter was the first thing that had the nerve to be demanding of a player's ability to dodge. There's no way that Monster Hunter is the direct inspiration for Demon's Souls.

[Jester Joe]

...are you actually suggesting that difficulty was an innovation developed by Monster Hunter? And that no other 3D game before it punished you for not dodging a telegraphed attack? Because I distinctly remember games like Devil May Cry requiring that skill set years earlier.

Lets not pretend that Monster Hunter was the first thing that had the nerve to be demanding of a player's ability to dodge. There's no way that Monster Hunter is the direct inspiration for Demon's Souls.

Hmm.

I think it's fair to say at least the Monster Hunter is unique in the same way as Dark Souls, that it forces you onto one difficulty which is the hardest, which I think might be what they meant more of? They also both have slower paced attacks with bosses that can attack faster than you, so you have to time everything.

Devil May Cry could be punishing, sure, if you decided to pick the hardest difficulty, but it isn't the only way to play the game.

[Coldkil]

Imho, the timing of different releases is not something really important.

What's important is the quality of the final product - the point is that yearly releases don't allow for a full production cycles and companies cash in repetitive and nto innovative titles which have still a solid playerbase to make money.

I'm not buying them becaus eusually they're half-done games or the same game of the previous year with a new timestamp on cover.

I'm a WWE fan, i have bought wwe 2k15 on Steam when it was on sale. very likely this is happening also for the following releases as i don't care much about the time i can play the game, as i don't value it worth the full price. I'll very likely end buying all of them, but not at that price.
And that's only because i'm a fan, i have fun wih it but objectively it's not a great game and a medium quality port overall.

Faster cycles means less time to optimize, test and generally develop the game. And this means less quality games.

[Katchii]

On the other hand, you have the likes of EA/Ubisoft/Nintendo claiming that these annualized series are what allows them to create other games like Dragon Age, Zelda or Far Cry. The cost of production of games are going up, which mean more time and more people are required. Since the price of the boxes stay pretty much the same, this is the way they're able to actually deliver quality games.

The problem people have with some of the annualized series is that they're getting charged the full box price of the game when it's NOT a new game... it's the same game as last year just with different levels, so it's the equivalent of a big DLC which sure as hell isn't worth $60.

[PACOX]

Annual multiplayer games make sense to me. Like a new season in a sport or the new iteration of a car. If the brand is not your thing or you're not ready to upgrade then just ignore it.

[kail]

Annual multiplayer games make sense to me. Like a new season in a sport or the new iteration of a car. If the brand is not your thing or you're not ready to upgrade then just ignore it.

They actually make the least sense to me. If anything it splits the playerbase when the game is almost the same. Me having last years CoD means I can't play with friends or others that have this years. If anything, map packs, modes, skins, etc can all be listed as addons for the base game. Everyone can still play together.

Inagine LoL or other multiplayer games having annualized releases.

[Tech614]

They actually make the least sense to me. If anything it splits the playerbase when the game is almost the same. Me having last years CoD means I can't play with friends or others that have this years. If anything, map packs, modes, skins, etc can all be listed as addons for the base game. Everyone can still play together.

Inagine LoL or other multiplayer games having annualized releases.

It doesn't really work that way, there are 3 different teams and 2 different engines used to make CoD with pretty much each game having it's own original source code.

It's not the same game being resold every year from a code stand point. They're not addons to last years game. No matter how much they can appear that way to people.

LoL has a single team, single source code completely unrelated to CoD.

Sports games are much closer to this comparison then CoD, as they are made by the same team in 8 month dev cycles and typically build on the same source code and very rarely reboot it.

[Deleted]

We're at a point in the video game industry where we can attain a new level of realism. In the past 10 years, the video game market exploded. We can visit entire open-world cities/world, we're more connected than ever and we're getting quality content we couldn't even dream of.

Several great games and series appeared in the past few years. May we hate or love them, series like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Battlefields, Mario, Pokemon and pretty much every sports games are selling millions every years and are some of the biggest grossing IPs in the industry. They also all have the same thing in common: They are annualized.

Recently, however, there's a movement growing in strength that is actually against yearly releases. This movement claim that annualized series kill the games, by releasing diluted content and unfinished games. These people also claim that it's a market made to milk as much money out of the consumer for much less content than it used before.

On the other hand, you have the likes of EA/Ubisoft/Nintendo claiming that these annualized series are what allows them to create other games like Dragon Age, Zelda or Far Cry. The cost of production of games are going up, which mean more time and more people are required. Since the price of the boxes stay pretty much the same, this is the way they're able to actually deliver quality games.

Finally, you also have the consumers that buy those games. Most of the time they are die-hard fans of the same series (Assassin's Creed, Call of Duties and Pokemon comes to mind) and they're usually consumers that spend more than just the initial box price. They also buy goodies on the side, like Amiibos, figurines or skins. These people are perfectly fine with the system and they are part of several millions of people every year who do the same thing.

Now that the big picture has been displayed, I need to understand why some people are actually against annualized series. If you don't like these games, nobody forces you to buy them. I see so many people on websites like Mmo-champion, IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku and the likes bashing games and insulting devs because of it while in reality these games grosses millions every year. They do not impact negatively the development of other games and they allow the studios to get enough money to develop more long-term games.

So why do people feel compelled to bash on these company and developpers? Did I miss something?

People dont like lazy rehashes. Thats why they moan.

Personally i dont mind annualised content. If you look at annualised games, they have all shown improvements in every area a little at a time.

If you dont like miniscule upgrades each year, buy the series every 2 or 3 years.

Problem solved...

[kail]

It doesn't really work that way, there are 3 different teams and 2 different engines used to make CoD with pretty much each game having it's own original source code.

That's the choice of the publisher to have three teams. They could have just hired one team to develop CoD and keep it updated with fixes, balances, and addons. Buy the game and stay with the same playerbase instead of fragmenting it with annual releases.

[Tech614]

They could have just hired one team to develop CoD

So you want lower quality/less CoD content then?

Because having 3 teams gives you a 3 year dev cycle to make a game. That is the ENTIRE point of it. Hell up until a little bit ago there was only 2 teams on CoD and they only had 2 year dev cycles, there is a reason Activision added SledgeHammer...

[kail]

So you want lower quality/less CoD content then?

Because having 3 teams gives you a 3 year dev cycle to make a game. That is the ENTIRE point of it. Hell up until a little bit ago there was only 2 teams on CoD and they only had 2 year dev cycles, there is a reason Activision added SledgeHammer...

CoD is just an example. Instead of releasing sequals, stick to one game template and update it from there. It's not that hard to understand. Moba developers have the best system not because of the F2P, but they stick to the same game. Update the engine, fix issues, provide addons for sale, etc.

[purebalance]

Depends on the series.

There's ones that just get boring (CoD) and charge you $60 for basically half a game (because you only ever play it for the Multiplayer). But wait, there's more, let us not forget they sometimes do TWO a year (main series and then they do a Black Ops). They might not be in the same calendar year, but they are def released within a span of a year between the last.


Then there are the worst offenders: Sports games. $60 for the same game as last year that might have one or two tiny weeny new features and updated stats on the players......something that all could have been done with a $10 DLC (and even that is paying too much) for last years edition.


I think the only "annual" release series I enjoy is Monster Hunter, if it even counts (It's annual in Japan since they alternate the main games and the spin offs, but its more bi annual here in the States). Mainly because they are, you know.....good....and fun....and usually don't cost $60 (since they are most often a portable title they are usually in the $30-$40 range) and almost always offer something vastly different from the previous title.

I can't agree more with the sports games. I was always baffled how friends would spend money every year for what was the same game maybe with a new player. Much less can't stand sports video games. I can't stand televised sports so have an even harder time drawing the line to a sport video game. But regardless, even if you like it, you can avoid buying a new Madden game for like 4 years and be the same.