Videogames Ignore the Laws of Sequels

If you want a sequel that sucks, heading to the movie theatre, but it you wishing a sequel that rocks, peck a restrainer.

The law of diminishing return dictates that when a studio announces a sequel to a movie, it's probably going to suck. Videogame sequels are curious exception to this regulation however, and people actually bear them to be better than the games that came before them. In Issue 304 of The Escapist, Brendan Main talks about what makes videogame sequels unique amongst entertainment media, and why the expectations of improvements aren't wholly unreasonable.

There are three myths that necessarily pop up whenever the relative worth of various media are discussed: The book is always better, the adaptation is always worse, and sequels are always rotten … When IT comes to videogames, the first ii rules still rule dominant, but the tierce is nowhere to be found. Despite all the sequel-bashing that takes place with former media, a videogame sequel is a different casing altogether. Rather than simulate that a sequel is an innately inferior thing, often the opposite is true – we expect sequels to increase in quality. In fact, this assumption is so commonplace that we don't often stop to consider how radical it really is.

Usually in other works, a sequel is an extrapolation … And in this scramble to add along additive stuff, the innovative can be grossly mischaracterized or misunderstood … It isn't just that a sequel might take a beloved story in a weird direction, but that in its missteps, it drags the first one on behind it through the muck.

But a sequel in a videogame doesn't necessarily employment that way. There is atomic number 102 need to slap the one onto the another, suggesting a direct and chronological type of sequentiality. What it mightiness arrange instead is re-explain and reiterate, and serve as a mechanical sequel, kinda than a communicatory one.

By exploiting this unique feature of videogames – where developers keep a game's plat roughly the same as its predecessor, but importantly changes and upgrades what the player does – the medium can buck the trends that blight sequels in other forms of media. You backside read more in Main's clause, "Play it Over again."

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/videogames-ignore-the-laws-of-sequels/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/videogames-ignore-the-laws-of-sequels/

Share this post