14 DAY TRIAL // These are the names of a few video games that were revealed to be coming in 2011 at the Video Games Award ceremony hosted by Spike last week: Mass Effect 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Forza Motorsport 4, Prototype 2, Uncharted 3, Resistance 3.
Let's talk about the names of some other high profile video games that will be coming next year to a gaming console or PC near you: Dead Space 2, Dragon Age 2, The Witcher 2, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Retribution, Crysis 2, Gears of War 3, Call of Duty (no number but also a long-running franchise), Little Big Planet 2, Batman: Arkham City.
We might also get Diablo III from Blizzard or the Heart of the Swarm real time strategy, which has the dubious honor of being an episodic expansion for a sequel.
Now, let's run down the big releases that are confirmed and will not contain any sort of numeral or the hint of a franchise being involved: Bulletstorm, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (if we bend the rules a little), Homefront, Hunted: The Demon's Forge, L.A. Noire, I Am Alive (if it's still being worked on), Brink, RAGE, Quantum Theory, Space Marine.
It's pretty clear that the sequels outnumber the original material pretty heavily and I'm ready to wager that the games that have numbers after their title manage to sell overall better than those who do not.
This suggests that the video game industry has some trouble with originality, at least when it comes to would-be blockbusters, and it is more interested in the brand recognition linked to a title than to the attraction of something entirely new.
This approach might make sense from a commercial standpoint at first sight, but it has a major problem further down the line: gamers who grow accustomed to yearly series will expect, at the same time, both innovation and traditionalism from their big hits, something they surely can't deliver at the same time.