[radicalbyte]

You can apply that logic to anything: why bother returning to the same great restaurant? Why bother with sports matches? Why buy a new car? New mobile? New computer? New TV? Why install a new version of an OS or software?

It's because they change: They tell new stories. They look better. They play better. They introduce completely new mechanics.

Persona: we're up to 5 in 25 years (almost 30 now!), during which time we've seen a massive increase in compute on consoles. Having a new game every 5 years seems very reasonable.

[misnome]

Not to mention the entirely of art, music, literature. The concept of stories in general.

It’s such an absurdly bad take they can’t be serious.

[scott_w]

Sadly I suspect they are. There’s an entire culture of denigrating anything fun by absurdly reducing it to its basic components. I’ve seen a lot of people denigrate football by calling it “kickball” and “just 20 men running around chasing a ball on a field.” I guess we could say our job is just hitting a keyboard thousands of times a day, no idea how anyone would enjoy that! /sarcasm

[alt227]

Sorry but I think your analogy is just wrong.

In football anybody in the world who has legs and can walk can perform the main goal of football which is to get a ball into a very large net. It doesnt take any skill to perform the feat whatsoever. The skill only comes with who you choose to play against. From that angle, it is just 20 people chasing a ball around, it just depends on the skill level of the players as to whether that is interesting to you or not.

With programming, not everybody with fingers can achieve the end goal which is to write working software. It takes years of learning and practice to be able to make even the most basic piece of software, whereas my 2 year old child can reliably kick a ball into a net.

The difference between the two is that football, and sport in general, creates enjoyment by intense moments of tension and excitement in a small space of time. Programming is an intellectual activity, where its payoff is in solving mathematical and logical puzzles to achieve a goal. Its not far fetched to see that people who get enjoyment from one type thing might not enjoy the other.

Why does everybody have to enjoy everything?

[scott_w]

> it just depends on the skill level of the players as to whether that is interesting to you or not.

The people denigrating football are referring to the Premier League, La Liga, etc. It’s nothing to do with skill and everything to do with snobbery.

> It takes years of learning and practice to be able to make even the most basic piece of software, whereas my 2 year old child can reliably kick a ball into a net.

You’re starting to sound like those people.

> Why does everybody have to enjoy everything?

I didn’t say you did, all I said was that it’s a sad cultural behaviour that I’ve seen to denigrate things other people enjoy.

I don’t even watch football that much, I picked it because of its popularity.

[ToValueFunfetti]

That seems like an unfair comparison. It doesn't take years of learning to write the "kick a ball into a net" of programming; most everybody writes hello world on their first day. Programming and sports both have vastly different difficulties depending on whether you're approaching it as an amateur or a professional.

[JKCalhoun]

At some point though, kind of like bad movie sequels, you start to think that Corporate has run out of ideas.

Of course someone there is looking at the balance sheet and noticing that recycling is actually profitable so who can blame them if we want to keep repurchasing the shinier version of the thing we liked before?

Then I suppose we have ourselves to blame — or not.

I suspect the OP though is bemoaning the lack of new, original ideas that this kind of commerce workflow eschews. (Myself, I'm not into first person shooters and so essentially walked away from mainstream gaming decades ago.)

[thaumasiotes]

> You can apply that logic to anything: why bother returning to the same great restaurant?

> It's because they change

That's not true at all. I don't return to the same great restaurant because it's new and different. If I wanted that, I'd look for a different restaurant.

I go back to the same great restaurant because I'm hungry again.

[zerocrates]

And realistically the vast majority of Persona fans, certainly in the West, haven't played anything before Persona 3. By the numbers there might be an absolute majority that have just played 5, since it was such a jump in popularity and mainstream success.