| I admire iteration - the idea that you make a basketball game and you keep making it better makes sense to me. Eventually, it'll be as good as it can be, right? When you're out of improvements, you can just update it every year with better graphics and updated rosters. In another other industry, that mentality makes sense. In the video game industry, it doesn't. Video games are so tied to emotion that you really need to strive to create something new, to induce something novel in your customers. I think the best example of this was the release of NBA Live 10 vs NBA 2K10. Since 1995, NBA Live was the basketball game. They (in my opinion), crushed the 2K series. For years, it was a really polished game and sales were pretty consistent. They continuously improved on the menus and on the actual basketball games. Then, something changed around 2010. Suddenly, EVERYONE preferred NBA2K over NBA Live. Here's a good article about that: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/416482-nba-live-10-or-nba... In my opinion, EA kept optimizing for local maxima. When 2K10 started experimenting more with simulating the business side of NBA teams with Association Mode, more people were hooked. The metagame became way more fun. And My Player mode was great too. EDIT: I think there's a lot of parallels between the video game industry and the film industry. The companies that stay on top (Disney, Nintendo, Blizzard, Valve etc.) are fiercely protective of their brand and never release something they think is just okay. The "people will forget about our mediocre games" mentality is very, very off in industries so tied to emotion. |
I'd argue this is not true of Disney, who churn out endless zero-budget, cookie-cutter direct-to-video sequels and spinoffs from their big theatrical hits (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Disney_direct-to-vide...) in order to milk them for every cent they can. Disney does this because they're an easy way to squeeze a few more bucks out of the parents of kids who are obsessed with a particular Disney property, not because they are stories that demand to be told.