| the2real4mafol said: I don't consider it by number, but by quality. It's only milked if there is no true distinctions between each game, the gameplay could be similiar in each game, but if it's different settings or characters i don't really consider it milked. Call of duty is milked because it's not really changed since cod 4, just different guns and the story is not big in cod. But i don't consider Grand Theft Auto milked because they work to make it the best game it can be before release and even if the setting is the same, it's very different plus they work hard on the story too. eg Liberty City between GTA III and GTA IV. I suppose it's also to do with how often they come, like Assassin's Creed is a yearly franchise and i guess it's milked despite different settings in each game. |
There, he's right.
The core gameplay of a franchise should not change drastically in every single entry; after all, it is the core gameplay the one that makes the franchise itself. However, there is always room for the improvements, yet most franchises skip this important part of the game design.
Let me put an example: think for a moment that the three Uncharted's were to be on sale with a difference of six months between each entry. Would that be a milked franchise, because it is being released way too quickly? No, because they improve themselves with every game. However, most games have yearly releases nowadays and yet they do not change anything to the formula, and try to make up things with pretty graphics and a novel element to the core gameplay (Which should be the main point: adding things to the core gameplay). Sometimes, though, you can mess up things by adding the wrong elements to this core, but unless you don't try, you are falling into the milking category.
I'll put you an example. Dead Rising (as I stated in another thread) is not a milked franchise; yet Dead Rising 2 is a milked game. How is this? Well, Dead Rising 2 was such an improvement in almost every area from Dead Rising one, yet it did not forget it roots and keep the core gameplay. But what happened? Capcom saw money. They had previously released Case Zero, a XBLArcade game which serves as a prologue to Dead Rising 2. Then they released a somewhat epilogue chapter (not as necessary as the one in Asura's Wrath to see the true ending, but still...), and then they released a rehashed Dead Rising 2 with minor diferences in the story and replacing Chuck with Frank to be the main character. That's it. I don't know how they could do such a thing, but they did. Is the franchise milked? No. Is the second game in the series milked? Yes, yes it is.
