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Forums - Gaming - Why is 'milking' considered inherently bad amongst gamers?

happydolphin on 03 July 2012
Chris Hu said:

With just a bit of research its pretty hard to get ripped off today.  This isn't the 80's where it was hard to get more then one or two or no reviews on a game.  Its also a lot easier to find a game for the right price without getting ripped off.

Aielyn just gave the example of Guitar Hero, where full price is charged for what can be consider a bonus pack. That's not a good business practice imho, and should be avoided by others before the franchises go bitter for consumers.



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happydolphin on 03 July 2012
Walkthrublazer3 said:

Gamers love to be negative and hate.

They love to blame Mario, COD, and Halo for the lack of new IPs and original ideas, even though new IPs rarely sale well and many people just ignore them.

All the haters have no one to blame but themselves. In the gaming industry money talks and bullshit walks. New IPs are often largly ignored by the gaming masses and rarely become breakaway successes.

For example the many Nintendo gamers complain that Nintendo releases to many Mario games and ignore their other franchise like F zero and Star fox.

The sad thing is that while Mario sells millions of copies per game, the last F zero and Star Fox Command couldn't even break a millon unit solds. People grew disinterested with the franchises.

To put it plainly all these people who complain about milked franchies are just spewing hot air. The vast majority gamers want their Mario, Halo, and COD as evidenced by sales. The haters are just jealous that no-one buys all the niche and not as popualar games like the plethora of JPRGs.

Hence why their is so much hate for COD, Mario, Halo, Uncharted, etc..

Pikmin, Mario Tennis, the Wii Series and many others say hi.



darkknightkryta on 03 July 2012

Simple, it's easier to bore of something that you do repeatedly. This isn't really tied down to games either. Like listening to a song over and over again, you'll get sick of it, same with games.



Jay520 on 03 July 2012
Dodece said:
Milking can be described as putting forth the least effort possible for the greatest possible gain. Which in the case of game development usually means that a developer is cloning their previous game, and making only enough changes to get away with what they are doing. The time frame is pretty irrelevant as far as the workmanship is concerned, but it does make milking far more obvious to the casual observer. After all when installments are a few years apart it is much easier to miss the duplication. Then if the two games were just a year apart.

Milking is entirely detrimental, and in no way should be condoned. Even by ardent supporters of a game series. For one simple reason. There is a more common usage of the term, but it is keenly in the minds of those that are applying it to a game series. It is a term used to describe abusing the system, or unjustly taking advantage of the system. There are few things that rile people up more then the notion that someone is cheating to get ahead, or even think they can cheat us into getting what they want.

This is fundamentally human psychology. We expect and demand reciprocity of a equal nature. We expect to get the same rewards for the work we put out as another, and we expect the other to work just as hard as we do to get their rewards. Be honest if you go to work, and your coworker fucks around for ninety percent of the time, and still draws the same pay as you for months and years. You really start to hate that person don't you, and even if you understand how fruitless that hate is your still going to have that hatred burning you up inside.

Developers milk properties, because it is both quick and lucrative. They can make a lot of easy cash fast. That has a downside though. In that they generate a lot of ill will directed not only at the series being milked, but at the developer who is doing the milking. Their short term success is usually costing them their good reputation with the people they need to buy their products. It is like slash and burn farming. Sure you get a bumper yield for a few years, but after that you got a wasteland to try and make a living off.

I suppose the irony of it all is the people pointing the finger aren't the problem. They are usually the people who are doing the right thing. Even though it may not feel that way right now. They are demeaning a developer in the hope that the developer will see the error of their ways, and return to the honorable path. The problem is those people that defend a milked series right up until the point that everyone finds in obscene. You really shouldn't defend the indefensible. It is wrong to misuse a franchise, and buying into it is like feeding a addiction that in the end is going to kill the series off altogether. Developers that milk get addicted, and if you let it continue on long enough then it becomes virtually incurable.


I've always thought milking was simply releasing a lot of games within a short time. Since I've seen a lot of people say X game is milked even when the series has been high quality. People also say a series is becoming milked when a new game is announced yet hasn't been released. For example "Halo 4 and 5 are already announced? Microsoft is milking Halo!". In this example, the games haven't even released, yet people are still calling it milked. That's why I don't think the term is tied to quality, just release frequency. And even if that's not the popular definition of milked, its the one I'm referring to, as noted in the OP.

Jay520 on 03 July 2012
Aielyn said:
To me, the problem is that the term "milking" hasn't been sufficiently-well-defined in the context of games, so it's being used to mean "making a lot of games that I don't like in a franchise I'm not big on".

There are instances where it is clear that a franchise is truly being milked. A good example was Guitar Hero - at its height, in 2009, there was Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Guitar Hero Smash Hits, Band Hero, DJ Hero, Guitar Hero 5 Mobile, and Guitar Hero Arcade. Note that Metallica, Van Halen, Smash Hits, and Band Hero were all nothing more than track packs, really... yet they were all full retail price.

And when a franchise gets milked, it inevitably dies soon afterwards. The last Guitar Hero franchise games to be released were released in 2010, and there's no sign of another title. Also note that review scores of the last batch of titles were significantly lower than those that came before. Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock sold less than half as well as Guitar Hero 5, which itself sold poorly compared with earlier Guitar Heroes.

Now, had Activision made it a rule that there is only one Guitar Hero per year, or perhaps one Guitar Hero and a couple of low-price track packs, things would have been fine. If they wanted to introduce "DJ Hero", it should have been that year's main game, with the next Guitar Hero delayed until the following year. And then, with plenty of time to spend on developing new ideas for the franchise, they could have kept things fresh.

And that's probably the other thing that is a consistent pattern of a milked franchise - complete lack of freshness. If new games in a franchise don't feel fresh, and they're released rapidly for a period of time (as in, multiple entries a year for multiple years), it's being milked, and you can expect its death.

Be wary, because Call of Duty is beginning to show signs that Activision are milking it. Note that there's been the recent suggestions that extra CoD titles, beyond the yearly entry, are in development. It is currently on an upward trend, but that's not going to last forever, and Activision have a particularly bad history of milking franchises to death. To be honest, I'm surprised that they've restrained themselves so much, so far - I wouldn't have been shocked if 2010 saw three different CoD titles. Note that this concern is not because of any sort of dislike of CoD - I own two games in the series for Wii, and will likely get Black Ops II for Wii U. But the signs are there.


I don't think milking automatically causes diminished sales or quality. Last generation for example there were way more IPs on annual release schedules. Grand Theft Auto, Hitman, Ratchet & Clank, etc released annually and are considered to have stayed high quality. (Except for Deadlocked in the R&C series). I do agree that multiple entries per year will cause issues, but those cases are so rare, I didn't think they were relevant.

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Chris Hu on 03 July 2012
darkknightkryta said:
Simple, it's easier to bore of something that you do repeatedly. This isn't really tied down to games either. Like listening to a song over and over again, you'll get sick of it, same with games.


Good point like they say variety is the spice of life once you get tired of something its time to move on to another thing.



MDMAlliance on 03 July 2012
Chris Hu said:
darkknightkryta said:
Simple, it's easier to bore of something that you do repeatedly. This isn't really tied down to games either. Like listening to a song over and over again, you'll get sick of it, same with games.


Good point like they say variety is the spice of life once you get tired of something its time to move on to another thing.


Except the game isn't the exact same thing over and over again.



happydolphin on 03 July 2012
Jay520 said:
I've always thought milking was simply releasing a lot of games within a short time. Since I've seen a lot of people say X game is milked even when the series has been high quality. People also say a series is becoming milked when a new game is announced yet hasn't been released. For example "Halo 4 and 5 are already announced? Microsoft is milking Halo!". In this example, the games haven't even released, yet people are still calling it milked. That's why I don't think the term is tied to quality, just release frequency. And even if that's not the popular definition of milked, its the one I'm referring to, as noted in the OP.

Yes, but if the frequency is too high, the value add between each entry is reduced for the same price. Since value-add is a measure of content which is an attribute of quality (for games), then milking can be considered a reduction in the quality/price ratio and hence leads to a rip-off. Anything that doesn't fall into that can't be called milking.



Chris Hu on 03 July 2012
MDMAlliance said:
Chris Hu said:
darkknightkryta said:
Simple, it's easier to bore of something that you do repeatedly. This isn't really tied down to games either. Like listening to a song over and over again, you'll get sick of it, same with games.


Good point like they say variety is the spice of life once you get tired of something its time to move on to another thing.


Except the game isn't the exact same thing over and over again.

Almost any game can become repetitive if you play it enough some are just more repetitive then others. 



MDMAlliance on 03 July 2012
Chris Hu said:
MDMAlliance said:
Chris Hu said:
darkknightkryta said:
Simple, it's easier to bore of something that you do repeatedly. This isn't really tied down to games either. Like listening to a song over and over again, you'll get sick of it, same with games.


Good point like they say variety is the spice of life once you get tired of something its time to move on to another thing.


Except the game isn't the exact same thing over and over again.

Almost any game can become repetitive if you play it enough some are just more repetitive then others. 


Like CoD? hahaha but people haven't gotten tired of it yet, probably because when people play online they do dumb sh**.