Virtually all of the Sports titles with yearly releases. (Some years actually do improve markedly)
Assassin's Creed has been milked to death - it should have ended with 2.
Forza

EDIT: OMG I forgot CoD. Milked to death. Haven't purchased a cod since black ops.

It all depends on who is calling a game milked and if they like the game or not.

COD fans don't think it's getting milked but haters say it's the most milked. Mario and Zelda fans don't think they are getting milked and I as a Halo fan would love more Halo. Give me as much Halo as 343i can make. If it was yearly I'd gladly buy it every year. Yell if it came out twice a year I'd still ask for more Halo.

So it's just a matter of perspective. One person complains that a series is milked and another is asking for another glass.

I don't see any problem with producing popular games in as fast of a rate as meets demand. Only when it hurts the quality of the game do I worry. Some believe that you can have too much of a good thing and regardless of the quality they don't want a COD every year. I personally don't understand this because you don't have to buy it.

I think the people who really hate popular stuff like COD getting made every year don't like it because they don't like shooters and want those resources going into genres they do like. I can understand the frustration of a JRPG fan or Platformer fan seeing shooters come out every month and while they rarely get what they want. But that's no reason to hold back the flood gates for those who do love the popular games. Like I said I'll take as much Halo as 343i can throw at me.

1. Releasing games more frequently than gamers want to play them.
2. Very little evolution or change in content and gameplay.
3. Compromising quality to release games frequently.

I personally think sports games should be excluded from these rules though, they're just optional upgrades really.

Assassin's Creed 2 is one of my favourite games this gen, but the franchise has absolutely been butchered by greed. It's quickly becoming the best example of a milked franchise.

Mario as a character is milked, but not the franchise.

I'd agree with that.

Everything Nintendo releases, COD, and Assassins Creed

Yearly installments without adding anything new.

My list of Milking.

MARIO, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty and Halo.

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.

There are different factors depending on the game type, I think.

With a game that is focused on a particular story, for instance, such as aliens invading earth, when you get to the end of that story, there is a feeling that creating a new conflict just to keep the series going is "milking". How well this is done, though, is very important. If it's logical, if it makes sense, then it's usually forgiven, at least by the fans of that series. If it feels contrived and tacked on, then obviously it's more of a negative.

With other types of games, those that center around the characters or the gameplay, I don't think it really matters how many titles are in the series. Something like Super Mario Brothers or Disgaea would be examples of that.

When you take popular characters and basically re-skin completely different games around them, however, that is clearly milking those characters. A little bit of that is fine, especially with mascot types, but when you churn these types of games out on a continuous basis, then you have to wonder where the creativity is going.

The time consideration is probably a new one, at least with AAA games. It used to be that you had to wait at least a couple of years between releases in a franchise but now they're coming out every year. You have two teams working on staggered releases for the same franchise at the same time. It's getting out of hand, I think, and it's burning people out on those series quickly. Publishers seem to have a "let's milk it dry while it's popular" attitude, which is only good for the short-term.

Still, if the quality remains high, I won't really complain much. It's when the quality starts nose-diving that you really have to get annoyed with the publisher/developer.

Spaghetti definitely. Though to be fair I've had much nicer spaghetti than lasagne, usually when I get lasagne it's shitty supermarket takeaway lasagne, and "spaghetti" could mean a variety of dishes... I'm going to assume spaghetti bolognes. Hot dog was a weird option in the poll, I thought the inclusion of both spaghetti and lasagne established this was out of italian food.