The Escapist Bulletin: Out with the new, in with the new

LucasArts teased us all this week with a cryptic message on Twitter saying that it had a big announcement coming, and it would be great news for old school fans. Speculation ran rampant amongst gamers, some hoping for a re-release of a favourite adventure title, others hoping for sequels to some franchise or other.

The announcement turned out to be the former, but on a very grand scale, with the company releasing its back catalogue via Steam. This prompted more than a little glee from gamers of a certain age.

The relationship that gamers have with their own nostalgia is a very interesting one. On the one hand, our classics are sacrosanct and we complain that so many games are sequels these days, but when a Mechwarrior sequel is announced, or a high-profile piece of abandonware like Bethesda’s Daggerfall is released as a freebie, we’re in heaven.

The HD remix of Streetfighter II sold so fast that it broke records, and of the twenty best-selling games on Xbox Live Arcade last year, eleven were either old titles or remakes of old titles.

Despite all our protestations that we want new ideas, we’re rather comforted by the familiar. When Shigeru Miyamoto announced that the next Legend of Zelda game would not be a significant departure from previous instalments in the series, the general reaction was a complete lack of surprise, but there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the game will be a bestseller.

The fact of the matter is that when we do get a game with a new idea, or at least a new setting, we treat it rather shabbily. Mirror’s Edge sold so poorly on release that 1UP editor Simon Cox practically begged gamers to buy it. Dead Space, meanwhile, was played by 3 million people, but only half that number actually bought it.

Admittedly, 1.5 million units sold isn’t something to be sneezed at, but when you consider that Gears of War 2 sold twice that in its first month and was an Xbox 360 exclusive, you can see how we really feel about new intellectual properties.

Publishers figured this out years ago of, course. Activision has pushed back Singularity, a new FPS with time-manipulation as a concept, to the beginning of next year so that it can concentrate on Modern Warfare 2, a sequel to one of the most popular games of this generation and a game that some analysts believe will sell around 11 million copies. It’s like they know us better than we know ourselves.

The sequel has a special place in our hearts, and this is a good thing. Not every game is going to be the next Half-Life or Super Mario 64, and to expect otherwise does nothing but set ourselves up for disappointment.

When we embrace the familiar, we give games the chance to evolve instead of forcing developers to try and re-invent the wheel with every release. Not only that, but it gives publishers more chance of actually selling the game. A game can have as many new ideas as it likes, but if no one buys it it doesn’t do anyone any good.

For every game that turns the industry on its head, there are tens, if not hundreds, of games that make some small improvement. The gradual method might not be as exciting as ‘the next big thing’, but it’ll make us all a lot happier in the end.

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