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[DarthHelmet86]

John_sabugs what people do you think will be attracted to the title X-Com, New gamers who have never heard of the original series or people who know the original series? New gamers don't know the series, the name might as well be Alien Shooter 4 to them, people who know the older series are more likely to be critical of the newer game.

Cynically everything a game studio does is marketing, even back in the day it was all about marketing. Retooling an older game for a newer age is a lot easier then making a whole brand new game, it saves you money and already has a fan base to buy into it. But it also brings in it's own problems, gamers are more likely to be overly critical of any changes to the original game and unfairly judge the new game or outright hate it before they know anything about it. Marketing people know this they aren't idiots...well some of them are.

So far everything I have seen about this new X-Com has shown that Friaxis is not just doing this as a marketing ploy to lure people in. The people who made it seem to be genuine fans of the original games and want to bring the series back from the dead so more people can enjoy it and hopefully more games can be made from it. If this is successful I wouldn't be surprised to see it get it's own sequel, perhaps a retooling of Terror from the Deep and that is something I would love. Sure the game might not end up being perfect but what game is, the originals sure weren't, they had their flaws just like every game does.

[jonh_sabugs]

Does it matter who will be attracted? They stamped the name in, and it got a lot of attention. The market is played, the game got a lot of showcase, the numbers will be high whether the game is good or not. People who heard of the earlier games as legends will be very curious. Other people will have watched the ads and got on the wagon. Yes, the use of the brand is, more than anything, a marketing device.

I don't think the criticism you portray has much of an impact really. Take famous brands, like Civilization. Civ V was (and is) under a lot of fire from the older fanbase. And what? They are a minority, they can make a lot of fuss on their forums, but they will have no real impact in the end, the tons of new players attracted to it more than make for it. Civ 6 is probably on schedule already, with similar game mechanics, aiming at an even larger audience. No one is saying marketing people are idiots, it's quite the opposite, actually. They see this situation and know exactly how to exploit it, which is my point.

As for the people on Firaxis (developers mostly) being genuinely interested in a true sequel (whatever that means) is a mixed thing for me. I do believe many of them feel like this, but in the end who know how much this impacts the game. Companies have all kind of priorities, passion for game is usually low on them. Anyway, I was just reinforcing my point about brands as marketing devices, I have no idea how much it is the case for this particular XCOM game. I honestly hope it turns out to be a great game. It has been a while since I felt like a child when playing a new game, something I can still say for some older games.

[TotalAnarchy]

I think the idea that the franchise must remain the same in order to preserve itself as a franchise is preposterous. Not only were old games guilty of the same sin of changing mechanics and experience, like in the case of Dune and Gabriel Knight (and sometimes even under the same developers), but the very fact of releasing a second game in a series should be taken as an attempt to earn money upon the original success. Thus, X-COM: Terror From the Deep was already guilty of this.

Not to mention franchising is a business method through and through...

[Eagle of Fire]

Not only were old games guilty of the same sin of changing mechanics and experience, like in the case of Dune and Gabriel Knight (and sometimes even under the same developers), but the very fact of releasing a second game in a series should be taken as an attempt to earn money upon the original success. Thus, X-COM: Terror From the Deep was already guilty of this.

It is true that this kind of marketing already existed in the past (even though it appeared way, way less often back then) but allow me to tell you that you are taking very, very bad examples. They even go against what you are saying.

For example, the reason behind Dune and Dune 2 was because the publisher asked two companies to present them something with the only premise of the Dune story. Dune was quite hip at that time, with the novel(s) and the movie(s) and all. When both companies displayed their end result, the published decided that both were very solid proposals and eventually decided to publish both. The adventure game finished production faster and was dubbed "Dune", and what eventually started the RTS genre been sold as "Dune II" simply because it came out later.

In this case it is not really a marketing ploy but rather a publisher who had the "nice problem" of having too much good content rather than the opposite which happen all too often. And that little story is commonly known in the gaming sphere AFAIK.

As for TftD, it would probably be my prime example on how I'd like series names to be handled. TftD is so much alike UFO: Enemy Unknown that when it got out I considered it to be nothing more than a clone. If you look at all and compare UFO and TftD you'll notice that the exact same engine is used. The only difference is that you're evolving primarily in the water instead of on land, some graphics were refreshed to warrant the new game and some very minor changes in the code were made which prevent some weapons to be fired above water. Everything else is the same.

What you could say about this example is that TftD should have been sold as an extension rather than a stand alone game. That was the nicely executed marketing ploy in this case. But take TftD as an example of companies who use the name only to sell something completely different to a bigger volume? Sorry, that's pretty much the opposite of your argumentation.

[TotalAnarchy]

What you say is solid. Of course I can bring out other examples of both correctly exploiting a franchise and of shamelessly using a title for further easy profits, like the case of the Alone in the Dark original trilogy. But that's beside the point.

What I wanted to underline in my post is that we shouldn't dismiss that easily new entries in a franchise. Who knows it might surprise us, and the new game might be more faithful to the original than it gave the impression in the previews. And if it will be crap, you can find that out from other people and not buy it, even better pretend it doesn't exist. After all fans don't decide which games are allowed to be released or not (just look at the trainwreck that is the racing game FlatOut 3). Publishers decide if they want to milk money or not out of a franchise. And if it comes to this the least we can do is to hope it will be a good game.

I myself am from a different generation than you. For me what I call nostalgic games are Quake III: Arena, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Syberia, Battlefield 1942, a bit of Sonic Adventure etc. Frankly I was utterly disgusted when they decided to change the focus of Call of Duty from WWII to modern warfare and they started saying the same will happen with Medal of Honor (which it did eventually). It was really the biggest sin inflicted to a solid franchise, so it's not that I can't sympathize with longtime X-COM fans. The new CODs are ok games, I've tried most of them, just not something that gets me overly excited. Nowadays, I stopped caring when they release another one. Eventually they'll release all of them in one bundle here for 6 dollars and you can finish them in one weekend for the lolz.

What's interesting though, is that for those people who crave for that original experience that started their favourite series, patience sometimes really works. This is true for Sonic fans, which got Sonic 4, or for Rayman fans, which recently got Rayman Origins.