Why Sequels Are Hard in the Evolving World of Gaming: A Look at Counter Strike 2, Overwatch 2, and Kerbal Space Program 2
Exploring the challenges of creating successful game sequels in a rapidly evolving gaming industry
Sequels are a funny thing. What even is a sequel? The same thing, but different. In books, and movies a sequel makes sense. Hey, you remember that cast of characters from the first thing. Yeah, we took that cast and have them in a new adventure. Sometimes its not the cast of people that are the same, but the world, or the setting. So why do I bring this up today? In the last week a lot of sequels to games have been announced, come out, and flopped. However with the current gaming landscape sequels are becoming something that is harder and harder to do as games sprout legs and take their first steps on dry land away from their initial breeding ground inspired by movies and books.
So how do you make a Chess 2? Furthermore how do you invest in a Chess 2 while ensuring that people want to make the switch, and that you will ultimately profit from it? As games boldly step into the public zeitgeist out of their parents basement into the realm of actual sports is there even a need to iterate. After all games are a technology product, which should evolve and change over time. But what is the right way to do it? This is the question that has increasingly become brought up over the last couple of years.
Recently some rumors have come out that Counter Strike 2 is going to be a thing. Counter Strike, Global Offensive (CS:GO) for the unaware is one of the largest E-sports in the world. Certainly due in large part to it’s underground ring of unregulated sports betting, and gambling websites. That is a huge topic, but to me it follows the “porn leads the way to the next technology” theory behind VHS. Which raises a lot of questions about a second game. Will my money I’ve invested/gambled from the first game be lost in the transition? What will happen to the scores of jobs associated with the e-sport? Will people even like it? Will it be a separate game entirely or will it absorb the first game so people have no choice but to just pretend the original game didn’t exist. We’ve seen the latter strategy used in the transition from Overwatch → Overwatch 2. Wherein the game effectively had a graphical update and some rule changes and called it 2. The biggest criticism of that is.. why? Why even bother calling it 2. The name Overwatch is a franchise, and some rule changes by the devs that absorb the old game hardly justify a sequel.
I think the reigning champion in this department is Fortnite, and is part of why it has maintained huge relevance. There has not been a Fortnite 2, and from what I can tell the game has not really dropped in popularity much since it’s big mainstream breakout a few years ago. However if compared side by side with the game at launch the current Fortnite is wildly different. I think the most apt comparison is a zen garden (yes seriously). Things change. Football teams change, and so do the strategies used based on the players who are currently playing the game. This is like a zen garden. The current setup is beautiful, and part of its beauty is the fact that the zen garden is, in a sense, alive. Tomorrow it will be just as beautiful, but different. I’ve observed games that embrace this zen garden like evolution be very successful. Fortnite, Call of Duty Warzone, Smash Bros, Rainbow 6 Siege, League of Legends. This is the formula for keeping something interesting for long periods of time. While Chess, Soccer, Football, and Hockey may not change all that much. The people playing certainly do, enough to keep the audience guessing what will happen in each match. The difference with games is that the player doesn’t change, because it’s always me playing. So the game must change.
A great example of this is my favorite past-time, Rocket League. Rocket League has done a good job cementing itself as an e-sport staple. Rocket league also has an incredibly high skill ceiling, which just means that you can always be improving at it. No matter how many games I play I will always be getting better. The issue that rocket league has is that it is totally static. For as long as I’ve been playing the game rarely ever has anything interesting happened that changed up the formula even slightly. Back when the game came out Psyonix pushed out a couple of alternative game modes that they would support with additional servers. These remained as the only officially supported alternative game modes for years. Which gives this game an interesting problem. The e-sports is actually very interesting to watch, because it is very dynamic. The dominating teams change quite often. However the game itself for casual players has been exactly the same “roughly” since the game’s launch back in 2015. To be honest since the games alpha in 2014.
Kerbal Space Program 2 just launched recently. I fell in love with that game when I was in middle school, I am 26 now. So to say I’ve been waiting a long time for the sequel would be an understatement. However the game bombed on launch. Which was very disappointing. If you have never heard of Kerbal Space Program it’s effectively a physics simulator game where you design your own spaceships and pilot them yourself in this simulated solar system. The first game was very complete, and is old enough now that it probably runs well on just about anything. So the question is, why make a second one? What do you upgrade about a physics simulation so that you can call it a 2? Certainly the game could use quality of life improvements and graphical updates. But the game came out with less than the original game had, and ran worse than the original. So people immediately left it and went back. I have no doubt that after a couple of years people may totally forget about the first game and switch over to the second entirely once its feature set has been improved, and it’s performance gets fixed. But again I ask. What makes a sequel to a sport?
Let me know what you think in the comments of this post.
I’ve been posting this newsletter on my social media pages and received a great deal of support. I just wanted to thank everyone who’s taken the time to read my ramblings.
Some Stuff:
Elden Ring DLC, Counter Strike 2 and Destiny 2: Lightfall | This Week In Videogames by Skill Up
Concept Albums (That I Like) by FUNKe
Do Competitive Games Have to Be Complex? [Game Essence] by Masahiro Sakurai (Creator of Super Smash Brothers)
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