Feature creep can also screw games up. Look at Halo 2: Bungie normal-mapped the hell out of the graphics, and in exchange we got glitchy-looking cutscenes and no ending. Could the story of Master Chief and the Arbiter been resolved if Bungie hadn't felt the pressure to ramp up the graphic technology so much? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say yes, the new graphics features cost us a real ending.
Then there's Knights of the Old Republic 2. It's a terrific game - assuming you're a hardcore gamer - and it's the first game I've played where I thought the voice acting was genuinely interesting and worthy of critical appraisal. All we really needed was a good story and good characters, more of the same stuff we enjoyed in the first game. What'd we get? The ability to break down and recreate almost every item in the game, allowing us to min-max every piece of gear, for every character, at every level. I did it. I'm not proud. Give me an obsessive, tweaky feature and I'll fall for it like Popeye for spinach. But we also got a butchered ending, incomplete character arcs and an entire subplot about a planet of droids that abruptly cuts off partway through. Fans of the PC version even located the completed script and voiceover files from all the content the developers had to cut, still there but stillborn. Could we have had a complete story if we didn't have that entire item-creation system? Maybe. Start cutting new features and, God forbid, there might be more time for new content.
Imagine the world we could be living in. What if, for $5 a month, you'd get a new Splinter Cell level to download? No new features, no new gadgets, no graphics upgrades. Just another level, another hour of fun with Sam Fisher. I'd buy that. Wouldn't you? There are plenty of games I could keep enjoying for a long time with new levels and no new features. But parade that kind of approach past the marketing staff and they'll hiss at you. Instead we get new weapons, new gadgets, new game modes, more complexity and less accessibility.
I'm not just going to whine about the problem of feature creep. Let me offer a solution. Don't just make sequels. Make prequels. Prequels in the sense of stripped-down feature sets and easy-entry gameplay at budget pricing. Call it Splinter Cell: Training Ground. You can sneak, shoot and grab. No gadgets. No funky bullets. Sneak-or-shoot multiplayer. Twenty bucks. After six months, you give it away free in magazines, pack it in the console box or do an AOL-style mass mailing a month before the next sequel ships. Imagine an Xbox 360 that shipped with ten prequels like this on the hard drive, everything a new gamer would need to get up to speed with the state of the art in racing, shooters, fighting, football, stealth, squad tactics, you name it. Simple, fun, accessible. Every year you refresh the prequels with new levels and no new features.
Then, when the budget prequels start outselling the hardcore sequels, you can tell marketing to shove it. And my girlfriend will finally have something to play that isn't 20 years old.
What a wonderful world it could be...
John Tynes has been a game designer and writer for fifteen years, and is a columnist for the Stranger, X360 UK, and the Escapist. His most recent book is Wiser Children, a collection of his film criticism.
