Survivor Series: Franchise Innovation and Fanboy Rage
Innovation is usually seen as a good thing by most people in any given field in human endeavor, however there are always a small percentage of die hard adherents to something that cannot accept change in any form. This is nowhere more apparent then in video game fandom. So I’m going to look through some of biggest fanboy dust ups over game companies trying reinvent their franchises.
OK, these are not in any particular order, there just ones I have been made aware of. The first one is the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, of which I’m a huge fan. There have been a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh games across many game consoles, but the three that are relevant for this discussion were on the Game Boy Advance and Gamecube. The first GBA game was the Sacred Cards released in July of 2002 and it was different in a couple respects. First, unlike all the previous games in the franchise, this game actually has a story, in fact it lets you play one of the story arcs from the show. The other difference was the rules of the card game itself were different, and that’s really pissed off the fanboys of this franchise. The second GBA game was called Reshef of Destruction, was very similar although it had a completely original story. Now both of these games have flaws, like most games, but they are also good games broken the formula and because of that the fanboys labeled them as inferior, which is so short slighted. Moving to the Gamecube, in 2002 a Yi-Gi-Oh game was released called the Falsebound Kingdom that was radically different from anything seen in the franchise thus and since then. The game was a combination of the RPG and RTS genres and was not a card game at all. Instead the monsters from the cards become characters in the game to be used on RPG style teams of 3 under the command of one of the cast from the TV series. A lot of the items in the game are also cards from the card game, which shows the detail the developers put into the game. RTS element comes out in the missions in the game in which you move your teams and engage your enemies and capture bases, additionally there are other objectives to complete sometimes in a given mission. The games was received very negatively by the review community as with many games that step outside the norm. The game has some flaws, as the maps for the missions were really low rent and not very inspired, but was balanced by the great graphics of monsters and battle animations.
The next franchise that attempted to go a different way and hit a brick wall of fanboy rage was Devil May Cry. The controversy stems from the redesign of Dante, a design that wildly changes from the previous four games. This game doesn’t even have a release date yet, its suppose to come out in 2012 sometime, and the hate is already flowing from the fanboys. You would think that people at least would wait until the game came out ,and not just complain about the visuals.
Infamous is another franchise that has felt a rain of fanboy artillery fire over the design of a character, Cole, the main character in the game. The difference here is that, Sucker Punch the developer of Infamous, caved into fanboy pressure and changed Cole back to to way he was in the first Infamous, although there was still minor changes to him to better fit the new game. Again its just kinda sad that fanboys cannot get pass such trivial things like character designs.
When Transformers: War for Cybertron was announced, the main complain yet again was superficial about character designs. The G1 40 year old virgins were complaining about why wasn’t the game using the 1984 designs. Well maybe because its 25 years after the fact, and things need to change sometimes to bring in new fans to a franchise. Blinded by nostalgia glasses is a common medical problem for most Fanboys, and can be corrected by getting out of your parents basement, actually getting laid , and not watching porn all the time.
In sum, I just wish fanboys would come out of their formulaic comfort zone, and give a game with a different take on a beloved franchise a chance. Its almost like fanboys are afraid of change in and out of their game life, which is probably why they cannot get out into the world and get their lives going. If there is any group of fanboys from anime or video game fandom you look to see get owned by me, please leave a comment or pm me on the forum.
This has been pubic service message from the Truth and Fact Defense Force.
-Devil_Survivor
October 8, 2011 @ 7:27 am
There’s a difference between innovating and just being a crap spin off.
Also do realize that while innovating is good, doing it at the expense of what made the original so great is simply unacceptable.
October 12, 2011 @ 8:21 pm
Well Kron, I would agree in principle, but its kinda hard when you don’t mention at all which franchise your talking about. So feel free to tell me what your referring to.This applies to your second comment as well, when you speak in generalities it doesn’t really prove your point against anything I said in the article because I was talking specific cases and you just come with a in general and vague argument that’s almost impossible to agree or disagree with. Also if your using character design as your thing that made something so great, then that’s pretty weak and makes me think your just a fanboy consumed with nostalgia.
October 9, 2011 @ 11:04 pm
I couldn’t agree more about how you said that fanboys need to get out of their comfort zone and take another perspective. I would like to see you taking on the Sonic fanbase.