Note: This isn’t anywhere near as good as I imagined it would be. Send me your ideas for making it better! You may think it’s ok, but I can guarantee it wouldn’t make the front page on Destructoid, and THAT is what I had in mind. Probably asking too much there.

There’s a pretty unfortunate trend in big-budget games these days: creative new IPs don’t sell, and sequels do. So every game that comes out is a “franchise opportunity” if it sells well, and it’s abandoned if it doesn’t. Rather than publish something like Brutal Legend, publishers like Activision will put their money where they see potential profit: Call of Duty and Prototype. They’re allowed to do that, of course, because video games are a business and businesses want to make money. But they’re leaving gamers like me behind.

        When Dead Space 2, Mass Effect 2 (and soon Mass Effect 3), Uncharted 2 (and soon Uncharted 3) come out, you can’t spend two minutes on the internet without hearing about how great they are. I’d love to play them, but there’s one problem: I haven’t played the previous games. I just don’t want to play sequels without playing the previous games and understanding the context and the characters. That’s even more true for games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age where you literally transfer your character from the previous games to the new one.

        I barely have time to play one game, and I certainly don’t have the time to play one game and its prequel (or two). So instead I buy games like Stacking, Costume Quest, Inside a Star Filled Sky, Super Meat Boy - games I can play in short sessions and know I’m still making progress. Or I play freeware games like Desktop Dungeons or Cave Story. Five minutes here, five minutes there, half an hour during a boring computer science class… That’s how I game these days.

        So when I look at the list of releases for 2011, discounting any sequels to games I haven’t played, here’s what I see that I might like to play: Okamiden, Portal 2, The Witcher 2, inFamous 2, Resistance 3… Then there’s five times as many sequels I’ll never play. I’m sure they’re great games, but they’re great games for someone else. Maybe Dragon Age II will be unanimously declared the Game of the Year, but I’d have to play Dragon Age: Origins first in order to enjoy it.

        Of course, I’m part of the problem too. There are still new games coming out in 2011, but none of them really catch my eye… because they’re new IPs and I don’t know if I’ll like them. If I have to buy only one game, like most gamers these days, I end up going for the sequel I know I’ll like over Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, or Singularity, or any of the other good new IPs that came out last year. That’s how I got into this situation in the first place. Dead Space, BioShock, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Uncharted, God of War, all those AAA games that are still getting sequels years later - I looked at them, wasn’t sure I’d like them, and played my part in the vicious cycle.

        I’m not here to make dire predictions about the future of the industry. I can’t honestly say “we need more new IPs to keep the industry alive,” because people like me will keep those games from selling. I can’t honestly say “sequels are killing the industry,” because if it weren’t for those games, there wouldn’t be any money to fund new IPs. But I’m buying fewer and fewer games, and the games I do buy aren’t the AAA titles. What’s to stop Call of Duty or Uncharted from being the next Guitar Hero? How many sequels can they make before people stop buying them?