Like someone else already pointed out; CoD holds a lot of blame for that, considering how well it has done and keeps doing. It seems like every gaming franchise now wants a piece of that action rather than trying to succeed by doing something different. While I think the technology and gameplay has heavily improved, it seems like gaming today is lacking a lot of imagination and creativity.

I sincerely and honestly doubt the industry is lacking creativity, but rather, lacking a set of balls to actually implement completely different things Just think Or rather, don't Just look at Halo Reach, feck it, look at Halo 4 Bungie and 343 try to stray from what "defines" Halo and we have so many butthurts claiming the demise of the series It makes for a sorry ass fanbase that I certianly don't want to deal with For goodness sake people actually complained about Super Mario Sunshine, which I deemed to be one of the best Mario games I ever played

[quote]I sincerely and honestly doubt the industry is lacking creativity, but rather, lacking a set of balls to actually implement completely different things[/quote] What would be their incentive to do so exactly? People speak with their wallets, and with game development cost being what it is today you need to sell multiple millions of copies of a game for it be a reasonable success. The issue is that the gamers are really only paying (consistently) for blockbuster sequals, very few seem to invest in IPs, with many only trying something new via used games or Steam sales, which does little to nothing for the developer in terms of generating profit. Your Halo example was spot on. The fanbase consistently whines about wanting change and not wanting Halo to be a "COD" and keep on doing the same thing over and over again, yet when change hits it's met with outcry of "this isn't Halo". Trying something new is not a safe bet, not when there is so much money on the line, so developers will rarely do so.

Yeah, that's about right as well And it makes me sad And the thing about it is that when a game DOESN'T change, then some people complain about it being the same thing over and over Like, wtf do you want That's why I said I wish developers would just take that chance, but like you said, it's high risk for all that money What a vicious cycle

It really is, and sad is the word to be sure. Anyone that has been gaming since the early 90's knows full well that what people pay for games vs actual development costs is an absolute steal. There were some SNES and N64 carts that were north of $60.00 for crying out loud, and look at how those games are built (technically) vs what is done today. I know people jump all over use of the word entitlement, but many gamers fit that description to a T.