I'm seriously seeing the difference between reddit and lemmy in this post. Last time I saw somebody mention how franchises were pretty frequent releases they got jumped on hard for not knowing anything about how games are made and that it does take 15 years to make a decent product.

I'm of the opinion that it really depends on the nature of the game.

For example, the children are super hyped for GTA VI, because even though GTA V came out before some of them had object permanence, they've been playing it for years. It's remained in their consciousness this entire time.

Compare that to Skyrim, which came out only a year or so before GTA V, and we haven't seen an Elder Scrolls game since... The young don't give a toss. They weren't playing it then, they aren't playing it now, so there's absolutely no attachment to Elder Scrolls as a series.

Games used to stay in the consumer's consciousness before by having sequels made every few years, sometimes even every year! Now? It's all live services, so it doesn't feel like the game hasn't had a new iteration for over a decade.

In other words: Kids aren't attached to franchises anymore because the game industry is stagnating.

It's much easier to build momentum around a franchise when you release 7 games in 10 years than 2 games in 7 years.

Existing franchises are missing the young people because they're about squeezing pennies out of nostalgia, rather than making good games.

The Indie developers of today are creating tomorrow's lasting franchises.

It's a tale as old as game development.

It's all there from day one in the history of Atari and Activision.

Atari's CEO decided that game developers should wear ties, keep standard work hours and be happy with a salary instead of any equity. This brilliant leadership vision led to the founding of Activision.

Atari went on to become a brand husk company.

Activision went on to become Blizzard / Activision and get bought for more money than I'll ever see.

I prefer quality over quantity. Problem is we don't have quality, even for games that take a long time.

I mean, when games take a long time to come out and then still have serious flaws (looking at you starfield) can you blame anyone for not feeling too attached to a franchise? God I remember when veilguard was first announced after Inquisition... Announced, cancelled to be reworked into live service, cancelled again only to completely change everything that really made it a DA game.

How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story?

You can just play the original, though.

Same with any of these franchises. The newer titles are hit or miss, but the old games have aged like wine.

I've never played dragon quest, but as a long time final fantasy enjoyer, final fantasy 15 sucked so much I put it down and I never went out of my way to play 16 because of that.

FF7Remake was amazing. FF7Rebirth was good in many ways but also had way too much garbage and goofy shit so I have very mixed feelings about it. Also like the post said it's a very long wait for a complete story. It also is not really an entry point because FF7 is a huge franchise in itself.

If you take those out of the equation, the last FF games were 13 lightning returns in 2013 which I think is probably good but very different (I didn't end up finishing but not because I didn't like it) and 13-2 which in my opinion is one of the best in the series but gets slept on because it's gated by 13 (2009) which I like but I wouldn't call amazing or transformative.

I think FF12 might would qualify as a worthy childhood formative game, which means (excluding 16 since I just don't know) the last good FF that is also an entry point came out in 2006. 20 years ago.

Tldr; I don't know if FF16 is a worthy childhood formative experience, but if it's not, the last candidate is TWENTY years ago, so ofc young people aren't getting attached to the franchise. They're probably playing jrpgs that are actually good instead.

The graphics and "the biggest game ever" races have led to this.

No, you do not need physically accurate bubbles flowing in the shaded beer bottle that you will at best appreciate for 3 seconds while looking to get on with the game.

Or realistic horse balls. Or 4K skin textures. Or ray tracing in every game. Or 40000 side quests on a map as big as Mars.

Yeah, that makes sense. Do they need to be forming attachments to the same series that we did though? Certainly stories told by contemporary writers are more likely to resonate with someone growing up in today's world, rehashing and up the stuff that resonated with us isn't necessarily the best move for getting the youths on board. Let the ones with interest in the history of gaming play dragon quest and final fantasy.