Activision COO Thomas Tippl took the time to discuss the idea of “franchise fatigue” and how it isn’t much of an excuse or concern for a developer, so long as innovation paves the way for releases.
“[Franchise fatigue] is something that I have not bought into,” he said. “I think it’s an excuse for lack of innovation. If you have a great franchise and you stop innovating, then yes, you will lose your fan base.”
“If you think about it, if you have a large fanbase around the property, [it gives you the opportunity] to communicate directly with them, to really understand what they love about the game and what they’d like to see in the game,” said Tippl. “You can market it much more strongly than new IP.”
Tippl isn’t without his reasoning, noting that 99 percent of all new IP fails within a year across all kinds of consumer products. Video games are no exception to that statistic. He does state that new IP is a very cautious strategy for Activision as well, “[launching a new IP] is a very, very difficult thing to do, which is why we do it, but extremely selectively.”
As gamers have become more and more accustomed to yearly releases from games such as Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and expansions from World of Warcraft, Tippl continues to support the idea that innovation occurs at each new release. Call of Duty in particular, he adds, has just established a new business unit aimed at evolving the franchise.
“There’s so much that our Call of Duty fanbase wants that we are not providing yet, that we see many, many years of innovation ahead of us,” Tippl said.
“When people come up and tell me, ‘how can you possibly make another Call of Duty,’ I always tell them that I used to work for a company that every year had to figure out how to make a white shirt whiter,” Tippl said. “And [Procter & Gamble] have been doing that for 35 years with a product like Tide.”
Whether or not he is correct in his belief on rehashing the same franchises, the market seems to be responding positively, and not just with Activision.
His experiences with mass-market product development have led him to the belief that consumers are looking for familiarity intertwined with new experiences. “You’re telling me with all the opportunities we have, and the technologies and the content ... and all the different stories, the characters that we can develop, that we can’t innovate on a franchise for 10 years? Give me a break. Then we’re just not doing our job.”
