http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7759-Sequel-or-Slaughter

Jim Sterling may adress this issue in his usual rude way, but he does make some valid points.

I'm posting this here because of all the people requesting a sequel to Primordia. I think Primordia is a work of art. It's philosophy and philology and literature and sociology and music and... art. All combined into a great, fluid, well built video game. But it's definitely art. And, like with all art, it stands its own ground. If I want to revisit it, there's a solution for that: I play it again. Just like when I want to revisit Bukowski's Love Is A Dog From Hell, instead of asking someone to make a sequel (to a poetry book, nonetheless), I pick up the book and read it again.

When Precursor Games set up to develop a spiritual successor to the great GCN title Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, and when I saw the amount of people that wanted a sequel, even though the game offered closure in its ending (yes, I think the hidden ending offers closure), and was a great experience on its own, I was appalled. Why does Eternal Darkness need a sequel? Obviously, the developers (ex-Silicon Knights, all of them are people with their careers pretty much ruined, after the flops that were Too Human and particularly X-Men: Destiny, the Epic lawsuit, the Kotaku article and the NeoGaf controversy) are playing the nostalgia card with blind fans, and requesting those fans to blindly crowd fund their project, since no big studio in their right mind would do that, and they need to have something to show the big studios in order to put their careers back on track again. And fans just follow, because they want a sequel to a game that should work as a single experience.

My point, here, is that it deeply annoys me when Primordia fans beg for a sequel. Primordia is finished. It's a great game we can revisit as many times as we want. So, please, stop asking for a sequel... we have Fallen. It's not a video game, but it's part of the "Primordia experience", and, again, it's just great in its own right, regardless of Primordia.

I have the utmost confidence in what Wormwood Studios throws our way next, and I hope it's not a Primordia sequel/prequel, unless they think something was left unsaid, regarding that specific universe, that would justify a whole video game. Make whatever you want to make, but make it stand its own ground, not necessarily depending on the success of Primordia. Like I said, if there's something you feel you need to tell us, in the Primordia universe, that was left unsaid in the game, and that absolutely justifies a second video game, I'm more than up for it, but I don't think whatever Primordia material you can still provide us should be outside the realm of the art videos and novellas you're already providing us with.

Just, obviously, my two rusty corroded cents.

I appreciate the thoughts, which I mostly agree with, and the encouragement, which is a nice counterbalance to the pro-sequel folks. I really don't want to do a sequel, so I can't imagine we will. I used up all my good robot jokes (apparently I used them up well before stopping), most of my good "follow such and such to its logical extreme" ideas for robots run amok, and so on. Setting everything else aside, it's hard for me to see how a Primordia sequel would be anything other than an effort to make a suit out of remainders. Of course sometimes that works and you wind up with Joseph's amazing coat! But usually it doesn't.

That said, it's hard for me to get too critical of the call for sequels. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the first piece of writing I did that got any fan traction -- traction that perhaps made all the difference in the life that followed -- was a schlocky fan fiction sequel novella to Final Fantasy III (and, in a sense, Final Fantasy II). I wrote it when I was 15 or something (1995 or thereabouts), posted it on Usenet, and got 137 emails (I think that was the number) and various posts in response. Contra my rationale for writing the novella ("The ending to Final Fantasy III sucked"), the source material for the novella was a "complete story"; there really wasn't much left to do with Final Fantasy III other than, perhaps, a bit more dialogue at the tail end. Certainly not enough for a novella, for all I could stretch it out, and for all I got 137 pieces of fan mail (more attention than anything I did since, really, until Primordia).

The impulse to continue stories is very strong; even serious (if still "popular") authors like Homer (hehe) or Doyle or Dumas or Tolkien succumbed to it. I don't think it's unreasonable for fans to want to continue the stories, and at the end of the day, while I think it's not intrinsically as much fun for the writer as crafting new work, for someone like me, the "intrinsic" fun of writing carries one so far but only so far. I suppose most creators -- who are, after all, creating for the public -- crave praise; or, anyway, this creator does. It's hard for me to imagine what would happen if (1) I felt I was capable of making a sequel to Primordia; (2) I made a totally new game next and it received a very tepid response; and (3) people still wanted me to come back to Primordia. I'd like to think I'd stand by my principles and keep trying out new things, but who knows? More likely, like the much better writer Doyle, I'd come crawling back to my older work and try to resuscitate it.

Which is all to say, I can't criticize anyone for wanting stories to continue (whether fans or writers), and I'm delighted to see people expanding Primordia in various ways (fan art, P&P RPGs, whatever). In my mind that would be the nicest way for the story to carry on. For myself, my hope is that my next game is better than Primordia and everyone says, "Thank god he didn't do another robot game!"

None of this bears really on Sterling's point about bloated budgets requiring games to be made with an eye to sequels, which seems like a depressing state of affairs (though I think the industry has always been very sequel driven, so I'm not sure it's such a new thing).

Well, people were (and I believe some still are!) asking for a sequel to Grim Fandango. I never understood why. It has such an emotionally beautiful ending that any attempt at continuing past it would completely ruin it, and a full-size spinoff game with different characters would likely never live up to the original's awesomeness due to not "feeling" the same. As someone who usually does want more of whatever game I happened to like, I was surprised to find one that really didn't need anything more. I think I felt the same way about Primordia.

To me, a story written in such a way that there's simply no room for a sequel despite the setting technically allowing for more, is a good story. Whatever questions are left open can be answered by the fans themselves, inspiring them to create their own works - this is much, much better than wringing the story to the point where nothing else is left to add to it.

This is pretty much what I meant, though my sometimes "strong" opinions might betray me and convey the thought I'm all against sequels. I'm not, as long as there's room for them. When it's just developers milking their cows dry... not so much. There are games that are just so well built and accomplished that they don't need sequels whatsoever (Grim Fandango was a great example, by the way; I feel the same way about it), and Primordia is arguably one of those rare experiences. I wouldn't mind a Psychonauts sequel, for instance, as I feel Raz's adventures could be far from over. Still, if they never make one, I'm not complaining or asking for it, either, since I own the game and can replay it how many times I want to..

People want sequels to experience that universe again, where repetition can make it feel too rigid or stale. Many of those people would be disappointed with the result, because it turns out they actually wanted more than just that universe again; they wanted the whole experience afresh, which is impossible.

A writer striving to meet new heights must follow where their creative inspiration leads. Valid reasons for sequels would be a) Your most inspiring ideas being in the same universe or b) Commercial reasons.

A sequel isn't bound to continue the story. The endings (at least some of them) state that they can go anywhere they want. How close you stay with the original setting is up to creativity. You can also start with completely new protagonists, location, environment, back-story etc. as long as it relates somehow to the same universe .. and a universe can be vast. Of course, one can built something completely fresh, not tied to a predecessor, but you already have got a fan base, making acceptance and selling easier and there are tons of potiential follow-ups and links story wise (lunar station, pre-war, another planet to go with the horus, the horus itself, robots creating life with all the discussion we've the other way round, humans in underground bunkers, robots and emotions etc.). Although expectations and therefore pressure might be higher, perception is selective and hardly biased towards these expectations, thus a lot of people will be happy.