In my time, games that had a number next to the title were called series. Some began in one console and continued in other, like Phantasy Star; some had different versions for different systems, but the main trunk remained in a single system (Sonic 1 was available for Sega Master System, Genesis/Mega Drive and Game Gear, but the sequels were only on the Mega Drive). Even games that stopped being numbered, like Super Mario Bros. 1 to 3 then World, were series. Games that never had numbers and no continuity, like Zelda, were series, too.
At some point, then, they became franchises. Maybe it was games like the Sim series that caused that: SimCity 2000 could be called a sequel to SimCity, but what of SimTown, SimTower, SimWorld, SimAnt, SimCopter, SimEarth, SimHealth, SimFarm, SimIsle? They were a genre, but not similar enough to be considered a series, and it would be silly to say a single company held the whole genre (because no one made anything similar to Sim games other than Maxis, at the time); so they came up with franchise to designate this kind of group. But this paragraph was just to show I know a lot of Sim games.
I actually think it was game companies’ executives giving games a name executives from other areas could understand. It is a “franchise” made of several “installments” across multiple “platforms”. All good, we still called them series when they came in numbered order in a single console.
Not long ago they decided franchise no longer did it. Now being a multi-billion-dollar market, game companies had to please the shareholders and justify acquisitions by saying they had something of more value than simple “game franchises” – so now they are called “Intellectual Property”, or just IP. EA wants to acquire TakeTwo, of GTA fame, and says its only interest is “in the IPs”. God of War 1 and 2 are directly sequential, numbered, and still called IP. A famous game designer whose name I forgot left a larger company to start his own, “Eat, Sleep, Play”, and six months later was talking about how they were hurried in creating new IPs because they intended to be acquired as soon as possible.
My thoughts about that are expressed in great clarity in the last row of this comic.
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