Note: This was written more 'off the cuff' than planned. Ive been writing it in my head for a few days but Ive only been typing it for 10 minutes.

Theres an epidemic in gaming right now. What is that epidemic you ask? Well since you asked so nicely Ill tell you, its "Rinse and Repeat" gaming and copycat gaming.
For those that don't know Rinse and Repeat gaming is games like Madden which each years release the same game but with slight name changes and 1 extra pixel per player model. What is the point in Rinse and Repeat gaming? It nets the publishers a whole mess of money sure but for Gamers theres nothing there. Unless you are the number One player of the Game then the changes each year made to the game will pass directly over your head. For most players buying a new version of the game every console generation will easily be enough.
This type of gaming is more prevalent in sports games, with the main offender being EA sports, but its beginning to extend to other games. Is there a way to prevent this continuing? As far as I can see it will always happen but hopefully not buying them will help.

The other epidemic is Copycat gaming. When Grand Theft Auto 3 first game out and showed the Masses how good Sandbox gaming could be it caused every second game that was released to be a Third Person Action/Adventure Sandbox Shooter (Generally based in the Criminal World). This isn't all bad because some of the copycats, like Saints Row and Crackdown, were actually quite good and enjoyable. Unfortunately most of the copycats are absolute S**T. Games in that category include Driver 3, True Crime: Streets of LA/NY. That's not to say that games in this category aren't worth publishing or player, people can get pleasure from these games but generally they trade on the Similarities to popular games and as a result neglect good gameplay.

Copycat gaming doesn't just mean GTA Clones. Way back when, after the first release of Doom, 80% of games released were First Person Shooters, at a time when the FPS genre wasn't already crowded, and most games were even built on the same engine (Imaginatively know as the Doom Engine) such as Heretic, Hexen and others. Until ~1997 is was actually more common for Gamers call FPS games 'Doom Clones' rather than 'First-Person Shooters'. Graph obtained from Wikipedia:



Copycat gaming goes round and round stopping at diffrent genres each year. This can have good and bad affects producing good and bad games. When it falls on FPS games I'm particularly happy as for originality in games is overrated. I'm happier with a Solid FPS games with good (but not great) Single Player and Multiplayer. Id much rather have that than the latest and great FPS with a completely unique twist over other smiler games but where the shooting has less importance than the unique feature.

So whats the cure for this epidemic? To be honest I dont think there is One but I know that not buying Rinse and Repeat/Copycat games will certainly help. So whats your opinion on this? Do you beleive there is an epidemic or a cure?