How To Save A Dying Video Game Franchise

It's a universal maxim of video games that any massively popular game will get a ton of me-too imitators, many of them cheap knock-offs, but also a number of blatant admirers in the AAA sphere.

There's no example more egregious - or successful, perhaps - than Crystal Dynamics' 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, which so obviously took most of its stylistic and gameplay cues from the Uncharted series.

With a more cinematic approach to action than ever before, the new Tomb Raider was an enthusiastic leap far away from the stiffer, more sober prior games, and ably brought Lara Croft kicking and screaming into a new era.

While nowadays this tends to materialise in far more cynical ways, by including loot box mechanics, micro-transactions, and maybe even a Battle Royale component, games which attempt to capitalise on current trends have a high probability of actually succeeding with the casual market.

But when even this doesn't seem feasible, there is one desperate last resort, which we'll call The Nuclear Option...