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Why old games never die, but new ones do

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Re: Why old games never die, but new ones do

#161

Post by thiht »

Barrin92 wrote: post #158
mattnewton wrote: post #2

The article kinda dances around this point, but I think the largest reason "old games never die" is simply the old games mentioned were the good ones of their generation. Similar to the lindy effect[0] where shows that had been around a while were likely to stay around a while longer. The are the games good enough for people to host fan servers and make mods, and behind each good game there is a lot of forgotten stuf…

>is simply the old games mentioned were the good ones of their generation. I don't buy this. Yes obviously there's a survivorship bias but here's some of the most popular games of 1998 alone , from memory: Ocarina of Time, Half Life, Xenogears, Metal Gear Solid, Thief, Starcraft, RE 2, Mario Party, Baldurs Gate Almost 30 years later we still play franchise spin-offs and remakes off these games, half of them invented…

There are plenty of games made in the last years that will be remembered 10 years from now. The Horizon series comes to mind.

Games need time to become classics, because we need time to realize how impactful they were and how much they live in our memories.

Re: Why old games never die, but new ones do

#162

Post by gmerc »

Old games being available has stopped enshittification and value extraction from VC and PE.

The cost of new games has reached a point where that kind of capital is needed but the value extraction mechanisms these funding methods require don’t work when there’s competition from old games that allocate more value to the user.

The hardware upgrade train stopped about 2019 too because more expensive hardware scarcely makes a difference for modern games anymore.

Steam, as a privately owned company ensuring old games stay available is single handedly responsible for all kinds of attackers, legacy publishers and Big Tech from gaining control over ecosystem or backlog.

MS is trying to fuck around with game pass but it’s doomed with Steam.

The moment of truth will come when Gabe Newell gives up control

Re: Why old games never die, but new ones do

#163

Post by t-3 »

mattnewton wrote: post #2

The article kinda dances around this point, but I think the largest reason "old games never die" is simply the old games mentioned were the good ones of their generation. Similar to the lindy effect[0] where shows that had been around a while were likely to stay around a while longer. The are the games good enough for people to host fan servers and make mods, and behind each good game there is a lot of forgotten stuf…

There's also a big heaping helping of "many titles, same game". There's no reason to buy a new game when it's the same as the old game, but with half the functionality hidden in DLCs where the older title will have that from the start and likely be mod-friendly to boot.

Re: Why old games never die, but new ones do

#165

Post by zx10rse »

mattnewton wrote: post #2

The article kinda dances around this point, but I think the largest reason "old games never die" is simply the old games mentioned were the good ones of their generation. Similar to the lindy effect[0] where shows that had been around a while were likely to stay around a while longer. The are the games good enough for people to host fan servers and make mods, and behind each good game there is a lot of forgotten stuf…

I don't think it is a generational thing or a lindy effect plain, and simple greed is what is killing modern day games.

Eventually they become a never ending grind loop for battle passes, points, buy more points, cosmetics priced as full fledged titles, loot boxes, etc. etc.

There is simply nothing to it, no depth, no cool mechanics, no story nothing, and once a player spent x amount of hours realizing that, you simply boot up 20 years old game, so you can have some dopamine rush again.

It is so uninspiring no easter eggs, no special levels, secrets nothing, login buy a battle pass, and do that recursively every x amount of months.

Re: Why old games never die, but new ones do

#166

Post by sph »

ivape wrote: post #9

The current crowds move together through games. If everyone is not into a game, it dies because the friend group never goes "lets all go play that". Current game marketing is centered around influencers really pushing the idea that "this is the place to be", they don't really sell any other vibe. It's like club hopping.

The recent wave of early-access indie co-op horror games is proof of that (i.e. Phasmophobia, Lethal Company, Backrooms, R.E.P.O., etc.).

They seem to pop out of nowhere, explode and rank high on Steam, and die a month later when streamers and their young followers have moved onto the next one.

Re: Why old games never die, but new ones do

#167

Post by rjbwork »

zeroq wrote: post #61

The biggest problem today is ownership . There are dozen of games that made headlines 5 years ago that you can't play today because servers are down. Some of those games are single player only. You can't host these games like you could Quake or CS back in the day, because you never owned them in the first place. I own couple hundred games on Steam and similar ammount on Epic but when I die no one will find an obscure…

You can host them though, if you really want. Look at https://freeinfantry.com/

These guys wrote a custom server from scratch and have hacked up the original game itself as well. It's hosted completely by the community.

Re: Why old games never die, but new ones do

#168

Post by duckmysick »

zx10rse wrote: post #165
mattnewton wrote: post #2

The article kinda dances around this point, but I think the largest reason "old games never die" is simply the old games mentioned were the good ones of their generation. Similar to the lindy effect[0] where shows that had been around a while were likely to stay around a while longer. The are the games good enough for people to host fan servers and make mods, and behind each good game there is a lot of forgotten stuf…

I don't think it is a generational thing or a lindy effect plain, and simple greed is what is killing modern day games. Eventually they become a never ending grind loop for battle passes, points, buy more points, cosmetics priced as full fledged titles, loot boxes, etc. etc. There is simply nothing to it, no depth, no cool mechanics, no story nothing, and once a player spent x amount of hours realizing that, you simp…

There are indie games without those in-app purchases that capture the spirit of the old games.

Re: Why old games never die, but new ones do

#169

Post by squigz »

CrossVR wrote: post #20
mattnewton wrote: post #2

The article kinda dances around this point, but I think the largest reason "old games never die" is simply the old games mentioned were the good ones of their generation. Similar to the lindy effect[0] where shows that had been around a while were likely to stay around a while longer. The are the games good enough for people to host fan servers and make mods, and behind each good game there is a lot of forgotten stuf…

Yet the obscure forgotten stuff is still playable if you kept a copy of the disc. Those games didn't need a community to preserve them, because they were not designed to be ephemeral like live service games.

It's not like they were designed like that on purpose. It was a limitation of the technology of the time. If they could've made as many live service games back then, they would have.

This comparison is also unfair for a couple more reasons:

- It ignores the fact that when a game was released on CD back then... that's it. No updates. No patches. Nothing. You break it, that's it. Game ending bug that corrupts your save? TOO BAD. Oh, scratched your CD? TOO BAD. Maybe try one of these folk remedies with tooth paste or some such.

- And the flipside of that: that paying for live service games, you get consistent updates, new content, new cosmetics, etc, etc. You also get features like cloud saves. You don't have to worry about managing 100s of CDs or worry about a scratch on them or anything like that.

Is there a problem these days with online-only games being shut down? Yes, absolutely, and I hope the industry moves away from that.

Is romanticizing an era of gaming that was not all that great the way forward? I don't think so.

Re: Why old games never die, but new ones do

#170

Post by Hikikomori »

somenameforme wrote: post #116
Gigachad wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of computer games, there are plenty of games that have died off because the communities to play them no longer exist or the rules have been forgotten. Any game that has a multi player or team aspect will eventually die. Even if the servers stay online forever, it will not be the same experience as if you were there in the moment playing when it was lively.

Counterstrike 1, released 25 years ago, averages around 10,000 players 'online' at any given moment, pretty much exclusively for team based multiplayer [1]. That makes it more popular (by active player count) than e.g. Hogwart's Legacy. Most modern games not only really fail to bring anything new to the table, but often feel like the overall gameplay is general decline. For instance the gunplay in Counterstrike still…

Bit weird to compare a singleplayer game with little replayability to the genre defining multiplayer game of its time and try drawing conclusions from that.
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