Live data from Hacker News

Why old games never die, but new ones do

pleromanonx86.wordpress.com

181–190 of 335 posts

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

#181

Ver few competitive games can survive, because you need a huge player base to maintain a skill based matchmaking ladder 24/7, and the moment you dip below that critical number the game is doomed since new players are locked out. Its winner takes all. Everyone stills tries to make em for the big potential upside, but they are always very high risk. Single player, and non centralized coop, are a different matter of cou…

Even without matchmaking issues, it can be difficult for new players to break into a community of diehards who have often been playing together for years.

This perfectly encapsulates the new Fatal Fury game. It's such a great new release but all the Fatal Fury old heads absolutely obliterate any new players, especially players from more popular backgrounds like Street Fighter or GG Strive.

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

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The idea that there’s nothing to these games just isn’t true. Take Fortnite, the quintessential “modern game” that popularized battle passes. You don’t need a battle pass to play, in fact all purchasable things are purely cosmetic: they offer no gameplay value. Nobody is playing Fortnite for the cosmetics, they’re playing it because it’s fun! Why would you care about cosmetics in a game you don’t enjoy playing? It ma…

it's well know the hit box for "the defaults" (slang to refer to players with free character designs) are slightly larger.

but yeah, it's by far the least egregious case indeed.

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

#183
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking survivorship bias [1]. That and general nostalgia are common explanations for this but I find the explanations unsatisfying. Like if this were true, shouldn't we be seeing similar survivors from the 2000s and 2010s? I mean there are games that are beloved years later (I'm looking at you, Zelda: Breth of the Wild) but the gaming landscape is fundamentally changed. We now have free to play games that hav…

> Like if this were true, shouldn't we be seeing similar survivors from the 2000s and 2010s? We absolutely do: GTA SA, Team Fortress 2, Star Wars BF 1&2 (original one, not remaster abomination), private Lineage 2 servers with thousands of players, same for WoW, WarCraft 3, original Dota, LoL with millions player base, Dota 2. The list goes on and on.

I thought WC3 was 1990s but I went an checked: 2002. Weird. I so associate Warcraft (excluding WoW) with the 1990s.

The big one neither of us mentioned from the more "modern" era is Minecraft. It absolutely has staying power, still to this day.

GTA is an interesting one. GTA3, Vice City, GTA:SA and GTA4 were absolutely groundbreaking games, not only for their open world gameplay but also for their wit and satire. Arguably RDR and RDR2 fit here too.

But my hot take is that GTA5 was a terrible game. It lacked all the satire of the earlier games. The writing was terrible. I almost stopped playing the game when I became Trevor. And, unlike every earlier game in the series, I have never gone back to play it after finishing the story mode. GTA5, to me, was just a story to sell online play, which held no interest to me.

Anyway, my argument was there aren't any memorable games from the 2000s and 2010s or that there aren't games from these eras that people still play. It's that there are more from the 1980s and 1990s, particularly when you consider there are more games in later years. So when the market was much smaller, any given game seems way more likely to be memorable.

It goes across game systems too: Commodore 64 (and Amiga), SNES, even the Atari 2600, N64, PS1 (and arguably PS2 but that was released in 2000 so it's on the cusp).

Now one might say this is a function of age. The music a person likes is typically what was popular when they were 14 years old. The same is kinda true for video games but anecdotally I see streamers in their 20s who play games from before they were born.

Think too of emergent game play, particularly speedrunning. This is a highly active community and it's all old games.

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

#184

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…

You are proving GP and OP’s point. CS 1.6 was an exceptionally popular game in the GoldSrc days and that is why it survived and was chosen by you as an example. That is an exception not the norm. Plenty of FPSs from the same generation have been forgotten. How many people out there are still playing Day of Defeat? Or Counter Strike Condition Zero? Or any of the old Delta Force games? Or Daikatana (except for the lol factor?)

I don’t even think you can easily find people to play on pre-1.6 versions of CS these days, even though when I played CS on LAN I had friends who believed CS 1.5 to be the better version and insisted that we play that instead.

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

#185

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…

What's different is that new games increasingly incorporate planned obsolescence as a business strategy. The game won't function unless it can phone home, stream assets etc. from their server, and they can and do plan to shut that server off at some point, forcing you to move on and buy new games.

Now what's really troubling is you can conceivably employ this approach with any form of digital entertainment. I think Netflix and the streaming industry in general aspires to convert movies into a planned obsolescence business model; in the beginning Netflix's selling point was that they had an archive of every DVD ever made, but now increasingly they're conditioning us to expect that stuff's going to leave the platform sooner or later. Why? If all we watch are the classics there's not much point to keep subscribing to a streaming service, just download/buy the classics, and then you're done. They are having trouble with this however because the movies they put out just aren't as good as the older stuff; I've read the data indicates that people are mostly watching 90s stuff on Netflix, so they can't purge it from the platform just yet. But they will try.

The games publishers on the other have us over a barrel. They switched to a planned obsolescence model one day and we just went along with it.

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

#186
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same enshittification trajectory as everywhere else. It starts with a product that serves its users and once the money starts flowing in, users are turned into cattle to be milked and shorn.

so apparently, these 'users' are so lacking in agency that they willingly get milked. If so, they deserve it. There's still plenty of good games, esp. in the indie sphere, that aren't like the modern live-service-shit.

> they willingly get milked.

> If so, they deserve it.

The majority of users have no idea that they are getting milked and their data end up in the hand of Ad companies and law enforcement.

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you don't fire up Action 52 every few days?

I actually once downloaded a copy of "Big Rigs" after watching AVGN's video. It still baffles my mind how this game could ever make it to the shelves. It is the most broken thing I've ever played. The infinite speed reverse gear is quite an experience, though.

This is my favorite review comment on that game: https://www.gamespot.com/big-rigs-over-the-road-racing/user-... e.g.

> This comment on society is driven home (or in fact, not driven at all) even further by the computer AI. It doesn't even leave the starting gate. Much like the dreams and aspirations we harbour as youth, reving our engines on a starting line where the crack of the pistol never comes. Meanwhile, those of privledge cruise to easy victory, unconcerned over such mundane things as rent or grocery bills or collideable landscapes.

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

#188
post #94

I think another reason might just be: simplicity. A lot of these older games are much easier to pick up and grok. I remember I used to play a ton of Battlefield 1942 back in the day (like, in a competitive clan, going to LAN parties, that kind of thing). I tried picking up Battlefield V but I just gave up because it felt like there was just too much going on. It probably has a host of other great things, but my main…

You just described my experience with MOBA games like League of Legends and Dota. Around 15 years ago there were only about 50-60 playable characters. Nowadays there are more than 100 and more items and customizations. As for shooters this is the same. Too many weapons classes and subclasses, maps, game modes eventually divide and distract the playerbase from the core essence of the game. I think this is one of the r…

> As for shooters this is the same.

Worse. Why do i need to chat with a character in a FPS ? This is not an RPG.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that there’s nothing to these games just isn’t true. Take Fortnite, the quintessential “modern game” that popularized battle passes. You don’t need a battle pass to play, in fact all purchasable things are purely cosmetic: they offer no gameplay value. Nobody is playing Fortnite for the cosmetics, they’re playing it because it’s fun! Why would you care about cosmetics in a game you don’t enjoy playing? It ma…

it's well know the hit box for "the defaults" (slang to refer to players with free character designs) are slightly larger. but yeah, it's by far the least egregious case indeed.

No, this is just plain wrong. The hitbox is the same one on all skins. On payed skin like peely for example, the skin is bigger and will be more visible, but the hitbox stay the same. This is pay to loose if anything.

https://www.esports.net/news/fortnite/do-all-fortnite-skins-...

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

#190
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so apparently, these 'users' are so lacking in agency that they willingly get milked. If so, they deserve it. There's still plenty of good games, esp. in the indie sphere, that aren't like the modern live-service-shit.

I think it's time we as a society let go of this 7,000 year old tendency to place all blame for people suffering from how a society is set up, on individuals. Don't you think we can find a way to do that without taking away people's agency? For example, I can find news articles from the 1600s where people lament how "the newest generation just doesn't want to work anymore." So, we've tried pinning it on individuals f…

100% agree - I usually use obesity as a simple example to make the point: "Our society became obese in a span of 50 years, how amazing that so many individuals lost their willpower!" Maybe there's a little more to it than that, eh?
Post reply on HN