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Why old games never die, but new ones do

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211–220 of 335 posts

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

#211

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

If you're an EU citizen and care about video game preservation, I highly suggest joining the European Union Citizen's Initiative in this link. Even if you don't care about video games, it could end up having pro-consumer ramifications for software ownership in general if it manages to go anywhere.

For more information checkout Ross's Scott's YouTube channel, Accursed Farms. Here's an introduction video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkMe9MxxZiI

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

#212

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 N…

Planned obsolescence doesn't account for games like Concord

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Do you really consider "esports.net" a source for the internal implementation details of a proprietary video game?

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

#214

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…

Is it your opinion of a game like Breath of the wild ? Not so great games have existed as long as games existed. Parent's point is that the few good ones stay. And could imagine someone in 20 years replaying BOTW, or This war of Mine, same way Journey still has many active players 13 years later.

The article touches on multiplayer games which my comment reflected, they are after all the predominant genre that generates the most profit for companies, and of course are the most exploited.

I didn't say that there are no good new games anymore, there are of course good titles great games your example is one, but the market shifted because the cash is elsewhere.

If you compare the profit for a game like BOTW despite being huge success by unit sales, and the yearly profit of a game like Fortnite as some of the commenters pointed, or CoD you will see what I mean, those tittles literally print money with in game shops not unit sales.

I agree with you, and this was my main point in 20 years someone will replay BOTW because it is a great game, the ones that are made to simply print money will be replaced by others that prints money faster, and better.

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

#215

Unreal Tournament is given as an example of an old game that never died. But I've tried to play it with a group of friends, and we found it too buggy. Unmaintained games will stop working eventually. First there was a brightness problem; the game was too dark on multiple computers to be playable. Eventually we found a patch somewhere for that. Next we noticed that the player hosting the game could run much faster tha…

UT99 is being maintained with a community patch:

* https://github.com/OldUnreal/UnrealTournamentPatches

Is that the one you used?

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

#216

A good and interesting article, but mimicing old games will simply not work. While it would be admirable to have old features back, some of the largest problem these days is fragmentation. Up until the 2000s, a new AAA game was a shared event. Fewer games were released, magazines acted as moderators for a common understanding of the market and each game tried to trump its competitors. Games these days simply left mor…

Right, when Doom came out, everyone who was interested in computer games and could get their hands on this game would absolutely do so. Similar for other major games like Diablo, WarCraft, Quake, etc. Even if someone didn't end up liking it, there was basically no chance they wouldn't at least try it because these were like THE games to play at the time.

A lot of that was because of piracy, though - and the piracy may even have been part of why they were so big. There were a ton of other games coming out at the time which have been mercifully forgotten.

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the reasons a future in which everyone watches their own AI generated programming would be so empty. Shared culture is important. It already feels like a loss but it could get so much worse.

i've heard people talk about a future where everybody gets bespoke custom media made by AI. I can see how it would work in theory now , where a machine has a list of my previous media consumption patterns and I can give it some list of attributes/styles that I'm in the mood for and it'd spit out media perfectly tailored to my history and tastes. but things could get really weird once you cross the threshold into a wo…

I think it's not going to happen, precisely because of this. We think we have a certain taste, but as individuals, we hardly do. We want to feel like we are part of something together with other people, and for ultra-customized AI entertainment, it would have to lie to us to give us that (not very sustainable).

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

#218

We're lacking a middle ground in copyright law that would allow people to play Mario Bros 3 on the NES for free, but doesn't give everyone the right to use the Mario IP, or to resell it en masse. (It's only possible right now because of incomplete law enforcement.) The purpose of copyright is to encourage creation, but rent-seeking on a decades old game is not it. Copyright and patents encourage creation and inventio…

It's impossible to take seriously the argument that copyright is broken because people can't play 1 famous game for free. At least say you want to pay Nintendo to play the game...

> At least say you want to pay Nintendo to play the game...

They possibly did this 30 years ago but now they can’t play the game - despite the license they purchased - because they are missing the original hardware. For the same reason I would never pay Nintendo (again) to get permission (again) to play Pokemon Red: it doesn’t matter to me (and it never will) that I’m somehow “infringing” because I want to enjoy culture that I grew up on. It just makes copyright law a joke that people will reasonably ignore until it is less farcical. Oh no, boo hoo, they make a little bit less money; I’m over here playing (not a beloved game from my childhood, but) the world’s smallest violin in solidarity for the profits of the largest media conglomerate in the world.

Not trying to attack the above commenter but god damn am I sick of hearing how I should be paying money again to enjoy something I “““owned””” in my childhood. Fuck that every day of the week. I do not want to pay Nintendo to play Pokemon Red, I never will, and that is reasonable even if I choose to play it.

/rant

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

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doom was the genre defining multiplayer game, and it released in 1993. And there were a ton of multiplayer shooters released in the 7 years interim. The only really distinct thing about Counter-Strike, besides its quality, is that it came to Steam from the very beginning. But the game had already become a classic before 1.6 launched on Steam and the idea of playing on/through Steam at the time was quite divisive.

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

#220

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 N…

If you care about this, vote with your wallet. If you don't like a game's phone-home or planned-obsolescence "features," don't buy it (or wait for a deal and don't pay full price).

I personally buy very few games on Steam, I spend like 5 times as much on GOG.

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