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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

#221

Post by CivBase »

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…

This is simply wrong. Obscure and commercially unsuccessful games still work today, although it might be difficult to find the hardware needed to run them.

Even the successful games of today are likely to die eventually. Ubisoft's The Crew was relatively successful, but they shut down the servers and made the game unplayable. Now they're talking about at least adding an "offline mode" but core features of the game would still be unavailable to the customers who bought it.

The difference with games today is that many are designed to require a connection to company servers - and those servers cannot be self-hosted. Eventually it won't be profitable for the company to continue running those servers and they'll shut them down. Unless companies are forced to provide an EOL plan that allows customers to continue playing the games they bought (could be self-hosted servers, open source, patching out the server requirement, etc), modern games will continue to die at an increasing rate.

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

#222

Post by MrJagil »

jwitthuhn wrote: post #145
999900000999 wrote: post #99

I want FOSS alternatives for every genre. I tried to make a FOSS MTG clone and I keep running into weird edge cases. Anyway, even small games need solid teams to get started. Even if the games are ultimately monetized , it would be nice to have a FOSS core. I want to play COD without a bunch of stupid skins and side effects. I would pay 60$ over the base 60$ to disable that non sense, it’ll never happen though. Back…

If you're interested in a FOSS MTG clone check out XMAGE and Forge. They don't have every card but they do have a whole lot. https://github.com/magefree/mage https://github.com/Card-Forge/forge

Or https://cockatrice.github.io/

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

#223

Post by MrJagil »

luisgvv wrote: post #94
overgard wrote: post #88

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…

I play dota 1 again now! https://firstbloodgaming.com/

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

#224

Post by dragontamer »

whoisyc wrote: post #184
somenameforme wrote: post #116

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…

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…

I think the Starseige Tribes community is still active. They have DOZENS of people, dozens!!

Not to hate on those who love old games but yeah, it's a much smaller community.

It's not all bad, smaller communities mean people know each other better. And there is no eSports money hanging over anyone, it's just a community meeting up to have fun once a week.

---------

The only reason Starseige Tribes is alive today is because of a large amount of hacking effort to port the game up from Windows 2000 to modern Windows. As well as hack the server software to run you own servers.

Other live games truly die. No one will ever play Concord ever again. Tribes loses support, but hackers can fix bugs and forcibly patch to modern systems

If there is a will, there is a way.

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

#225

Post by guilamu »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #213
guilamu wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I consider it better than 0 source at all. I also have access to the decrypted assets of the game and can personally confirm but the value of that is nil since I can't bring proof.

I'm pretty sure you could find dozens of sources confirming that too, but I don't have the time atm.

Confirmed here : https://www.reddit.com/r/FortNiteBR/comments/1agkxcd/the_gia...

(only one skin is a pay to lose skin with a bigger kit box)

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

#226

Post by Barrin92 »

abenga wrote: post #199
Barrin92 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

This just sounds like everyone remembering music/movies/other art that came out when we were coming of age extremely fondly. Young people starting to game now will remember a different set of games from you.

It's intellectually lazy to attribute any judgement of media to nostalgia, and inappropriate in this case. Young people are the best example of this. If you look at what past games the current teenagers are interested in, it actually is games from the early console era. Even in game art it's evident. Great indie titles, see for example Animal Well or Celeste harken back to the pixelart era, nobody emulates ca 2009 3d realism. Because artistically it just looks uninspired.

There is such a thing as objectively productive and unproductive periods in any genre or medium. This applies to film as well. The last fifteen years have largely been dreadful and nobody is going to remember dozens of conveyor belt produced Marvel slop films. People will still watch Coppola and Kubrick in 30 years.

And that's btw 20-30 years before I was born, you see my birthdate in my username. I don't appeal to "what I remember" when looking at media.

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

#227

Post by darthcircuit »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #212
safety1st wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[dead]

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

#228

Post by Firehawke »

Discordian93 wrote: post #57
Spivak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like for example you can play every GameCube game that was ever released for the system. There's readily available archives you can download and well-known console mods available to play them. This kind of thing just isn't possible for newer games. Self-contained, offline, drm free (or at least breakable drm) will probably be immortal but that's a shrinking segment of games.

You can't play Phantasy Star Online for the GameCube anymore.

Completely wrong.

You can play it offline one player or split-screen with just the disc. You can play it online with the disc and a minimal amount of extra work. https://sylverant.net for instance is a PSO server that supports Dreamcast v1, v2, GameCube v3, Xbox v3, and PSO Episode 3 on GameCube.

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

#230

Post by Firehawke »

nilamo wrote: post #203
mcnamaratw wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of that is true. Who played with the un-updated CD version?

All of us who never hooked the dreamcast up to the internet.

Dreamcast didn't have game patches over the internet. That wasn't a thing until the Xbox. You could, in rare occasions, download additional content (e.g. PSO had downloadable quests) but the vast majority of games were standalone.
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