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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

#251

Post by jfengel »

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…

Isn't Hogwarts Legacy famously just not a good game?

On top of which, the author of the IP has increasingly aggravated a significant segment of their fan base.

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

#252

Post by johnisgood »

azalemeth wrote: post #135
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…

Nexuiz (foss multiplayer quake) and beyond all reason (supreme commander rts) are both excellent and have large online communities. Battle for Wesnoth (turn based) is also fantastic. 0 ad has been coming along for ages (rts). We're missing a good, well written and big RPG but a lot of other things do exist ...

Nexuiz is still alive? There is OpenArena too, and lots of ioquake3 forks such as Tremulous, Urban Terror, etc.

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

#253

Post by sumeno »

Just the opening paragraph of this article is pure hogwash

> It’s well known that video games today are disposable pieces of slop.

There are absolutely incredible games still being made across genres. BG3, Hades, Clair Obscur, Celeste, the Horizon series, Balatro, Void Stranger, Elden Ring, these are all examples of all time great games in their respective genres and they all came out in the last 10 years.

> Modern multiplayer games tend to fall into one of two categories: they’re abandoned after a while and the servers are pulled (sometimes comically fast, like with Concord), while other games are endlessly changing “live service” games where they get endless updates and free content at the expense of having microtransactions in all their predatory varieties

Final Fantasy XI is still around and it's been going for over 20 years. WoW and FFXIV are as well. You can quibble over what "modern" means, but WoW and FFXIV are still getting full expansions and even FFXI got new content as recently as 2023.

> Just like how arcade gaming died in favor of “redemption games” that act as gambling for kids minus the regulations of casinos, video games have fallen victim to endless microtransactions and FOMO events designed to keep people coming back to play for another week or so. They’re designed to maximize money at the expense of the core experience.

Some have, but there are absolutely games that have not fallen into this trap.

It's hard to take this article seriously when it starts from such an unserious place

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

#254

Post by pflenker »

That article suffers from a strong case of survivorship bias. Yes, old games die, they go away and are long forgotten - only very few „never die“.

The same is true for new ones. Since the barrier to create games is way lower than in the past, more games are created today leading to even more games dying and fading away. Newer successful games will be remastered and rebooted for as long as there is a business case for it.

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

#255

Post by Capricorn2481 »

csense wrote: post #220
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…

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.

> If you care about this, vote with your wallet

Much of the gaming population are not following this stuff as closely, and get burned once or twice before they realize what's happening. I think it's good to pressure companies ahead of time, and vote with your wallet when you can.

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

#256

Post by Tiktaalik »

safety1st wrote: post #185
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…

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…

> new games increasingly incorporate planned obsolescence as a business strategy

It's not this. It's simply that the level of quality and features and competition in modern games is so insanely high that developer time is devoted to other things and custom servers and modding is relatively niche and doesn't move the quality needle enough.

Time is limited and focusing on custom servers means less time spent elsewhere.

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

#257

Post by MattRix »

blueboo wrote: post #195
MattRix wrote: post #180

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…

Fortnite‘s dark design was the reason Epic was subject of the largest FTC gaming-related fine in history. $200m+

That wasn’t because of the dark design of Fortnite itself, it was mostly because their shop allowed users (including children) to make purchases with only a single click, without any confirmation, leading to a lot of accidental purchases. Definitely not a good thing, but also not indicative of some fundamental issue with the game’s overall design. They added confirmation and the ability to undo purchases over 5 years ago.

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

#258

Post by pphysch »

safety1st wrote: post #185
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…

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…

Final Fantasy was on release #11 by the time Steam was initially released in 2003.

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

#259

Post by quinnirill »

wellthisisgreat wrote: post #107
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…

BFV and 6 and all that are just bad tbh, I can’t imagine a competitive BF1/5/6 etc scene at all- it’s either aim assist hell, or just lowest common denominator of a gaming experience that stuffs you with stimuli and leaves 0 room for any tactics and communication let alone strategy. For BF1942 adjacent experience try Hell Let Loose it’s really quite brilliant (and modern)

IMO at least on PC, BFV was occasionally a really good shooter, but it was a constant back and forth between updates that ruined the entire game and new swathes of cheaters on the latest exploit not caught by the anti-cheat, until eventually they stopped even trying to stop them.

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

#260

Post by dismalaf »

It's literally survivorship bias. There were tons of shitty old games. The ones we remember are the good ones.

And AAA publishers don't want to admit it, but gameplay trumps graphics. If I want to see something that looks like real life, I go outside.

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