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Why old games never die, but new ones do

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321–330 of 335 posts

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

#321

The Article forgot to mention that Counter Strike started as a Half Life Mod. And I remember friends playing UT mods more than the base game. I’m not very happy with gaming in 2025. I’m more a console gamer because the whole custom configuration to get the best FPS/visuals is distracting me from playing. I mean I’m the problem there. So I liked to stick to consoles with their easy setup. But with the PS4 Pro that cha…

$3000 on overpriced junk. Any more than $1500 is a waste of money. It's really not that complicated. Just buy a mid range PC with a cheap 1080p gaming monitor and play the games.

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

#322
There are way better games now than before what is the article even talking about. Are they looking only at AAA and multiplayer games?

There are a gazillion indie masterpieces out there, go play!

Game design has improved dramatically in the last 20 years, enjoy that.

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

#323

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?

We used "Unreal Tournament: Game of the year edition" from Steam[1]. This was in December 2023.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/13240/Unreal_Tournament_G...

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

#324

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…

You clearly have a different understanding for meaning of the words and what is meant by them. Look, there is no depth in Fortnite, just like there is no deepness in minds of kids that are under 10 and playing it. Same for other points. Fortnite is arcade shooter - no one is expecting from it realistic mechanics, which would also ruin the game. Fortnite is a niche and it was kids game - some of them have grown up and…

Give me an example or definition of what you mean by depth, and we can see if it fulfills it.

The tone of your post makes me think you’ve fallen into the logical trap of believing that because a game is enjoyed by children, that it can’t be also enjoyed by older people as well. See also: Minecraft.

A true sign of maturity is being able to enjoy a game on its actual merits, and not worrying about whether you’re playing a “kids’ game”.

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

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

CS was 3D shooter and not a DOS game - quite important distinction as it gave better(and nonpixelating) graphic. Pre 1.6 CS had many modifications already - frankly I stopped playing CS before 1.6 and had my fun.

Descent and Quake were both 3D shooters and DOS games, and Halo came out a year earlier with "better graphics"; CS was neither the first 3D shooter nor the first Windows game in its genre. Also, the first Counter-Strike was not a completely new game -- it used a modified Half-Life engine (which itself was built on the Quake engine).

Sure, CS was arguably the most popular and long-lasting of the FPS of that era -- but let's not pretend that that was because of technical superiority, it won out because of gameplay.

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

#326
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Much of the gaming population doesn't replay games. Why should I care if Major Game doesn't work any more, I've been playing Major Game 2. I had no intention of playing Major Game 1 again. The fact that their old game doesn't work anymore doesn't "burn" them, and they genuinely might not even notice. As long as they keep the game servers up and running long enough for the vast majority of people to get their enjoyment out of the game, no one feels robbed, and no one stops buying games as a result. The average person is not that savvy of a consumer.

Can I play CoD4 on xbox 360 anymore? Single AND multiplayer? I genuinely don't know the answer to that because I haven't tried within the past decade(+). Should I be able to? Absolutely yes. But I have a sneaking suspicion all the multiplayer servers are shut down.

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very old games are a problem for windows and have a significant higher chance of running out of the box with proton on linux

can you provide an example?

Every time people tried to make 20-30 year old games work I quickly test them on my Linux machines if they are available on the internet archive and so far they have worked out of the box every time. The last one was a German point and click game from ~28 years ago.

Adding them to steam and forcing proton is also simpler than something like bottles for me.

People try to run them on W10/11 and they won't start, the windows compatibility layer hardly gets them up and running.

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

#328
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things about the Angry Videogame Nerd that I enjoyed when he first came out (yeah, I'm that old) is that back in the mid-2000s, there was a lot of NES nostalgia, but it tended to focus on big-ticket games that were considered "good" -- Mario, Zelda, Mega Man, Castlevania, etc. -- and shared experiences like blowing on cartridges. The AVGN showcased that there were also a lot of forgotten not-so-great games…

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

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1147860/UFO_50/

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

#329
post #137

It's normal for achievement in any given genre to have a golden age. It can happen at any time and for mysterious reasons, but I think it is very common to have a golden age right when something new begins to mature and gain cultural momentum. I think that happened with cars and airplanes and movies and TV, to name just a few examples. Why do video games kinda suck now, compared to the 90's? I mean, same reason as Hi…

Interesting perspective. What media would you say is in its golden age today?

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

#330
Games are not food. We can live without them.

AAA studios driven by shareholders are just stupid. There is a cap of consumer spending in the gaming industry, can't get more as people simply will not spend more. Spending has already plateaued.

Games like factorio/satisfactory/dyson sphere program/witcher/cyberpunk/etc are new era and are great. Factorio will definitely stand the test of time.

Maybe people should look more into non-competetive games before making a generalized comment about everything.

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