Decline Retold, Remade, Reforged, Resurrected, Remastered - Where are new IPs?

[luj1]

They should start a new company called Re Entertainment (or alternatively Reeeeeeeeentertainment) and just churn out shite after shite after shite

shameful lack of originality and new IPs, it was never this bad

 

[Chuck Norris]

This is what Mark Fischer - postmodern scholar - predicted in his writings.

- Neoliberal economy creates an atmosphere in which the society is driven by competition more than any other force
- relentless competition makes people short-sighted and forces them to live in the moment
- This not only stifles creativity, but it makes them nostalgic for a past in which they felt more at ease
- Hence all the ramkes, remasters, etc. Because your average game developer's financial state is so volatile they don't have time to sit around and think of original ideas. In the rare cases that they do, their output is not received as well as an update for an older game, because people's mind are so clogged by daily struggles they don't have time and patience for new things.

Watch this video for a deeper analysis:

 

[JarlFrank]

It happens not only to games, but movies too. I watch a film with an American pal every week, we usually pick older films, 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.
Whenever we pick a film from those decades, especially 60s-80s, there's a good chance it has a modern remake... and the remake fucking sucks.
Always brings us a little bit of amusement when we research the films (we never actually watch the remakes, there's no point when the original is better).

 

[Frank Capicoli]

- This not only stifles creativity, but it makes them nostalgic for a past in which they felt more at ease

Which also plays into why so much entertainment is infantilized. Aside from the part that this system manufactures retards, is that it is the consumers childhood where they were oblivious of the workings of this system.

 

[Cohesion]

It happens not only to games, but movies too. I watch a film with an American pal every week, we usually pick older films, 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.
Whenever we pick a film from those decades, especially 60s-80s, there's a good chance it has a modern remake... and the remake fucking sucks.
Always brings us a little bit of amusement when we research the films (we never actually watch the remakes, there's no point when the original is better).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Calf_(1968_film) watch this movie. You won't regret.

 

[luj1]

It happens not only to games, but movies too. I watch a film with an American pal every week, we usually pick older films, 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.
Whenever we pick a film from those decades, especially 60s-80s, there's a good chance it has a modern remake... and the remake fucking sucks.
Always brings us a little bit of amusement when we research the films (we never actually watch the remakes, there's no point when the original is better).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Calf_(1968_film) watch this movie. You won't regret.

The book is a cult classic

 

[luj1]

Look at the imagination of people living in the 90s and early 00s:

Soul Reaver - dark fantasy inspired by biblical mythology, a dead vampire travelling through the Underworld
Quake 1 - medieval world mixed with cybernetics and augmentations
Perihelion - genetic engineering mixed with occultism and mutation (but on Mars)
Morrowind - Roman-like empire invades a nation living beneath a volcano where fake gods rule and there's a disease which rots your flesh but makes you enlightened
Omikron the Nomad Soul - 1984 style city where an AI rules over people's souls
Evolva - not many people heard of this game but it was super unique. split screen TPS where you control a squad of aliens that you can "evolve" to gain upgrades
Sacrifice - somewhat whimsical Terry Pratchett kind of twist on a war between gods in a surreal fantasy world
Giants Citizen Kabuto - an island is flying through space, a technological race, a race of mermaids and a giant creature none can control fight for dominance
Arcanum - steam engine is invented in a fantasy world
Little Big Adventure - sorta magical realism, you have this whimsical world which is low-magic and high-technology where a guy wants to enslave people with cloning and teleporting tech
Abe's Oddysee - comical but brutal story about workers in an alien factory fighting for their freedom, also has strong Orwellian/Huxleian vibes
Last Blade 2 - a comet in the sky draws out 12 swordsmen each with an agenda, set in 19th century feudal Japan
MDK - dude has a suit which is a weapon and his head is literally a machine gun
Powerslave - stupid story but nicely executed setting of Egyptian mysticism
Tiberian Sun - the Earth is undergoing rapid ecological collapse as the discovery of a new mineral dooms mankind to endless resource wars

 

[430am]

Because corpos today are allergic to risk taking and funding uncertain ventures. That option is not even on the table. A product must be a guaranteed return on investment, which is a result of mass data analysis, gathered from trends, social networks, journalists, ads, and so on. It's a pure profit and loss operation, and experimentation is the worst case scenario they're trying to avoid like wildfire. Previous hits are a proven success on the market, so they will rehash them for newer generations over and over again.

 

[Valestein]

Remasterings are nothing new.

 

[Beastro]

Remasterings are nothing new.

That's not disputed, what is is the sheer scale of them being done now and the increasingly risk adverse environment people are in.

 

[jaekl]

Uh yeah we remastered this game that you could already buy on GoG and it works fine for $10. Now it's $30 and it's much uglier because the smoothed out textures and lighting clash with the old school look and we removed some stuff that we didn't like but don't worry because we added some new gay shit that you'll hate to replace it. You're welcome gamer bros!!

 

[jaekl]

Oh it crashes all the time too now. Sorry our bad!!

 

[Falksi]

Revamps have their place for me, but I completely agree that the sheer amount is a joke, and that modern creativity is pathetic compared to previous generations.

Lots of people and companies to blame, but Nintendo sit top of the tree with their Mario milking. For example, Super Mario RPG Remake...a 16-bit game which you can emulate on a toaster given a slight aesthetical life, easy combat made even easier, and little else...sold in their digital store for £50. What a fucking joke

Mario this, Mario that...and it's the world's biggest selling franchise, with a loyal army of rabid fans who will defend any criticism against their overlords to the hilt. 0 critical thinking from them, they just hype and buy en masse on brand name with every release.

It's that mindset which has allowed creativity to die in gaming.

 

[octavius]

Retold, Remade, Reforged, Resurrected, Remastered - Rejected. I just enjoy old stuff instead of Regurgitated stuff (I probably miss out on lots of delicious butthurt).

Some blame the situation on neoliberal economy. But we are also living in the most leftist dominated time period since the 1930s. And as a wise man once said "Evil can not create, only corrupt".

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

If you saw a field full of gold just sitting there in the middle of nowhere, with no owner, no nothing, would you just leave all the gold there and go your merry way?

That's old games for you. The period between late 80s-late 2000s is CHOCK-FULL of great games, total gems. Good Old games which:
- Have old graphics
- Have zero/minimal/mods only/no widescreen and modern resolution support
- Limited modding support
- Dated code for ancient CPUs which plays merry hell with modern ones (like always running at 100% CPU use because back when, CPUs were so weak that it was assumed necessary to do this to run the game right)
- Games with no multicore support
- Compatibility issues with modern systems
- Only run by emulation
- Only run on Windows

I would say this is a logic outgrowth of what started at Home of the Underdogs, all these years ago, and later with GoG: Someone realized that there's lots of pretty good games just lying there, abandoned. People like HotU and other Abandonware sites pick those games up.
Eventually, GoG shows up and realizes you can actually make money off selling old games with some technical support to make these games run on modern systems.
Steam eventually does something similar, and a big yet underestimated part of what Steam does, is that they're probably the best thing which ever happened for gaming Linux compability.

If selling old games with some technical fixes and improvement makes money, why not Remaster the game? Its a logical progression. Once you have the Source Code, the Docs and the other OG files, and sometimes even the OG devs, its just a matter of time, effort and money. And I suspect Remastering a game is way faster and cheaper than making a new game from zero.

Did I mention you can also port older games to new plataforms as well? Bigger player base therefore more money.

Another advantage of Remasters: If you want to do new things with an old franchise, you have to bring back interest to it - both bring back old fans and bring in new fans who never played it before.

 

[lightbane]

Oh it crashes all the time too now. Sorry our bad!!

Besides these reasons mentioned above, have you seen how much soy and incompetence is in the average modern game developer team? They can't be trusted to make a new game that plays well, so remakes are slightly easier to make...
When they don't censor them to boot, Crapcom style.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Oh, there are new IPs.

Starfield, Concord, Dustborne, Stray Gods, Thirsty Suitors...

Wanna some?

 

[Silvanus]

Oh, there are new IPs.

Starfield, Concord, Dustborne, Stray Gods, Thirsty Suitors...

Wanna some?

These examples go to show how even the new IPs are largely derivative and uninspired compared to what has come before. Aside from Starfield, which is derivative in a different way, each game listed here is a recombinant slurry of the same themes, aesthetics and influences with a few gameplay elements swapped around. They're the gaming equivalent of YA novels, the lacklustre execution of the same handful of (boring) tropes ("what if this coming-of-age romance narrative takes place in a DYSTOPIA?!?" - They actually think that this constitutes a meaningful creative contribution!) and nothing besides.

 

[sebas]

Yeah, I was just thinking about this some days ago when I was trying to find some new music to listen to. All of the entertainment industry is playing it mega safe regardless if it's music, movies or games. Eveything is at most a direct iteration on the past.

 

[luj1]

Oh, there are new IPs.

Starfield, Concord, Dustborne, Stray Gods, Thirsty Suitors...

Wanna some?

 

[Silvanus]

I'd like to add that anything containing a sassy blaq kween with an afro and ESPECIALLY anything containing a Person of Melanin with vitiligo (notice that it's always vitiligo and never any other skin condition because they're only capable of combining elements that they've seen in other works) is effectively the same IP (the extended tumblr universe) even if it's not recognised as such.

 

[Gandalf]

Look at the imagination of people living in the 90s and early 00s:

Soul Reaver - dark fantasy inspired by biblical mythology, a dead vampire travelling through the Underworld
Quake 1 - medieval world mixed with cybernetics and augmentations
Perihelion - genetic engineering mixed with occultism and mutation (but on Mars)
Morrowind - Roman-like empire invades a nation living beneath a volcano where fake gods rule and there's a disease which rots your flesh but makes you enlightened
Omikron the Nomad Soul - 1984 style city where an AI rules over people's souls
Evolva - not many people heard of this game but it was super unique. split screen TPS where you control a squad of aliens that you can "evolve" to gain upgrades
Sacrifice - somewhat whimsical Terry Pratchett kind of twist on a war between gods in a surreal fantasy world
Giants Citizen Kabuto - an island is flying through space, a technological race, a race of mermaids and a giant creature none can control fight for dominance
Arcanum - steam engine is invented in a fantasy world
Little Big Adventure - sorta magical realism, you have this whimsical world which is low-magic and high-technology where a guy wants to enslave people with cloning and teleporting tech
Abe's Oddysee - comical but brutal story about workers in an alien factory fighting for their freedom, also has strong Orwellian/Huxleian vibes
Last Blade 2 - a comet in the sky draws out 12 swordsmen each with an agenda, set in 19th century feudal Japan
MDK - dude has a suit which is a weapon and his head is literally a machine gun
Powerslave - stupid story but nicely executed setting of Egyptian mysticism
Tiberian Sun - the Earth is undergoing rapid ecological collapse as the discovery of a new mineral dooms mankind to endless resource wars

And the list goes on and on... The only game I don't regonize from this list is Last Blade 2, never heard of it. I think Evolva is just a forgotten game, it was pretty known back in the day, some magazines had it on the front cover.

 

[luj1]

I think Evolva is just a forgotten game, it was pretty known back in the day, some magazines had it as a front cover.

Could be, back then there were loads of interesting games every month

 

[luj1]

 

[Ravielsk]

A core problem is that the industry has ,among all the other things already mentioned, actively driven any talent and skill out of the industry. Good writers and ideas do not come from an environment where at any point your work could be scrapped because some level 3 manager(cousin of the CEO's ex) was not "feeling it". Putting in the effort when you are all but assured that unless you are immediately needed you will be let go also does not help the creative juices to flow. Simply put you cannot actively work against your own workers and expect them to put in anything but the bare minimum.

The only reason why it seemed to be viable was because initially there was a surplus of talent left over from the 90s in the industry. That surplus however has been exhausted at least twice over at this point and so the only people left are the bottom of the barrel people and DEI hires.