Devaluating and destroying old classics

Discussion in 'General Game Discussion and Questions' started by Aventador, Jan 30, 2014.

  1. Aventador

    Aventador Well-Known Member

    Jan 16, 2013
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    This got me worried lately as we've all seen what has been done with Tales of Phantasia and Dungeon Keeper ( and probably some other ones that don't come to my mind at the moment ).
    Old classics being ripped apart and turned into IAP sinkholes in search of whales nostalgic and desperate enough to eat out of their hands.
    Those games must be free at all cost to bring in more audience and active consumers, but that comes with a steep price of totally ruined gameplay balance to accustom IAP.Game like this usually doesn't represent or hold any value of classic it once was, furthermore it becomes something disgusting as someone who is familiar with game progresses further into it and sees all the IAP horror.
    My question would be :
    Why didn't they just released a direct/remastered port and have a huge sale numbers for first month and at least some steady sales during next years , instead of this IAP abomination which will get so many negative reviews and fade into endless sea of other games ?
     
  2. one.sixty.four

    one.sixty.four Well-Known Member

    Jan 14, 2013
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    It's to target the casual gaming audience. On average, They are more willing to spend money on IAP then on a game.
     
  3. Jorlen

    Jorlen Well-Known Member

    Jan 7, 2009
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    #3 Jorlen, Jan 30, 2014
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2014
    And it works.

    My brother-in-law recently started playing a game, claiming he was happy to have gotten it for free. "I'm not paying for these, no way".

    Next thing you know, he tells me he spent $100 on IAP in a month's time on that very same game. One of those stupid competitive games with leaderboards. I.e. build your bases, conquer other people, etc. And of course they sell IAP to speed up your progression. Bollocks. Do people not see through this? They get hooked, and want to win, so they pay to win. And it just goes downhill from there. Almost like gambling.

    The reason companies are doing this, is because it's working for the MAJORITY. The minority, which is most of us I'm guessing, who prefer to pay for quality and won't touch this IAP JUNK, are not the ones generating them tons of cash, sadly.

    Luckily there are still exceptions, but for every quality PAID game I find, there are a dozen or more IAP garbage games on the market. I'm all for paying extra IAP for content, but I avoid IAP where you can guy gems, or gold, or whatnot. It's an insult to gaming in my book and ruins the experience before I even start.
     
  4. I think the trend for now is freemiums, devs now seem to think freemiums with paywalls and inapps are best to make money. And who's to blame them. But every game can't be freemium or else people will just stop playing ios games. I think it is just a trend.
     
  5. Based Xatu

    Based Xatu Well-Known Member

    Aug 27, 2013
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    If console and pc gaming degrades into this, I say we riot.

    Anyway cell phone gaming isn't important, you can make a lot of money from it of you play your cards right, but it's mostly a bust. Games that come out are forgotten within a month most of the time.

    Cell phones main functions have nothing to do with gaming. That's a side feature - so games won't matter that much, and even consumers are reluctant to spend a large amount of money at one time on a cell phone. It feels like sometimes we expect to much from cell phone and tablet gaming.
     
  6. undeadcow

    undeadcow Well-Known Member

    Dec 4, 2010
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    #6 undeadcow, Jan 30, 2014
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2014
    As much as I appreciate the foundation video gaming is built on, the thing that really devalues and destroys old "classics" is time. No matter how much I want to, I will never be able to relive the glee of purchasing a SNES cartridge of Final Fantasy VI and staying up all night to play it for a week straight because school can wait anyway again. I would like to say Dungeon Keeper will always be a timeless shining gem, but that's not true. Dungeon Keeper was revolutionary, but now it's more commonplace and getting dated. Video game publishers that shoehorn IAP into these games or fiddle with the content to be more marketable are not destroying the game - but taking advantage of our faulty sense that we can reclaim that nostalgia. What we need is modern standard bearers to identify our own current generation in gaming untainted by twisted sentiment but of pure immediate experience.

    Just trying to re-release a classic even in it's virgin form is a bit destructive, because no matter what... you can't re-live that experience like you did back then. Homages are fun, but I disagree if the idea is you can just 100% transplant games from one era to another and one format to another without some loss.
     
  7. Isilel

    Isilel Well-Known Member

    Feb 20, 2009
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    Well, as somebody who has been playing a lot of old games for the first time thanks to iOS and Steam, I beg to differ. Monkey Islands, Broken Swords, Beneath a Steel Sky, Final Fantasy III, Shining Force, Lufia II (on an emulator), Max Payne (Steam), Beyond Good and Evil (Steam), etc. were all great for me, who had zero nostalgia because I never experienced them back then.
    Great gameplay is great gameplay.

    That's also one of the reasons why Nintendo and Sony and developers who published on their platforms have been endlessly porting and remaking some of their most popular classics - quite successfully, I might add.

    So yea, attempts to turn old games into freemium titles are an abomination, which hopefully flops hard.
     
  8. GGLV

    GGLV Member

    Aug 4, 2013
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    I think it's rather the fact that the around 10-50% of the App Store users who download these type of games are mostly kids who really have no idea what a good game is like. Thanks to generic shooters like Call of Duty and now these freemium IAP pieces of junk, the next generation are inclined to think that these games are normal, and that it is perfectly alright to be spending hundreds of dollars on a piece of junk.

    We need to start seeing that indie games are given more of the spotlight, and introduce measures to 'censor' these IAP riddled games from a future generation of gamers.
     
  9. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
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    Dont agree with that. Its like saying people shouldnt watch old films anymore etc. Films/music/games to me mature well with age. Now i'm older i've still got those nostalgic feelings with these games/films etc but now i tend to also appreciate how they were created more. Eg Star Wars, breathtaking how great that film is 36 years later. 8 bit games, its amazing how they pushed the machine to get out a game in just 48k.

    A lot of games its great to come back to, yeah i had them in the 80's and played them tons, then didnt play them for years, then due to emulators i gave them a go again. To me the magic is still there, having the ability to have 200 Speccy games on me at all times on an app is amazing.

    Graphics age, sound in games age, but the playability doesnt age. SOOO many games out now are just the same but with better graphics/music and cost a lot more. The basic principles 'go from point a to point b' are the same.

    Look how many people dislike remakes of old classic films ? Its the same for games, the new Dungeon Keeper has tons of IAP, i'm staying away from that. The old classic i might be able to download from some website (which someone put in the DK thread) but i cant play that on my iphone and thats one key thing to me. Having these classics such as Duke/Sonic and others on my phone to play is great.

    I tend to also take my time and now try and beat these old classics as they have save points etc.

    Look at Gridlee (MAME) and how popular that is. People love playing the all time classics, love watching classic movies and listening to music they grew up with etc.

    I'm not entirely trying to recreate 1984 by playing Manic Miner, but its still exciting having that old classic on my phone 30 years later so i can play it whenever you want.
     
  10. undeadcow

    undeadcow Well-Known Member

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    I don't disagree. I just got back into PC gaming so there's a whole decade of milestones I missed out on and am enjoying. Great games are great games; but if imagine how much greater that game was at it's inception on native release. Contra is still a lot of fun to play; in the 1980s it was a mind blowing obsession but now it's a fun time waster repeatedly cloned, now overly familiar. Final Fantasy 1 was my all time favorite game as a kid, but now it's a weaker entry in the early FF canon so hard to appreciate as I did in it's glory days. Consider that strong video games are emulated and built upon cannibalized to become a foundation for future games in the process becoming dimmer in some cases.
    As a fan of old movies and old games, I agree. However, I do think some of the experience is relative to the immediate cultural awareness. For example, I love Bunuel's classic film Milky Way (as well as his Search for Truth trilogy) but there's so many religious and culture references specific to 1960s era timeframe I don't think I can ever appreciate it in some optimal way without having been there then. I'd hesitate to recommend Milky Way to general audiences because of how specific it sometimes feels despite being amazing. It's a great movie now, but less accessible and immediate than for earlier generations.
    Myself included, I love having quality older games available on their own merits (nostalgia aside) but I can't help wondering if the original poster is frustrated not just by changes to older games (IAP, graphic redesign, control alterations, balance tweaks, etc) but also because unobtainable nostalgia or cultural changes bar immersion.

    This is an interesting discussion, thanks for the replies.
     
  11. Exact-Psience

    Exact-Psience Well-Known Member

    Jan 12, 2012
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    I dont think time is to blame here. It's more how they change the game to adapt to today's market in order to earn.

    FF7 and Vagrant Story are still fantastic and a lot better than modern games in their genre since they havent been tampered with.
     
  12. undeadcow

    undeadcow Well-Known Member

    Dec 4, 2010
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    #12 undeadcow, Jan 31, 2014
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2014
    Maybe your right, I guess before the Tales of Phantasia fiasco I wasn't aware of many botched ports of classics, especially specific to iOS, so went on a tangent about inability to reclaim nostalgia because generally speaking iOS ports haven't been too tainted so there's be little other reason for failure (IAPs aren't prevalent, graphics generally consistent, etc). On iOS I think there's a good tradition of faithful ports - Lunar Silver Star Story, Doom, Xcom, Final Fantasy (despite some changes), etc etc etc.
     
  13. Isilel

    Isilel Well-Known Member

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    #13 Isilel, Jan 31, 2014
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2014
    Well, in my case I now absolutely adore the P&C adventure genre. But I can't imagine really getting into it on PC. The ability to fire a game up quickly and try various ideas on the spot really helps when you get stuck. If I had to be at home, turn on PC, turn on a game, both quite slowly, then be unable to progress, I'd have probably given up in frustration pretty quickly. Not to mention that there weren't even on-line walkthroughs to help you back in the day.

    Ditto JRPGs. They and requisite consoles would have cost an arm and a leg when they first came out and I would have been stuck with awful German localizations to boot.

    No, much as I love them now, I don't see myself enjoying these games when they first came out.

    Yea, couldn't get into it or into Phantasy Star 2 on iOS. Gameplay was just too archaic for me. But many other games aged much better or were remade with sufficient enhancements to remain highly enjoyable.

    I feel that in many cases good old games weren't emulated and canibalized enough and as a result lots of great gameplay ideas were abandoned and are only to be enjoyed in these old games, sadly.
    Heck, even action games used to provide a decent amount of exploration and light puzzles to provide a change of pace. Pretty sad, how things have evolved.
     
  14. aikavari

    aikavari Well-Known Member

    Apr 24, 2011
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    Ly, the DK universe seems to be perfect fit for the freemium genre.
     
  15. Mene

    Mene <b>ACCOUNT CLOSED</b>: <em>Officially</em> Quit iO

    Mar 18, 2012
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    Freemium is scaring me, I hope it's a passing trend, because if it's here to stay and the App Store stays swamped by this trash as much as it is now, and old classics are released just to milk stupid people dry then I will simply stop using my ipad for gaming and switch to another platform.

    Freemium needs to die off or the stupid people that won't buy a game if it's over £1 but will happily get a free game and pay £1-2-5 over and over for iap need to be educated.
     
  16. Eli

    Eli ᕕ┌◕ᗜ◕┐ᕗ
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold

    It seems sort of weird to me that you want to decide what is and isn't a good game for other people. If kids are enjoying these games, who cares? Gaming is beginning to be as mainstream as eating out at a restaurant. If you look at the massive variety of restaurants available, most of them are junk like McDonalds, Applebees, Chilis and the like. Even though the vast majority of people in the USA would just go to The Olive Garden for a never-ending pasta bowl over going to some hole in the wall Italian place where they make their pasta by hand doesn't mean there isn't room in this world for both places, nor does it mean that the people who choose to eat at The Olive Garden are idiots. It's just what they enjoy, what they know, and what they're comfortable with.

    Telling people the things they like, the opinions they have, and similar things are wrong and should be "censored" is getting into some very dangerous territory. Gaming as you know it isn't going to vanish because millions of moms are playing Candy Crush.
     
  17. Moms are the ones that started this epidemic? :p
     
  18. JCho133

    JCho133 Well-Known Member

    Jul 27, 2012
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    Has anyone brought up that fantastic Final Fantasy: All the Bravest game yet?
     
  19. undeadcow

    undeadcow Well-Known Member

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    #19 undeadcow, Feb 1, 2014
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2014
    I agree with the idea that some promising game trends have lapsed, but also iOS gaming is in relative infancy still not universally seen as a serious gaming platform therefore not the most representative cross-section of gaming development. iOS games exist in a bubble regurgitating fluff like Angry Birds (now we're in the Flappy Bird iteration) ignoring inventive arcade/console gems of yesteryear that have yielded more significant successors on console/PC.
    For example, there are a lot of promising metroidvania games that carry on this tradition (on iOS consider WazHack, Japanese Werewolf, etc if not others) and I think we will see more to come as the iOS format matures.
    Forget Godwin's Law, I propose Undeadcow's Law - that on Touch Arcade the longer a conversation gets the more probable it is someone will dead end it into complaints about the freemium model. As a forum at large the longer Touch Arcade forums exists the more likely it is to devolve into a jellied mass of IAP complaints.
    Wait... who are you calling a kid?!?
    As someone who tried to devise a Warmech Halloween costume when I was 7, I think Final Fantasy: All the Bravest is an enjoyable tap frenzy game that's more of a homage than bastardization of a classic because it makes no attempt to be a JRPG. I think fanboys that get overprotective about anything associated with a brand devalue classics. Final Fantasy X (circa 2001) onward are abominations. It's hard to argue the Final Fantasy games have any sense of integrity with a straight face. The iOS bubble has served up some classic Final Fantasy of yesteryear but the modern franchise has lapsed and not because of IAP (but because, in part, of de-empasizing gameplay over graphics to the point of some not even having a core single player game and play becoming too automated/passive). Ironically in Final Fantasy's case I think iOS ports have preserved an important part of gaming history for a franchise that's now gets little respect elsewhere.
     
  20. saansilt

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