Like two months ago
Maybe come up with titles that are more compelling and can be played anywhere? If your competition is retro games you’ve done a shit job.
TL;DR - Here’s the relevant quote:
“there would be a significant risk that preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes.”
So lemme get this straight… You don’t want people to have fun with your games? That’s why you blocked them from being preserved and why you don’t bother selling them in any capacity? Are you dumb?
Acknowledging the demand, but doing nothing to capitalize on it, is pretty fucking stupid. People already pirate a lot of retro shit because it is literally the only way to obtain them. You wanna stop most of that? Fucking sell them somewhere.
I think the motivation is that it’s difficult for them to show off their newer games to shareholders in a positive light if the old games are doing better. They want people to not dwell on older games and just keep paying money on the next new game, which are often low effort and dragged by the coat tails of some past legacy.
It’s about maximising profit and growth outlook with the least amount of investment and effort, not about providing fair access to their catalogue of products
I don’t know a single investor that would not like a game studio that said “we have a massive back catalog of IP that is raking in cash with nearly no additional development or maintenance cost. We’ll try to keep making new games to keep the IP fresh and see if we hit it big again, but in the meantime, enjoy the money printing machine back catalog”.
It’s basically what Disney does at this point.
And, for that matter, record/music labels. Most records labels lose money on the majority of new artists they sign. It’s the 1-in-10 that break even and 1-1000 that go big and the 1-in-10,000 that fill out huge back catalog they just keep milking.
If only old games were as easy to maintain across every conceivable platform like movies and music are.
You are assuming old IP rake in cash, but I assume that the initial purchase is the major revenue along with any DLC. That is the usual model for older games. Live action games rake in continuous cash via micro-transactions and seasonal passes but not any retro games. All the time spent playing retro games is the time they could’ve been playing modern games with micro transactions, is what some publishers reason I reckon.
The missing piece that very few people want to touch is that, at the heart of the industry (as with all industry), they intend to use games as a mechanism for social control. That becomes extremely difficult if they can’t change and adjust everything in response to modern issues.
Circuses, you say?
But are you also saying they need to impart social ideologies with them? Like what ones? Where you going with this?
Glorifying/justifying war? Or are you talking stuff in the realm of equal representation?
You’re thinking in far too limited a scope. It can be as basic as implanting certain ideas about how tasks are performed through the structure of gameplay.
Hell, it could just be implanting newly developed subliminal messaging through background acoustics, or adjusting the general mood of themes.
Oh, that’s even more engineered and conspiratorial than I was thinking. You’re right.
Video games like Assassin’s Creed normalise murdering rich assholes who exploit people.
Video games like Halo normalise thinking for yourself instead of participating in genocide.
Video games like Metal Gear normalise anti-war views and action.
Video games like Mario normalise working class people opposing the unjust actions of kings.
Clearly, Capital and the State have a vested interest in spreading these kinds of sinister narratives.
Nice list! Very well done.
I am always impressed about how much I learned about the I.A.E.A from Metal Gear Solid. A fantastic example about how to educate your audience without being “edutainment”.
Sure I had a job to do, bad guys to sneak around, super weapons to sabotage…but boy did I just keep spamming codec calls to hear EVERYTHING those people had to say before I moved on. It was really interesting!
they want to do planned obsolescence in games.
the original for tech already sucks that nobody ever asked for.
