I agree with the goal of this, but don’t necessarily agree with its specific assertions.
Like yes, 100% we would be way better off if companies would actively support emulation by selling super-cheap any games that they otherwise have no interest in anymore.
But actually, yes, I do enjoy paying $40 for the remake of an old classic, if it’s done well.
The Spyro remaster from a few years ago was extremely well-done and I loved being able to play a favourite from my childhood on my computer. It was exactly the same game, only with modernised graphics. Well worth it.
Even better, Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. It upgraded the graphics, but also added an enormous amount of new content and (most importantly) quality of life features, all done in consultation with the community that had been playing the original game for 20 years at the time DE came out. It would be best if you could still buy the original 1999 version for five bucks, but frankly I doubt many people would if you could, because the Definitive Edition was done so well.
It’s obviously different when there’s a remake that’s nothing but a cheap cash grab. Or when there hasn’t been any type of modern update. I wish, for example, it was easier for me to get my hands on a copy of Battle for Middle-Earth 2 to play with my friends. But the company that made it isn’t even allowed to continue selling it, for complicated licensing reasons. Because copyright law sucks.
Yeah for sure. That’s actually another reason that old abandonware should be kept available for people to play. If they come up with a replacement that’s good enough to displace the original, that’s awesome. But if they come up with a replacement that isn’t worth it, they shouldn’t be able to artificially prop up that version by making the original unavailable.
Huh, that’s very interesting. I’m genuinely curious to know what it was that you didn’t like about it.
Because the truth is that you’re seemingly in the extreme minority. While 2013’s HD edition seemed to split the community and received a bit of a mixed reaction, since 2019’s DE has been an unmitigated success in terms of both finances for the devs, and in terms of unifying and growing the size of the community.
I was expecting they wouldn’t change the visuals and feel of the game so much, I guess. Don’t know if it was the idea but I tried for a few hours and ended up refunding it because I was expecting the same “feel” I had from the original/hd version and everything felt so… different. Maybe I need to give it another try but I remember at the time I decide to stick with the HD Version because it was what felt more familiar for me.
Yeah fair enough. That sort of thing is definitely subjective and it would be impossible for anyone to say you’re wrong.
Personally, I find the new QOL features impossible to live without now. Shift-queueing absolutely any task, being able to queue multiple techs or techs and units, villagers keeping one resource until they actually start gathering—rather than losing all the gold they’re carrying just because you accidentally clicked a tree—farm autoreseeding. To me, none of these really change the fundamental way the game feels, they just make it feel like a smoother, more polished version of the original game.
I’m still unhappy about them initially locking content behind time-limited challenges. Didn’t buy the game early enough or just didn’t happen to play at the right time? No 256x tech mode for you!
It’s blatantly coercive design and even though it appears they’ve since unlocked the content for everyone I still have a negative opinion of the game because of it.
Yeah that’s not great. To be honest for the most part I really like it. Most of the stuff you unlock is pure cosmetics (profile pictures or alternate looks for units—which only display as different for you, not your opponent). They’re just some good fun, and I find my completionist nature enjoys jumping into the game to get them.
But there have been a few of the things unlocked as part of the challenges—that 256x mod is one of them, and there have also been a couple of cheat codes more recently—that did feel like more substantial things to miss out on if you happened not to be able to play while they were on offer. I wasn’t playing when the 256x mod was around, but when the cheat codes first appeared I recall thinking it was pretty disappointing for anyone who might have wanted them that would miss out for whatever reason.
If you own it, you should be able to copy it for your enjoyment.
If it was or is critical to work, you should be able to copy it.
Licenses back when this all started were perpetual. I use it for the entirety of my life. So long as I breathe I have a license for it. Emulating that shouldn’t be illegal at all.
Honestly maintaining or figuring out a migration method for these dinosaur systems would be my ideal job. I just love tinkering with these relics of the past but have no idea where to find this kind of work
I was an IT tech in college, and one of our biology professors had a stack of ancient computers in a closet specifically because the electron microscope in his lab had to have a computer as a controller connected to it that ran Windows 3.1 and which had extremely specific hardware specs. He’d Frankenstein them together as parts quit, and was always on the lookout for this very specific computer on eBay. I had to get his microscope back running once by installing Windows and the controller software on the “new” computer, and it was actually really enjoyable. Brought back a ton of memories. But yeah, he is just buying time until his perfectly good microscope quits working all because he ran out of parts.
That’s so stupid. If they made it like switching between warzone and multiplayer, that’d have been okay, although still unnecessary, but this just bad UX - again. Nobody believes their lie, that this is more than an update anyway, why pretend different?
I know we all don’t want to accept it but the truth is this will work. Until whales stop existing things like this will be around. These companies are forcing advertisements in every part of our lives and now they aren’t even trying to be sly about it.
I thought about buying an xbox to install kodi on and play some games on the big screen. But when i saw their new trash ad interface and now this, i'll never buy any of their shit again.
Dude same, first Roku started putting ads on the main menu and now Microsoft is pulling bullshit. Just another reminder that we don’t actually own anything anymore
You know! That’s what I was originally going to comment but wasn’t sure it’d make sense. Purchasing a product just means another way to sell to you nowadays. It’s ridiculous.
How do the people working fore Microsoft even come up with this shit? Do they not play Xbox? How are they not infuriated with every idea like this that they come up with?
Ambitious exec promotion candidate has an idea, senior executive sees idea and sponsors it as they believe it will make them money, JIRA lands in dev backlog, devs moan about it, devs like having jobs, devs implement.
I honestly don’t understand why anyone buys major-publisher games anymore. There are indie games that are at least as good and that come without the garbage.
The games industry got fucking huge and most people are just mindless consumers who buy whatever is advertised to them. It sounds crazy, but people buy these $70 games, buy the 'deluxe' editions for almost double, then buy loads of cosmetics in game. And they do it every year. All these companies are going to do is milk this mindset, so triple A will never change.
Indie, as you say, is the way to go. Actual games made by passionate people, with (most of the time) no bullshit attached.
Why mindless? Why can’t I enjoy a multi-player arcade shooter without being called mindless?
I almost exclusively play AAA games, with the occasional indie in between. The indies I play are basically all the famous ones that got really big.
It’s my entertainment, my time. Why call me mindless? The only issue Lemmy has, this whole “rebel without a cause” attitude against everything that is mainstream :)
A friend of mine is a top level director on a recent AAA game that wasn’t very well received. I can assure you, he was very passionate about his game.
Fair enough. Even if I like cod, I’ll still bitch about the campaign this time around. It’s not original and not exciting at all. I still don’t regret getting it for the mp/zombies.
Sorry, I wasnt calling people mindless, you are right that anyone can enjoy whatever they want. I was referring to 'mindless consumerism', where people arent really frugal and just buy whatever thing the big companies want to you to buy.
And the passion thing, obviously theres a lot of passionate people at big studios, but the leads of such places usually dont and bring it all down in the name of profit for them and their shareholders. Triple A is a money making machine, there's not a lot of innovation there anymore and a lot of the games are very unimaginative, regardless of how passionate the individual developers are.
Most indie games just don’t draw me in. They’re usually missing some major mechanic that ruins it for me. I also enjoy quality graphics, and in my experience, that’s the first thing to go with an indie developer.
That’s not to say I haven’t found some I enjoy (bastion, sea of stars, stardew valley), but most of the time they just don’t do it for me.
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