Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Why no ‘special editions’of classic games?

cliffski

I know that there are a lot of games companies that release sequels which, we all shout and complain, are just a re-hash of the previous game, but I wonder if they aren’t missing a bit of a trick here.

Everyone moans that TIE fighter was awesome and we don’t get a sequel. Ditto syndicate. Ditto all sorts of games. I always enjoyed Age Of Empires II.  Also Thief 2.

The problem is, big companies are obsessed with re-doing EVERYTHING and then charging full price as a sequel. I suspect there is a mid-market opportunity.

Lets say lucasarts took TIE Fighter, redid all the textures so they were higher res, re-did the models to be higher poly, and made the game play nice under directx9 on windows 64 bit etc, then re-released the game as a special edition for $10. Would people buy it? Would it pay for the art costs of doing so? I strongly suspect it would.

The trouble is, the big huge mega corps that control those old classics are simply not wired internally to do this. They either spend $10,000,000 on a game and expect a $100,000,000 return, or they do nothing. The fact that they have some old IP and an old (but classic) game design, where they could spend $200,000 to make $600,000 just doesn’t compute. It doesn’t fit their plan, marketing, financial or otherwise.

I’d like to think some canny executive at those companies could see that if they just sold the rights to re-release an updated, re-skinned TIE-fighter/Thief/insertnamehere, they could make a nice easy chunk of change, but I won’t hold my breath,

Bad idea? Good idea?

(I know GOG games make old stuff run on modern operating systems, but they don’t update the graphics in the way I suggest).

21 thoughts on Why no ‘special editions’of classic games?

  1. GOG’s approach costs less effort than actually redoing assets, so it’s probably easier for the big companies to buy into that.

    Also, depending on how the games were written, actually getting them to support the higher res art could take significant programming effort and introduce potentially serious bugs.

    But yea, I’d re-buy Tie Fighter to get a version I could play on my machine, in a heartbeat.

  2. Good idea; I’d love to see it too.

    If any big company is set up to understand the model, it’s LucasArts, because they’ve already done this with the first two Monkey Island games.

  3. I’d like the same thing actually. There are quite a few games that I know are really good in terms of gameplay/plot (and some of them I used to play and did enjoy), but I can’t go back to them now because visually they simply suck. Low-res blocky texturing, no detailing like grass and such, and no “scatter” items (loose things that aren’t useful, but fill up space to prevent the “big empty room” feel) mean that it’s really hard to be immersed.

    The problem is that I really want to be able to enjoy some of those games. I would happily pay a nominal sum to have an updated version. Unfortunately, none of the old engines were really written to allow many of the things we take for granted now, so they would essentially have to rewrite the game from scratch, just using the existing game as reference material.

  4. Well, LucasArts has been experimenting with this very idea. They first did it with the Secret of Monkey Island (see http://www.lucasarts.com/games/monkeyisland/). They released it on XBox Live and Steam, and to my knowledge it has been successful for them. Successful enough that they did for the Secret of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (see http://www.lucasarts.com/games/monkeyisland2/). I don’t know the extent of their remake plans. Maybe they are sticking to older adventure games, but it’s possible they may be considering redoing TIE-Fighter and their other classics like that.

  5. nintendo also recently remade ocarina of time and perfect dark was remade a couple of years back, both using all new assets.

    Further back than that, John Carmack said he would be interested in a deal if a small studio wanted to completely remake quake or quake 2 in their newest engine but nothing ever seemed to come of it.

  6. Obviously it’s a great idea. Problem though, as you already mentioned, studio’s and more importantly the publishers (the guys with backing and money) are greedy ass-hats that want large returns to finance their tastes luxury homes and cars, but also so that they have enough change left over to pay the programmers, artists, and the rest of the studio a nominal wage.

    Honestly, I think a small group of talented individuals (3 – 4 talented indies) could remake the games you mentioned, in a year or lest, and make exactly the kind of return you’re talking about, if not more. I wish something like this would happen, but then I also wish world hunger and peace for all mankind was a reality, but it is not. The bastards behind the decisions and the ones holding the cards with all the money (and the licensing behind these products) want big bucks. They don’t care about 1 million, the want multimillion… Why? Because they’re bastards, and they’ll even tell you that. Hell, it’s like a badge of honor among douchebags… Sad, unfortunate, but true. Just look at Activions CEO Bobby Kotick – a professional asshole, not much else. Arrogance doesn’t begin to describe his character, yet there are plenty of people just like him in the gaming industry – and that’s probably the saddest part of it. People like that shouldn’t have any part in the games industry. Gamers, game developers, and in general people who really enjoy this pastime should be more involved (aside from just spending money on games or simply programming).

    Video games companies have gone the way of the old record label companies. And that’s quite simply a terrible way to do business, EVEN IF it makes a handful of people rich. It’s bad business.

    Anyway, rant switch off… I’m tired.

  8. A no-brainer, really. Many indies have been arguing for just this, for some time. Consider Stardock’s attempt to remake Master of Magic, and the ridiculous “we control everything and you get enough to just cover your investment” response. As you point out, this is the cash cow theory of making game successors: everything must yield a maximum profit. Game development by Accounting.

    Now, if you can just convince the big companies of the value of your idea. Hey, good luck with that.

  9. It’s been done, and it’s feasible, but it’s not as simple as you imply. Off the top of my head, I can think of a number of games on Xbox LIVE Arcade that you just described: Banjo Kazooie & Tooie, Monkey Island, Perfect Dark, R-Type, Castlevania, Hydro Thunder, Ikaruga, Prince of Persia, Rez, Marathon, and a bunch of Coin-op ports (some better than most). But for every one of these, there are at least 10 aborted attempts at revitalizing other classic games.

    Consider some business roadblocks. It’s not always clear who owns the license for the classic game, and when it is, and even if it’s you, it’s usually more expensive than you think. $200k might get you a few developers for 6 months. But it will take more than that if you’re at a corporation. If you’re in a small studio that’s willing and able to work for less, you probably don’t own the license. So then you need to be savvy on the business end or just do what amounts to work-for-hire for the actual license holder. And if the license holder doesn’t have the money, they have to find a licensee or some publisher who will buy into their game. Some have been more successful (R-Type Dimensions), some have been less successful (Archon).

    Besides that, corporations consider a lot of factors when revitalizing titles. Is it recognizable IP? What are the sales projections? How long will it take to develop? What are the risks involved? What is the opportunity cost?

    Then, you can’t assume the source code of the original game is readily available to the developer and easily portable to the desired platform. That’s a huge assumption. Even if it is, there will need to be a certain amount of time ($$) spent for learning it, and working around its quirks, because it relies on technology that isn’t around anymore, and 99% of the time, nobody who worked on the original is around anymore. And it’s not just source code. If you’re talking about increasing the resolution of the art, it gets pretty complicated quickly, with side effects you might not expect. Start out with a 64×64 texture. OK, so to make that look decent in HD, you’ve got to increase that to at least 512, which requires improved artistic skills. You might even have to make multiple copies of each texture and vary them so everything doesn’t start looking the same. And in a 3D game, whenever you increase the texture size, you end up affecting the geometry of the world, and then you have to go through it with a fine-toothed comb to make sure there aren’t any holes or shortcuts that weren’t there before. And there are certainly new performance considerations. Basically, a bunch of side effects that become a headache and increase the time/cost of the whole project.

    You make it sound like those “big huge mega corps” don’t know business, which is simply not true. Yes, they make mistakes, and yes, they’re often stupid, but for every dumbass in a suit, there’s a group of savvy and smart individuals who are good at what they do. You’re not talking about anything they haven’t considered.

  10. Not quite the same thing, but the developers of Warzone 2100 (a great RTS originally developed for the playstation) released the code as open source so people could get it running on other platforms.

  11. Sometimes the company releases the source code, which allows for great “special editions” like Freespace 2 with the SCP : http://scp.indiegames.us/

    (And that’s much better than Tie Fighter anyway :] )

  12. Sony and Ubi have already found there’s money to be made in this kind of venture – look at the numerous HD compilations that are coming out for the PS3.

  15. @mart: Check this one out:
    http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Download
    This an open source remake of XCOM: UFO Defense using a heavily modified quake 2 engine (has post processing effects etc.) They also improved the UI etc. It’s finished, I think. Large download though (525 mb), but it’s really worth it.

  16. The only thing missing in UFO:AI is the destructable environment, ’cause they couldn’t find a way to do that in the quake engine.

  17. You know, there is another issue: Would you want to be the person who actually remade the thing? I for one would not want to recreate an existing game. It’s a boring job if all you are allowed to do is copy-pasting.

  20. Congratulations, you invented remakes!

    Jokes aside, yeah they’ve actually been doing this ages now, and of course it varies from full remakes that are almost a new game to much milder updates akin to your textures example. On consoles there’s also been the trend of the “HD” ports with or without additional enhancements.

  21. remade for mac os x please:

    transport tycoon
    castles siege and conquest
    lords of the realm
    chaos overlords
    colonization
    theme park/hospital/rollercoaster tycoon
    caesar
    etc etc

    isometric graphics only. No 3d

    why dont you do it

Comments are currently closed.