As video games become more expensive to produce and publishers take fewer risks, the last few years have seen a growing trend to make old video games new again.
I’m not talking about a direct one Port so people can play an old game on a new system. We’re all used to that, that’s okay. I’m talking about blockbusters, lavish recreations of classic games rebuilt from the ground up to essentially look and play like modern releases. Think Final Fantasy VIIor resident Evil. Or Max Payne, its announcement today contained the following line hidden in its press release:
The game’s development budget will be funded by Rockstar Games, which will be sized to match a typical Remedy AAA game production.
My first thought upon reading this was Wow, that’s a lot of money to remake some games that weren’t that popular, and which are still available and playable today. My second thought was: maybe you could have invested the money and time to do something new Max Payne
You don’t have to tell me why this is happening. I know why. Publishers want to sell video games but don’t want to take risks, so remakes of classics with trusted brand names are a safer bet. If you’re looking to test the waters with a potential new audience and see how an older property can resonate with a younger audience, this is a great way to do it.
But I’m not here to talk about how things are. I want to talk about how things could get better! This obsession with the past sucks! These games have been developed and released for one audience, for one platform, for a period of time. People played those games, those experiences became part of time and then led to sequels Alan Wake, quantum fracture, steering. None of this took place in a vacuum. It happened on a timeline where we are now at the part marked “2022”.
Max Payne is a game released in 2001. Max Payne 2 is a game released in 2003. That’s where they came from, and from their design to their writing to their messages, maybe that’s where they belong. Hell, for all his other flaws in 2012 Max Payne 3 based on the realization that ten years later Max was an older, sadder man, a slower relic from an earlier time.
I’m not saying new meets old Max Payne Games will suck or be a “bad” release that you won’t enjoy playing and shouldn’t buy. I’m just saying – bear with me – that life on this planet is finite, as are its resources and our time on it, and I can’t help but think in weird zero-sum terms that every time one of those big remakes is announced, that a publisher’s time and money could be better spent doing something New instead of this.
While there’s always some comfort in revisiting old favorites, to me, video games are a medium that’s at its best when it pushes the boundaries and uses advanced technology and design principles to create new and exciting experiences. Not, in this and an increasing number of other cases, to give old games a new shine.
There’s not even an argument here that these games give players the opportunity to play something they wouldn’t otherwise be able to experience on modern hardware (an angle I never buy in these cases anyway, since that’s the way it is a result of the industry’s complete neglect of true wildlife conservation). The Max Payne Series was born on the PC, and both 1 & 2 are still available on Steam. Or at least they are in some places; At the end of last year, both games were delisted in many regions of the worldin a move eerily similar to Rockstar’s before they ripped the older versions of Grand Theft Auto games and replaced them with the best selling, deeply broken remastered trilogy.
I know there are gaps in my argument, mostly from a publishing perspective, because I’m just a guy who likes video games and not someone who gets paid to make or sell them. I’m not here to present a bulletproof vision of the future or a watertight critique of current business plans. I’m just a guy who likes video games who sometimes, in that weird zero-sum way, wishes that the money spent rehashing old releases could be spent on more new stuff – like Max Payne was back in 2001 – instead.
