From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


You all know my opinion on remasters and remakes; I haven't been shy
about expressing my general disdain for the trend. But I totally
understand _why_ publishers make them; they sell! More than that,
they're easier to create, since a lot of the hard design work (you
know, the game mechanics that made the game popular when it was first
released) have already been worked out. (It doesn't help the
developers behind the remaster often have decades of critiques to help
them fix any of the mechanics that DIDN'T work well with the
original).

So it's no surprise that not only have 90% of gamers played at least
one remake/remaster, but three quarters of them find them 'appealing'.
In fact, of the gamers polled, 53% of them said it made them feel
'more engaged in gaming'.* Of course, the first number doesn't really
mean all that much; of COURSE most gamers have played at least one
remake, given how many of them are flooding the market these days.
It's hard NOT to end up playing one. But a lot of gamers don't seem to
mind.

The report does, at least, confront the issue that this continued
reliance on remakes is costing the industry in a loss of creativity,
and that continuing to push them will eventually cause the nostalgia
craze to burn out (and then what will your company do, if it doesn't
have any new IP in the pipe?). It also reminds developers that most
gamers won't pay full price for remakes/remasters.**

Anyway, see the link to the PDF if you're interested in the topic. It
isn't particularly detailed, but it does give some hard numbers to
throw around for the discussion. ;-)






* get the report here:
https://marketing.wearemtm.com/remakevsinnovate
(PDF download, real email address not required ;-)

** completely pointless aside: I finally added the word "remaster" to
my newsreader's spell-check. It was, oddly, not a word already in its dictionary... despite the fact that it didn't have problems with words
like 'kerfuffle' or 'shenanigan'.


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 9/20/2025 10:59 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

You all know my opinion on remasters and remakes; I haven't been shy
about expressing my general disdain for the trend. But I totally
understand _why_ publishers make them; they sell! More than that,
they're easier to create, since a lot of the hard design work (you
know, the game mechanics that made the game popular when it was first released) have already been worked out. (It doesn't help the
developers behind the remaster often have decades of critiques to help
them fix any of the mechanics that DIDN'T work well with the
original).

So it's no surprise that not only have 90% of gamers played at least
one remake/remaster, but three quarters of them find them 'appealing'.
In fact, of the gamers polled, 53% of them said it made them feel
'more engaged in gaming'.* Of course, the first number doesn't really
mean all that much; of COURSE most gamers have played at least one
remake, given how many of them are flooding the market these days.
It's hard NOT to end up playing one. But a lot of gamers don't seem to
mind.

The report does, at least, confront the issue that this continued
reliance on remakes is costing the industry in a loss of creativity,
and that continuing to push them will eventually cause the nostalgia
craze to burn out (and then what will your company do, if it doesn't
have any new IP in the pipe?). It also reminds developers that most
gamers won't pay full price for remakes/remasters.**

Anyway, see the link to the PDF if you're interested in the topic. It
isn't particularly detailed, but it does give some hard numbers to
throw around for the discussion. ;-)

One could argue that the original "releases" were actually beta/final
play test releases given how many problems most games have at that
point. Which would make the decade or two later "remaster" that actual release of the finished product.

* get the report here:
https://marketing.wearemtm.com/remakevsinnovate
(PDF download, real email address not required ;-)

** completely pointless aside: I finally added the word "remaster" to
my newsreader's spell-check. It was, oddly, not a word already in its dictionary... despite the fact that it didn't have problems with words
like 'kerfuffle' or 'shenanigan'.

Unlike "remaster", a new internet age word, "kerfuffle" and "shenanigan"
are positively ancient with popular usage going back around *GASP* A
HUNDRED YEARS!! Maybe even more! Amazing the complex multi-syllable
words our cave man ancestors came up with.
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Dimensional Traveler wrote:

On 9/20/2025 10:59 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

You all know my opinion on remasters and remakes; I haven't been shy
about expressing my general disdain for the trend. But I totally
understand _why_ publishers make them; they sell! More than that,
they're easier to create, since a lot of the hard design work (you
know, the game mechanics that made the game popular when it was first
released) have already been worked out. (It doesn't help the
developers behind the remaster often have decades of critiques to help
them fix any of the mechanics that DIDN'T work well with the
original).

So it's no surprise that not only have 90% of gamers played at least
one remake/remaster, but three quarters of them find them 'appealing'.
In fact, of the gamers polled, 53% of them said it made them feel
'more engaged in gaming'.* Of course, the first number doesn't really
mean all that much; of COURSE most gamers have played at least one
remake, given how many of them are flooding the market these days.
It's hard NOT to end up playing one. But a lot of gamers don't seem to
mind.

The report does, at least, confront the issue that this continued
reliance on remakes is costing the industry in a loss of creativity,
and that continuing to push them will eventually cause the nostalgia
craze to burn out (and then what will your company do, if it doesn't
have any new IP in the pipe?). It also reminds developers that most
gamers won't pay full price for remakes/remasters.**

Anyway, see the link to the PDF if you're interested in the topic. It
isn't particularly detailed, but it does give some hard numbers to
throw around for the discussion. ;-)

One could argue that the original "releases" were actually beta/final
play test releases given how many problems most games have at that
point.  Which would make the decade or two later "remaster" that actual release of the finished product.

A lot of these remasters are *tighter* than their originals. Many of
them have undergone optimization to a well extent. Even though they
have some improvements, typically you don't expect frame glitches and
whatnot that make you think your video card is become a spark plug like
a regular (without remastering) release does.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

sion F2 <sionf2@drum.cc> wrote at 22:06 this Sunday (GMT):

Dimensional Traveler wrote:

On 9/20/2025 10:59 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

You all know my opinion on remasters and remakes; I haven't been shy
about expressing my general disdain for the trend. But I totally
understand _why_ publishers make them; they sell! More than that,
they're easier to create, since a lot of the hard design work (you
know, the game mechanics that made the game popular when it was first
released) have already been worked out. (It doesn't help the
developers behind the remaster often have decades of critiques to help
them fix any of the mechanics that DIDN'T work well with the
original).

So it's no surprise that not only have 90% of gamers played at least
one remake/remaster, but three quarters of them find them 'appealing'.
In fact, of the gamers polled, 53% of them said it made them feel
'more engaged in gaming'.* Of course, the first number doesn't really
mean all that much; of COURSE most gamers have played at least one
remake, given how many of them are flooding the market these days.
It's hard NOT to end up playing one. But a lot of gamers don't seem to
mind.

The report does, at least, confront the issue that this continued
reliance on remakes is costing the industry in a loss of creativity,
and that continuing to push them will eventually cause the nostalgia
craze to burn out (and then what will your company do, if it doesn't
have any new IP in the pipe?). It also reminds developers that most
gamers won't pay full price for remakes/remasters.**

Anyway, see the link to the PDF if you're interested in the topic. It
isn't particularly detailed, but it does give some hard numbers to
throw around for the discussion. ;-)

One could argue that the original "releases" were actually beta/final
play test releases given how many problems most games have at that
point.  Which would make the decade or two later "remaster" that actual
release of the finished product.

A lot of these remasters are *tighter* than their originals. Many of
them have undergone optimization to a well extent. Even though they
have some improvements, typically you don't expect frame glitches and whatnot that make you think your video card is become a spark plug like
a regular (without remastering) release does.

Except for when its a complete disaster (Mario 3D All-Stars and Sonic
Colors Ultimate)
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On 9/20/2025 10:59 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

You all know my opinion on remasters and remakes; I haven't been shy
about expressing my general disdain for the trend. But I totally
understand _why_ publishers make them; they sell! More than that,
they're easier to create, since a lot of the hard design work (you
know, the game mechanics that made the game popular when it was first
released) have already been worked out. (It doesn't help the
developers behind the remaster often have decades of critiques to help
them fix any of the mechanics that DIDN'T work well with the
original).

So it's no surprise that not only have 90% of gamers played at least
one remake/remaster, but three quarters of them find them 'appealing'.
In fact, of the gamers polled, 53% of them said it made them feel
'more engaged in gaming'.* Of course, the first number doesn't really
mean all that much; of COURSE most gamers have played at least one
remake, given how many of them are flooding the market these days.
It's hard NOT to end up playing one. But a lot of gamers don't seem to
mind.

The report does, at least, confront the issue that this continued
reliance on remakes is costing the industry in a loss of creativity,
and that continuing to push them will eventually cause the nostalgia
craze to burn out (and then what will your company do, if it doesn't
have any new IP in the pipe?). It also reminds developers that most
gamers won't pay full price for remakes/remasters.**

Anyway, see the link to the PDF if you're interested in the topic. It
isn't particularly detailed, but it does give some hard numbers to
throw around for the discussion. ;-)

One could argue that the original "releases" were actually beta/final
play test releases given how many problems most games have at that
point. Which would make the decade or two later "remaster" that actual >release of the finished product.

* get the report here:
https://marketing.wearemtm.com/remakevsinnovate
(PDF download, real email address not required ;-)

** completely pointless aside: I finally added the word "remaster" to
my newsreader's spell-check. It was, oddly, not a word already in its
dictionary... despite the fact that it didn't have problems with words
like 'kerfuffle' or 'shenanigan'.

Unlike "remaster", a new internet age word, "kerfuffle" and "shenanigan"
are positively ancient with popular usage going back around *GASP* A
HUNDRED YEARS!! Maybe even more! Amazing the complex multi-syllable
words our cave man ancestors came up with.

a little history...



The Evolution of Kerfuffle

Fuffle is an old Scottish verb that means “to muss” or “to throw into disarray”—in other words, to (literally) ruffle someone’s (figurative) feathers. The addition of car-, possibly from a Scottish Gaelic word
meaning “wrong” or “awkward,” didn’t change its meaning much. In the
19th century carfuffle, with its variant curfuffle, became a noun, which
in the 20th century was embraced by a broader population of English
speakers and standardized to kerfuffle, referring to a more figurative feather-ruffling. There is some kerfuffle among language historians over
how the altered spelling came to be favored. One theory holds that it
might have been influenced by onomatopoeic words like kerplunk that
imitate the sound of a falling object hitting a surface.

and ...

The history of shenanigan is as tricky and mischievous as its meaning. Etymologists have some theories about its origins, but no one has been
able to prove them. All we can say for certain is that the earliest
known uses of the word in print appeared in the mid-1800s. Although the "underhanded trick" sense of the word is oldest, the most common senses
in use now are "tricky or questionable practices" (as in "political shenanigans") and "high-spirited behavior" (as in "youthful
shenanigans").

both from https://www.merriam-webster.com

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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