Not to turn this into Mr. Adequate’s Angry Blog Of Rage but…

You know how they’re destroying all our beloved old games with stupid remakes that have nothing to do with the original? FaceBook versions of complex strategy and simulation games? ‘XCOM’? Syndicate*? And so on?

We sit around whenever some such bastardized abomination is announced and wonder “Why”. Why are they doing this to our beloved SimCity? Well I think I’ve figured out one reason this happens. Now don’t get me wrong, a good chunk of it is still just because designers (And I’m looking at you Brian Reynolds) seem to not really grasp certain facts about their own game, such as the fact that nobody WANTS SMAC Effect, we want SMAC, the 4x. Otherwise it’s better left alone. Sometimes (And I’m looking at you Will Wright) they just go right off the deep end and decide that Spore needs to be an incredibly casual, cartoony disappointment instead of, you know, good. But these out-of-left-field revivals, the ones that come out of absolutely nowhere and do their best to destroy treasured memories? That I think I’ve got figured out.

See, Pike (Because she actually takes pleasure in my suffering) linked me to this article. Now that’s a long and depressing read, but the gist of it is a guy who tells us all about why games aren’t about games anymore, but about reducing them to the most mechanistic profit possible. Now, we’re not opposed to profit here. I just think that it should be one among a number of considerations and that profit is best made through quality rather than microtransactions.

But anyway. That particular page I linked you to is what sparked my theory. See, the people making these games need monetary support. They have to go to investors, i.e. old dudes in suits, and explain to them why X is a good investment. And that’s not going to be easy because the old dudes will probably think gaming ended with Pac-Man and is still the exclusive preserve of 12 year old boys. So. What’s a prospective developer to do?

Well if you’re smart, you’d go in and say “We’ve got this videogame idea. The franchise already exists – in fact it’s 20 years old, has sold millions of copies, and is hugely critically acclaimed.” The suits won’t understand the nuances here – they’ll just see “Hey this is already a winner we just need to cash in”. It’s doing half the job for you. The players who actually played the old games don’t enter this equation at any time. It’s not a poor attempt to rouse interest through using a known name (Though they will tell the investors this will happen), that does not factor into this process until the thing is green lighted and the poor bastards in PR have to try and spin it.

Or am I just being a conspiratorial nutbird who should join the ranks of those who think we need to return to the gold standard and that the moon landing was faked?

*In this edit: I forget that I had intended to append something. Syndicate is being made by Starbreeze, so it’s likely to be a damned good game. Just not, you know… Syndicate. Maybe. Who knows.