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A comment on John Carmack goes off about online-only games being abandoned. Parent comment

Re:John Carmack goes off about online-only games being aband... by raincole on Sunday February 12, 2023 @07:03PM (#34768558)
> For example, you can still play games like Master of Orion 2 or Total Annihilation in multiplayer, because they rely on players hosting servers, and some people still host servers 25+ years after release (and people have even written fan patches to make that possible today, if necessary).

You make it sound like a good thing. And it indeed is for gamers. But it's the worse nightmare for established dev/pub that people play the old games, on their own servers, instead of your latest title.

It actually happened quite a lot. Starcraft I was (is?) more popular than Starcraft II in Korea, where the biggest Starcraft E-sport scenes are. I recently learned that Red Alert II is still fairly popular today in China, and Red Alert III players don't exist.

"How to out compete our previous title" is a real problem that established studios face. The lack of durability is a "solution".

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Re:John Carmack goes off about online-only games being aband... by jdbernard on Sunday February 12, 2023 @07:34PM (#34768740)
I'm glad we didn't have to worry about Mozart or Beethoven trying to bury their previous works so that they wouldn't have to compete with their previous titles. This seems like a perverse incentive unique to modern creative works.
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Re:John Carmack goes off about online-only games being aband... by raincole on Sunday February 12, 2023 @09:52PM (#34769615)
Well without modern technology, you need a well-trained orchestra to replicate Symphone No.9. The marginal cost was a totally different beast at that time.
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Re:John Carmack goes off about online-only games being aband... by PeterisP on Monday February 13, 2023 @10:17AM (#34774432)
Well, you have to make a better title then. If people prefer Red Alert 2 to Red Alert 3, then it's not like Red Alert 3 somehow deserves or is entitled to any money or attention; it has to earn it by being a better, desirable product - and from the opposite side, the players are entitled to keep playing the older game forever, they paid for it fair and square.
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