Comment by a_t48 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by a_t48 | Hacker News Reader

My favorite game of all time, Oni, is also stuck in purgatory for similar reasons. It was the last game Bungie put out before being bought out by Microsoft. In theory Take-Two Interactive owns the rights to the IP, but it's really fuzzy and they aren't very interested in finding out if they actually own it for purposes of selling or licensing the IP. Distribution rights are also theoretically owned by 2K (Gathering of Developers [PC distro] and Rockstar Games [PS2distro]) are both now owned by Take-Two. (Source: https://wiki.oni2.net/Rights)

I've heard rumor that the person at Take-Two is fairly tight-fisted with old IP and not interested in anyone outside the company getting access to it, but that might be unfounded.

(If you work at Take-Two/2K Games publishing and are interested in licensing the distribution rights, shoot me a message. From what I know of the source, it should be an easy port to modern systems, and you'd make a lot of people very happy. It _should_ be profitable to do so. I'd be opening to setting up a small studio to do so. I have the time and the cash right now.)

Isn't the primary reason why games don't get release to avoid them competing with modern games for gamers focus. Like if I spend time playing older games then I'm not going to spend as much time on newer games so I don't need to spend as much money per hour of game time.

This is a proof that copyright terms are too long IMO.

Unless someone is actively selling a work, ie you can buy it, then the work should lapse in to the public domain. The appropriate IP office could issue a decision, on request and payment of a fee, saying who the current seller is or that no seller was found and so the work is PD. Indications could then be presented in the relevant countries IP journals saying "work X" will fall into PD on $DATE which would allow interested parties to intervene before the certificate was issued (ie saving their copyright) by saying where the work was available. Test purchases could be carried out to ensure companies don't hide their saleable works.

> Isn't the primary reason why games don't get release to avoid them competing with modern games for gamers focus. Like if I spend time playing older games then I'm not going to spend as much time on newer games so I don't need to spend as much money per hour of game time.

This is the first time I've heard this theory. In general I don't think this is the case - game development is risky and expensive. Economically it makes sense to milk every old game for all it is worth, if people will still buy it and there aren't any ongoing costs (servers, etc). Porting a game to a new platform is usually much cheaper. You don't need a full art and engineering team, nor do you need much in the way of design (some might be needed in cases of a UI refresh or additions to gameplay).

See: Nintendo. The original Super Mario Bros has been ported to nearly every system they've put out. And people keep paying for it. Other publishers will do this, too. There's https://www.gog.com/ which is pretty much dedicated to republishing old games.

Milking old games doesn't make sense at all. Most old games are not on a subscription model.

It's still cheaper than making a new game.

There's so many older games being released on the Switch, for example. And they seem to be selling fairly well.

Also see Hollywood (different market, same logic), with the extreme example of the newest director’s cut of the fully remastered and digitally improved etc. etc. version of Star Wars.

If you have a product that has brand value, it makes sense to reuse that value to market other products.

Also see JavaScript (used the (perceived) value of Java) and USB and Bluetooth (pivoted to completely different ways to shove data over a wire/the air a few times, reusing the brand to become popular)

And we're seeing just the same end result, with gaps missing in the cultural record. For example, there are Doctor Who episodes that simple don't exist anymore [1]. The contracts of the time specified a maximum number of broadcasts, after which they were taped over. Now, with loss of compatibility, closing of multiplayer servers, logon servers, games are going the same route. Another loss of culture.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes

I don't think old games compete with typical modern AAA games. They're far more likely to compete with indie games, but that's good for publishers too - they set a demanding standard (most "indie" games today are total crap TBH) for something that really might compete for their focus.

I don't think so, Skyrim has been re-released around 5 times.

> Isn't the primary reason why games don't get release to avoid them competing with modern games for gamers focus.

Games companies are constantly and ruthlessly competing with each other for gamer focus over modern games. You don't avoid that competition by simply not releasing your own stuff.

But even assuming you still have the original source code and assets for a title, spending a good chunk of $$$ to modernize a title to run decently on modern operating systems (lest you be flooded with time/$$$ consuming support requests), updating assets to to look like they're from the current decade (so it's marketable beyond an extremely niche nostalgic audience), all to maybe get a fraction of the original sales when second hand sales and piracy have likely saturated the market for the original, as sought out by the nostalgic - it's simply not a great time investment.

You can drive down the costs by just throwing DOSBox at the problem in some cases, like GOG has done for many titles. Or maybe it's been so long that your remaster is effectively a new game, ala FF7, and you can sell it to a whole new generation of gamers. Or maybe you had a subscription based game ala WOW, and maybe third party reverse engineered servers didn't already completely moot the interest in a re-release. Maybe.

But even then, a re-release is probably not going to be your next genre-defining blockbuster title.

You’re somewhat conflating a port with a remaster, here. Remasters are significantly more expensive, yes.

> You’re somewhat conflating a port with a remaster, here.

Guilty as charged! But there's a sliding scale and blurred lines, so I think it's warranted.

There are "remasters" that vary from basically untouched originals, to entirely new games. And while old-PC to new-PC is rarely thought of as a port per se, in extreme cases it effectively is.

> Remasters are significantly more expensive, yes.

Some are, some aren't. Porting can be plenty expensive as well.

They tried making a sequel. https://www.google.com/amp/s/kotaku.com/bungie-s-cult-classi...

Yeah, I've seen it, it's super neat. The higher resolution models are pretty. PS2 only, though.

Oni was such a great game, I'm really bummed to hear Take-Two isn't interested in figuring out the IP rights.

The Myth series is sort of stuck in the same dilemma. I wasn't a part of the talks for either game, unfortunately. I think the people who were trying before were trying to buy out the IP, which in my personal opinion is less likely to happen. I'd rather get it distributed with modding tools.

Edit: the modding tools exist already, but it's likely that the creators of them [myself included ;)] could come to an agreement for distribution.

Anyone seeing this who wants to play Myth 2 online with the small but friendly community. See: http://gateofstorms.net/

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