More remakes to come from LucasArts

[Rather Dashing]

Originally Posted by Bagge

Of course Lucasarts are hoping to profit from these remakes and special editions, but that is also the case with pretty much any game you'll ever play. I really don't see what the alternatives to these games being done for profit are - either short-term or long-term. In any case, they are not doing these remakes simply to be nice.

Everyone who creates and sells a product expects to(or at least WANTS to) make money. This reality isn't lost on me, but there's something more "mechanical" about a corporation the size of LucasArts than...say, a company the size of Telltale or the dozens of developers smaller than Telltale.

There is a financial plan behind doing special editions of old adventure games. Either Lucasarts management is hoping to turn a nice little profit per game, or they are looking at the oppurtunity to reenter the adventure game market, and needs to test the financial waters for these games and give their staff expertise in working on adventure games.

However, while the managment of a company looks at games from a financial view, the developers, artists, writers and coders working on the game can have a much more artistic and creative view on the project they are working on. The way I see it, nothing negatve can come from this. Worst case-scenario is that Lucasarts does a couple of flawed remakes of old adventure games before returning to doing Star Wars games, and the best case-scenario is a full fledged return of Lucasarts as a creative powerhouse doing new adventure games. We're probably landing somewhere in the middle.

It's not a detrimental thing if LucasArts only pumps out a few shallow remakes. But it's hardly something to be extremely excited for in my eyes. Unlike other genres, adventures aren't something you can really play through again until you've sufficiently forgotten enough aspects of the puzzles. You're not really "playing" it if you know what's going to happen, after all, since a good 80%* of the gameplay is in your head. So I don't get much value there, I don't get anything new.

Also, I have a more grim view of the worst-case scenario. The LucasArts remakes could be mediocre, and siphon money from the indie adventure game market, effectively suffocating and killing the market of creative games that I've been enjoying for years.




*Statistic completely made up.

Originally Posted by Pale Man

People are always going to judge a book by its cover, so if LEC wants new fans (which they do, and I think we all want adventures to be profitable), they pretty much have to make sure the games don't look like crap to newer generations of gamers who have never known anything worse than PS2.

I'd like adventures to be SUSTAINABLE, but I'd rather it not make heaps of money. That has ruined pretty much every genre of game and film already, but I've played plenty of great adventures since the "Great Fall of LucasArts". Granted they've been fringe titles, but I as a consumer really don't have to care how many people bought the same thing as I did, my only concern is that what I get is good. And I've played many great games that were obviously made because they wanted to make something incredible, and not because graphs, charts, and spreadsheets fed the latest financial trends decided that X+Y=$ because certain elements are "in season".

Now, again, I only care that the product is good. So if the result of bureaucratic mingling in the arts produces something good, I'm not going to complain. But my list of modern mainstream games that have been good in recent years is smaller than my list of good indie games in the past year, so at least there's a trend there. It's not an idealism thing so much as it is I think the indie market fuels the kind of creative environment that produces what I want. And LucasArts has proven to be so turbulent and unreliable in both the Star Wars and Adventure departments due to that type of mechanical logic that I can't be excited for this sort of thing from them. Lucidity has my attention far more than, say, Game #54:Special Edition.

Shallow? Yes. Graphics whores? Yes. That's the way of things. You know and I know that good game > graphics, but there are people who are dumb enough to get that equation mixed up

First of all, that's not an equation. An equation includes an "=" sign, what you have there is an inequality.

Secondly, graphics are PART of what make the game good. I care more about style and can tolerate the technical limitations of older machines far better than some, but I'd rather not play a game in which every graphical asset was replaced with random blobs, and my interest in the games "Machinarium" and "Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet" is based almost SOLEY on graphics, I love the look of "World of Goo", and one of my big issues with Curse of Monkey Island is the art and animation for characters.

A mechanic can make up for graphics, and to a lesser extent vice-versa.

and Lucasarts wants their money just as much as they want ours, and hey, if it works, good for them, they deserve money from idiots and people with common sense alike.

I don't WANT the industry to get their money. We all know what THEIR vote does to a product, what the popular consensus demands.

[SHODANFreeman]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

First of all, that's not an equation. An equation includes an "=" sign, what you have there is an inequality.

I know that, but it sounds pretty stupid to say that they "get that inequality mixed up."

Furthermore, I want Lucasarts to make as much money as humanly possible on any decent adventure game they release, even if it's just a shallow little remake. Why? This allows them to allocate more funds to future projects in the same vein to increase the quality.

If all they were doing was applying a blur filter to the original MI, pre-recording the midi instruments, and using a higher resolution font for the dialogue, but charging $20+ for it, then yeah I'd definitely have a severe problem with that. But they're, for the most part, creating new high resolution backgrounds and character art, recording live musicians, and full voiceovers for only $10 (or less if you get it on sale).

On a side note, the reason indie games may be of higher quality than you'd expect from a mainstream title is that the majority of indie developers are doing everything by themselves, and for themselves. They don't have the strict deadlines, they don't have massive teams of employees demanding hefty paychecks, they can work as long and as hard as they want on something without having to spend an extra penny. If a mainstream studio worked their employees 16 hours a day every day of the week, they'd either have a massive turnover rate, or be paying ridiculous wages for that amount of work. Many indie developers are only a couple of guys, and many of them work incredibly hard on their games because they either have hopes of getting their company to become mainstream, or that they want to get a career in a more prestigious company. If you enjoy indie games, that's great, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with mainstream games, they just have to follow different sets of rules.

[City Of Delusion]

Originally Posted by Javi-Wan Kenobi

I've seen that LucasArts has released SNES "Super Star Wars" on Wii's Virtual Console, and they plan to release the other two episodes.

Correction: they already have in the US. Rest of the point stands.

Personally, all I want is for LucasArts to make their back catalogue easily available, instead of me having to rummage through Amazon and Ebay if I want to buy, for example, Hit The Road.

[Javi-Wan Kenobi]

Originally Posted by City Of Delusion

Correction: they already have in the US.

Lucky you American. We poor European second class citizens are still waiting for them (and for ToMI Chapter 2, too)

[Rather Dashing]

Originally Posted by Pale Man

Furthermore, I want Lucasarts to make as much money as humanly possible on any decent adventure game they release, even if it's just a shallow little remake. Why? This allows them to allocate more funds to future projects in the same vein to increase the quality.

They seem to have done fine enough with the money they had to allocate to the Secret of Monkey Island remake.

If all they were doing was applying a blur filter to the original MI, pre-recording the midi instruments, and using a higher resolution font for the dialogue, but charging $20+ for it, then yeah I'd definitely have a severe problem with that. But they're, for the most part, creating new high resolution backgrounds and character art, recording live musicians, and full voiceovers for only $10 (or less if you get it on sale).

That is a good point, especially because I greatly enjoyed the Secret remake(I didn't even have the issues with Guybrush's look that most people seemed to). But if that's ALL we get, I'm going to be disappointed on the whole, no matter how nice the remakes are.

If a mainstream studio worked their employees 16 hours a day every day of the week, they'd either have a massive turnover rate, or be paying ridiculous wages for that amount of work. Many indie developers are only a couple of guys, and many of them work incredibly hard on their games because they either have hopes of getting their company to become mainstream, or that they want to get a career in a more prestigious company. If you enjoy indie games, that's great, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with mainstream games, they just have to follow different sets of rules.

I've heard differently.

If anyone gets to run by advantageous rules, it's the big developers. They have the resources to buy and push the smaller guys around. They can spend unfathomable amounts of money on ads to bombard people with the product constantly, to the point that a franchise can find its way in the public consciousness as greatness by sheer force of dollars. A big company can usually fall back on their held licenses, allowing other developers to to the grunt work while they rake in licensing fees.

I'm not going to shed a tear for the big multinational multi-million dollar corporation because a person is willing to work night and day to create something good, and ends up outshining a gigantic workforce with millions in resources behind it.

[Hero1]

I'm patiently waiting for Sam & Max: Hit the Road|SE !

[SHODANFreeman]

Originally Posted by Hero1

I'm patiently waiting for Sam & Max: Hit the Road|SE !

Unless Steve Purcell/TTG (depending on their agreement, which I assume assures TTG exclusive rights for a while) agree to do it, I imagine the most Lucasarts could do is the aforementioned blur filter, heh.