Video Game Companies Examines profits summary : WHAT? We're doing well for once?! What the hell?! Get Accounting into my office immediately.
Accounting: What is thy bidding, oh Dark One?
Video Game Companies: Quit kissing up to me. I want to know why we're doing so well. '22 was sewage mostly.
Accounting: Well, Dark One, We've been selling Dead Space, Resident Evil 4, System Shock. Gonna Roll out MGS3 onto the shelves--
Video Game Companies: WTF those games are more than two decades old! That can't be right.
Accounting: I have the receipts right here, Dark One. Numbers don't lie.
Video Game Companies: Get Marketing up here. I wanna know what sorta con he's running.
Marketing comes up to the office
Marketing: What does the Dark One command of me? I live to serve.
Video Game Companies: Accounting tells me you have somehow duped millions upon millions into buying games more than 20 years old. Aren't they gonna be pissed at us when they realize they are paying for products they have already bought?
Marketing: But my Lord, my scheme is fool proof.
Accounting: That's what you said about Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda.
Marketing: You can spray-paint a dead rat gold, but you can only sell it to so many before they get wise to how it is, in fact, still a dead rat that has been merely spray painted gold. It was my job to sell them to the unsuspecting, yourselves included, not to make sure they were actually good.
Video Game Companies: So how are you swindling customers this time?
Marketing: Easy. I have rebranded them all as remakes. I have slapped a fresh coat of paint on them, updated some interfaces and control schemes, and the customers are lapping it up.
Accounting: That's the laziest freaking tactic I've seen yet in this business. One really good remake once in a blue moon, I can see. But three to four remakes and not even fully halfway into the new year? You'll burn people out on the remakes.
Marketing: By the time that happens, we'll hopefully be more financially stable. Besides, most of the other stuff we've been releasing are buggy, micro transaction-ridden messes, borderline unplayable on release, All the good $#@(, like Arkham Knight, and Jedi Survivor, particularly suck when ported to PC, so we aren't even capturing the full market that we should.
Video Game Companies: He does bring up a good point. Just look at what happened with the GTA collection. Or CDPR
CDPR: ALL I NEEDED WAS ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS TO FINISH IT! WHAT THE HELL WAS SO UNREASONABLE ABOUT A NEARLY 2 DECADE DEVELOPMENT CYCLE!? WHAT, THE PHANTOM LIBERTY EXPANSION, THE LOADS OF PATCHES ISN'T ENOUGH FOR YOU PRIMADONNAS?
Everybody: SHUT UP CDPR!
Marketing: We'll hook them on the nostalgia factor alone. Plus, shilling for remakes or Remasters comes with multiple advantages. Most of the leg work has already been done. Plus, everyone knows screwing up a video game remake, especially a classic, is an even worse mistake then releasing something like a Gollum-centered Video Game. The fans would burn us in effigy if we had screwed up, say, the remake of RE2.
Accounting: So in other words, when it comes to remakes of games like System Shock, the company is left with literally no choice except to not suck?
Marketing: Precisely.
Video Game Companies: B-but what about all the new titles coming out this year?!
Marketing: Is anyone talking about them? Or are they talking about how awesome the remakes like System Shock are?
Accounting: But don't you understand how dangerous this Remake trend could be for us, you master of evil?!
Video Game Companies: What are you blathering on about?
Accounting: When we do a good remake, doesn't it just shine a light on how poorly the rest of our ideas of what makes a good video game actually do in comparison? If we only do a great Video Game like the RE4 remake just to make money, it's almost tantamount to admitting most of our industry is a money laundering scheme, and we try and get away with giving our customers something just above shovelware in terms of quality most times. Steven Seagal and Uwe Boll are hated for exactly the same things we try and get away with, it's just that their products are direct to DVD. Remakes could shoot us in the foot in the long run, since modern games don't really have an excuse for not being more awesome than older titles, and it risks reminding people of just how much we have dumbed down the medium to appeal to the largest base possible, how many features we have removed from modern titles, like cheat menus, alternative costumes, hidden levels, actual, meaningful branching paths in large stories. Can you imagine what a fully faithful remake of Daggerfall would ultimately do to us? The Customer would ask why we no longer do stuff like that regularly.
Video Game Companies: HA! Our 'customers' have the memory of a goldfish! This is a foolproof scheme! None of them are smart enough to ask all those fancy shmancy supply and demand economic stuff. Marketing, hot diggity dog, you've done it AGAIN!
Marketing: I live to serve, Dark One.
Video Game Customers: RAGGGGHAAARRRR! Some one get me something, anything to bleach the memories of playing Battlefield 2042 and Cyberpunk on release day!
Marketing: Shhhh. There there. Play this awesome System Shock Remake. You'll forget how crappy the rest of our products have been for the last half decade
Video Game Customers: Much better. I actually feel dumb enough to start pre-ordering stuff again!
Marketing: YOU ARE NOT YOU WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE QUALITY GAMING
