Is the current video game remake trend a worthy nod to the past, or a safe play obstructing new ideas?
Dec. 24, 2023Opinion | Making sense of life in the time of remakes
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The history of video games is as much a history of remaking and remastering: bedroom coders pulling apart the pieces and putting them back together, developers recreating arcade games for home consoles, or using better tech and bigger budgets to move with the times. Remasters of beloved titles – and some not so – have trodded along in the decades since, often as vibrant a part of the gaming landscape as new titles.
Back to the future
A well-done remake can be the best introduction to an iconic series
Remaking any old favorite means appealing to a ready and waiting audience. Business savvy might dictate that, licensing permitting, as wide a release as possible is necessary. So one of the greatest driving forces behind remakes is to broaden or expand on a title’s exclusivity the first time around. System Shock, the cerebral cyberpunk and spiritual forerunner to Bioshock, was a cult classic on MS-DOS and Mac back in 1994 and, after a rocky development saga, the remake enjoyed a cross-platform launch earlier this year.
It’s a shrewd business move, one that seesNaughty Dogcontinue to cement its cross-media empire. Though, in the case of the first TLOU, it’s coming close to Skyrim syndrome, in which a game is retooled and released in every conceivable way. As an IP, TLOU has had more remakes and remasters than original titles at this point. Re-introducing its magnum opus for the sake of a market being there needn’t be a prerequisite. It’s also serving to shrink the gap between original release and remake, which grows narrower year on year as trading on nostalgia eats itself.
“It’s also been argued – compellingly so – that the spate of remakes point to the future direction of game design”
Streaming services and the box office alike attest to the power and profitability of nostalgia, and it only makes sense video games would follow. The vast majority of the biggest remakes from this year are titles that originally released in the late nineties and early noughties. They’re foundational games but, crucially, ones that were played by kids who’ve grown up to be games journalists, streamers, and developers themselves. Why wouldn’t you appeal to this pre-baked audience with influence and the income to spare? The downside, of course, is that these games fail harder if they don’t hit the mark. Remember Warcraft 3: Reforged? Now compare that to a Forspoken-style mishit which, when the memes were done, just got swept under the digital rug and largely forgotten.
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