trueshot: You are engaging in a false dichotomy fallacy, by stating that there are only two possibilities in game development and that one is good and the other is not: creating new games (good) and maintaining legacy games (bad). You are vastly oversimplifying game development, and additionally the burden on you is to prove to me why Vicarious Visions (maker of Crash Bandicoot Remastered), QLOC (maker of Dark Souls Remastered), Forgotten Empires (Age of Empires: Definitive Edition) are all "parasites." If the fruits of their labour were so worthless, why would they all exist? If you espouse the view that all developers who remaster titles are parasites, you must provide a bit more evidence. To be 100% clear, my view is that a mutually beneficial contractual arrangement on intellectual property with stipulations of royalties would not be considered a "parasitic" business arrangement by any entity nor any court.
My argument on brand is not a false equivalency. Black Isle Studios is a defunct gaming organization whose members spread across Bioware, Obsidian Entertainment, and Beamdog. These games are not released with marketing that suggests Beamdog is in any way related to these organizations. The name of the game is not "brand" and it is in fact your misuse of the definition that leads to this flawed argument. My point is that the value of the name of the game is so tiny that you could not possibly make a reasonable case that it contains tremendous growth potential. Neverwinter Nights, while very popular for its time, is not worth nearly the same as say Call of Duty. Just having the name "Call of Duty" in any title is enough to generate a known and predictable amount of profit regardless of the particulars about which developers are implementing the game. I think this stigma against remastered titles, while well-founded, is misplaced for Beamdog...
Now you've made a straw man. I never once said they were bad. In fact I explicitly stated that they weren't inherently bad. Remasters or maintenance is not bad, just like a parasite is not inherently bad. You are drawing meaning from my words that was never put there and are arguing an entire case based on that. Beamdog deserves some of their hate simply for removing the original games from sale to force people to buy their new game, even if those people would prefer the older game. That's where they're bad. I think you're conflating bits of my argument because I never said that remastering older titles for modern systems was bad, it only becomes bad when you don't give people the choice to enjoy the originals (which, in their defense they actually do, at an exorbitantly higher price).
Your false dichotomy argument is nothing but a scarecrow. :) Burden of proof is on me to prove what? That a bunch of companies I wasn't even talking about fall into a category or not? Knock yourself out. I'm not going down that rabbit hole because you introduced them into the argument, not I. Stick to the discussion at hand.
The name of a game can totally be brand. Anything that gets a certain set of criteria associated with it becomes a brand. If a new Baldur's Gate game were released today, it would sell copies just for being Baldur's Gate regardless of who actually made because of brand or name recognition. If you want to pick nits, go ahead.
No one ever said anything about growth potential. Again, you are creating arguments to knock down. Also, who said anything about Call of Duty? Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights is a bigger name than Beamdog. That was my point, yet you keep dragging other companies into it. Beamdog is happy in their niche (for now at least) and they do what they do at least ok. But the truth is if they were remaking games no one ever heard of, the anger against them wouldn't be so strong.
Side note: Since you mentioned them: A LOT of people were exceptionally pissed about the state of the Dark Souls Remaster too (I own both the original and the remaster for that as well). QLOC's behavior isn't much different than Beamdog's though. Remaster, remove the original from sale, and don't even offer it as an extra. There was MUCH gnashing of teeth in the community and the remaster effectively killed the multiplayer on DS by dividing a dwindling player base in roughly half.
Look, you need to do the leg-work to make sure your argument is factually sound. Here is a description of the legal distinction between brand and trademark:
"While your brand represents your reputation and business in the public eye, a trademark legally protects those aspects of your brand that are unique and specific to your company. It is a mistake to use the terms "trademark" and "brand" interchangeably, as they have very important differences. When considering the two, remember the "all-but-not-all" rule. All trademarks are brands, while not all brands are trademarks.
In its simplest form, your brand is your image. It is what the public sees and thinks about your company. A trademark is a specific aspect of your brand which has legal protection as it is a unique identifier for you."
You are referring to the brand of a company that has been defunct for about 15 years now. This brand is no more. You are pointing out that the trademarks in the names of their titles have value; I'm not actually disputing this. I'm making a claim that that the value of these trademarks is so low as to be negligible in the negotiations between the two parties. The actual code and deliverables most certainly have way more value in the negotiations between defunct Black Isle owners and Beamdog. Contrast this to trademarks like "Call of Duty" where there is no need for any code, any assets to really be discussed- the name alone is worth orders of magnitude more monetary value. Again, in your case you conflated the terms brand and trademark. Furthermore, nowhere does Beamdog use Bioware marketing material or Bioware's name in their product listings. They want no association with the Bioware brand, at all, for both legal and growth reasons.
You also said this (unless edited since):
"I never implied that they didn't do any work. I said they were parasitic (they are) because they don't create anything of their own, but rather make their living updating other games. How good those "enhancements" are is a matter of opinion..."
Prima facie, you implied that developers that do not create works of their own are parasitic. A parasitic business arrangement would most certainly mean that one party benefits at the expense of the other. You are free to redefine this though as you see fit. My point is that a mutually beneficial contractual business arrangement that generates free cash flow for both parties cannot- by definition- be parasitic. The word you would then be looking for is symbiotic. I provided you with examples of highly successful remasters that (from what we can gather) are pure cash flow plays for both the contracted studio and the original owners of the IP. If you think that Beamdog specifically is truly freeloading in their arrangement- and that this is not typical of remastered games in general- you've got to make that point explicitly and provide your reasoning. I really genuinely feel that Beamdog has made more contributions to NWN:EE to date than QLOC (with vastly more resources and financial backing) has with Dark Souls Remastered...I guess if I feel that way, it's not a surprise that I'm disputing your use of the word "parasite" so heavily.
