Nowdays are we so short of creative energies that we need to remaster everything?

Some remasters use those creative energies.
They help in preserving old videogames.

Nowdays are we so short of creative energies that we need to remaster everything?

There, remastered your comment for you.

yes

I'm impressed.

Short Answer: Yes

Long Answer: Most AAA released nowadays are just rehashes of older games with minimal changes and a new coat of paint every year (see Call of Duty). So yes.

As we remaster movies I don't see a problem in remastering games. Especially the early CD games with highly compressed audio and video or old 3D games with low poly models and low resolution really beneift from that. And in best cases they even re-do the controls so the game just gets more playable.

I don't mind remastering, if it's done in a respectful way (like Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandago). What I loathe are remakes (like Gabriel Knight).

Remasters are fine if they stay true to the source and do not brickwall it in its design. This goes for both games and music, because good god, remastered music is a gamble.

Games get old very quickly because the systems needed to run them are considered obsolete in just a few years so, emulators aside, this is the only way of making those games run again in newer systems. If companies continued selling old machines for retro gamers this wouldn't be needed. It's a real pity there is so much programmed obsolescence in this industry (How the hell can 2 years old games be considered old?).

So yo. Remastering is not a new thing.

Look: This is a remastered and re-released collection of every King Crimson album recorded in the first 40 years of their existence. The release of the 40th Anniversary series was treated as a whole big huge event as if KC were recording new material and it rocks. Why does it rock? Because you get to hear In The Court Of The Crimson King as if it was recorded yesterday.

Is this is indicative of King Crimson's lack of creative resources? No it fucking isn't. Because King Crimson are currently touring and possibly making a new album.

Here is a website and advertising campaign for the re-release and remastering of every Pink Floyd album recorded before The Endless River. Again, holy moly, listening to Echoes as if it was recorded yesterday is an incredible goddamn experience.

Here is every release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Different covers, paper composition etc. Some are 'special releases' that come in amazing and beautiful box sets with lovely bindings and I sleep with my Folio copies under my pillow.

I won't bother linking this next one, just give you some instructions.

Look on Amazon for a movie. Any movie you like. You will notice it likely has a DVD release, possibly a remastered DVD release and a remastered on Bluray release.

Remastering isn't about shovelling out shit because you don't have any better ideas. Double Fine is working on at least one new game right now. Pink Floyd sort of made a new album (it sucks tho) and Hollywood shits out enough movies in a week to make up for all their remasters.

It's about freshening up the experience for a newer audience who maybe haven't been able to enjoy it.

You try to tell me that watching Twelve Monkeys on your ripped up VHS is in any way superior or preferable to enjoying it in a remastered form. Replace 'Twelve Monkeys' with YOUR favourite movie as appropriate.

Day of The Tentacle has not been commercially available since the early 2000s, and even when it was released then it was a tragically limited release that's quite hard to get a hold of now. The people responsible for the creation of DOTT have not made any money from it directly for nearly 20 years and an entire generation of human beings have not been able to easily get a hold of it and play it in ideal conditions. In no way at all is a remastered release either an indictment on the creative energies of the people at Double Fine or Disney or anywhere else and in no way at all is it even remotely a negative thing - unless you're a communist, in which case making something for profit should be a concept that makes you physically sick. Have fun shaving Tim Shafer's beard off with your sickle, but please don't hit him with your hammer.

There are some cases where the remaster has not been very good. The 30th Anniversary edition of Dark Side Of The Moon attracted a lot of negative attention from hardcore Pink Floyd fans because they changed the cover art a bit. I know right? OUTRAGE. The Monkey Island special editions also fail to please a lot of people (like myself). The new art sucks shit out a straw, the re-recorded music sounds terrible and even in classic mode the original music isn't ideal. However, I like the fact the special editions exist because they make Monkey Island commercially available again, and you can extract the original game from it and play it in ScummVM or DOS even with the voice acting.

On the whole though, a remaster hurts about 0 people. The people who DO get hurt by a remaster are the ones who, while working on it, trip over on their way to their desk. Similarly, it might hurt you if you fall over on your way to the shop to pick up a copy. Sorry if that happens, but it's no one's fault but yours. Or the person who put the obstacle there that you tripped over. Watch where you put your goddamn feet and you won't fall over. It's easy.

Unless of course you are in some way hurt by the fact that remastering is a thing. Please tell me how.

Long time no see @TheJoe

They are free to remaster whatever (even my sentences is seems).
I don't care about who, how much and when makes money from a remaster.
I don't give a damn about how a remaster is done.
I end up buying remastered game myself: there's no shame in it.

It's just about less original contents generated in the game market.
Look at the various Thief/X-Com/Master of Orion.....

Personally I'm happier to see new, original contents, then a remaster.

Right, so do I, but working on a remaster very rarely impacts on the ability to produce anything new. I mean it did with LucasArts because they were going down the pan anyway.

Original content is everywhere in games. You just don't see a lot of it because the major services you use, like GOG, Steam and Youtube are bad at allowing you to discover it. We don't have an originality problem in that there isn't enough of it, we have a problem in that there's too much of it and it's too hard for you or anyone else to find the good shit.

This is the first good thread in like 5 years. I like good threads.

It depends on how developers remaster a game.