The problem with re-release games

It's hard to confirm or deny this claim.

Re-releases may cause schisms in certain cases, but is this what is intended, or is it unintented side-effect? Also, what would be the monetary incentive to do that, as opposed of taking advantage of an already existing community to gain more money from them?

I believe the mission is actually to make money cause capitalism, which is achieved by directly selling the re-release.

40oz: let me double dmdr question: how tho? i mean, i don't understand how you concluded that. can you explain it in simple words, for dumb ketmars, please? ;-)

I'm using the doom unity port, doom64, and quake re-release as my base for my hypothesis here, I don't know how it works in other games and their communities because this is the community im most familiar with and I don't really pay a lot of attention to others.

The Doom and Quake communities have a vast network of free resources and content to sustain itself. Nobody asked for the Doom64, Quake, or Doom unity ports, but we did get them. Quake already has darkplaces, doom64 already has doom64ex, Doom already has GZDoom. These ports are far superior. What do they exist for? These re-releases are marketed on steam and other game marketplaces for a competitively low price. The marketplace handles the installation, and runs the games through itself as a frontend. Just a couple clicks and you get the game!

I have a few gamer friends who know I like Doom and old school shooters. When these new games come out, they ask if I'm excited. New maps! New and improved multiplayer! You should buy it so we can play together! If you're a part of the community, you already have access to this stuff and more. What is the selling point of the Doom unity port if you only get to pick from a catalog of wads they chose?

The selling point is the convenience. As things get more convenient, and simplified, the old school installation and troubleshooting of Doom and these other rereleases are now comparatively more complex. And because access to the user made content is not included, the goal is shove these free and bountiful resources into obsolescence.

Companies that rerelease games have an extreme budget to continually update these games because they now have a financial incentive to do so. They also have the marketing channels to make their updates bigger and louder so everyone knows about them. It's not important to players to use community source ports, but somehow it's still in my peripherie. Players who want to play Doom or Quake again SHOULD use the community made resources because they are better, more feature rich, created out of love for the game, and free! But because these ports are maintained for free as a side project, there's no promise these will remain active or stable forever without community support. That's not sustainable when companies rereleasing these beloved games are poaching the players over to their platform.

If players migrate to the convenience of the multi-platform support of these rereleases, there will inevitably be division among the community about "the right way" to play the game, because users of community resources and users of the re-releases will not be able to play the same game together.

I have friends who are casual gamers who ask me to play Doom or Quake with them when these new rereleases come out because setting up a game is so quick and easy. They have the gall to ask me to buy, from bethesda, a game I already have. And when I tell them I don't want to, I have to give them this long boring explanation about how I already have what that offers and more. And that they can too! But the process of teaching them how to do it is boring and complex and requires troubleshooting on modern systems and generally 'feels' hokey. That's not as appealing as clickety click click and BOOM new game appears on my screen and the multiplayer option is right there on the main menu etc. etc.

I dont think they're that dumb. And if I'm right, its in their interest for us to think they're that dumb. When it comes to capturing capital from the pool of doom/quake fans, I think a really healthy community that sustains itself without the IP owners' support ultimately effects their bottom line.

I don't really measure a company's ability to maximize profits in terms of being smart or not. I personally lean towards words more like evil, nefarious, manipulative, merciless, etc. Not in all cases, but with how fiercely competitive and oversaturated the market for gaming is now, I do.

I do think giving players a way to grow and sustain a Doom community via user-created content and a EULA in 1993 was a very smart and philanthropic thing to do. The market wasn't as competitive then as it is now, though.

More realistic plan is that they want to suffocate community by denying newcomers from finding their way towards old game and community centered around such. Which they already tried to do by the way they chose names for their reboots.

Now that would be actually plausible.

dmdr, the majority of source ports (including Odamex) use GPLv2 license, which would require them to disclose the source. If they don't want to do it, they have to reinvent the wheel to a great degree, using the copyrighted source code of original game. Though (G)ZDoom used to have non-copyleft license at earlier times, so they didn't have to go all the way back.