Remakes are the new live service games. Is that a good thing?

So far, 2023 is shaping up to be the year that killed the live service game. We've seen publishers pull support for games like Marvel's Avengers and Back 4 Blood and, more recently, there was a strong public backlash to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League for its use of looter-shooter and live service mechanics.  By contrast, remakes and re-releases like Dead Space (2023), Metroid Prime: Remastered and now Resident Evil 4 (2023) have been met with massive acclaim and strong sales.  

What's more, this trend looks set to continue.  While Kill the Justice League remains the only high-profile live service game left to drop, this year is still waiting to give us Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp, a System Shock remake and potentially Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth.  As such, many people have started to celebrate the end of endless, grindy live service games and have ushered-in the age of remakes and re-releases with open arms.  

(Image property of Capcom)

However, while I am as happy as the next guy that my games may no longer be sullied by micro-transactions, gear systems and loot boxes, I am not willing to embrace the remake revolution without a proper examination of what it could mean for us and for the industry more widely.

The Good

Any examination of a new trend should start with why it exists to begin with.  One of the most obvious benefits of the new wave of re-releases is how it has made video game history more accessible.  Due to the fact that, unlike other media, games can only be played on specific hardware, there is a real danger that some of the great games of yester-year could be lost without proper preservation.  As such, re-releases arguably serve an important role in maintaining gaming history by allowing the next generation of gamers to experience older classics.  

Take me as an example, I never owned a GameCube and I was shamefully unaware of Metroid Prime when it came out for the Wii. As a result, the remaster for the Switch has been my first opportunity to play what has been hailed as one of the greatest games of all time.  That wouldn't have happened without a re-release.

(Image property of Retro Studios and Nintendo)

Re-releases also provide an important opportunity for creators to bolster their original vision for a game.  Kirby's Return to Dreamland: Deluxe was re-released for the Switch this year and includes a slew of new content that the creators simply could not fit into the original.  Similarly, the Dead Space remake tweaked its story and altered its protagonist from being silent to voiced in order to better deliver the narrative that they created in the original.

Above all else, though, the reason we will continue to see more re-releases is because they are also good for publishers.  Take the example of The Last of Us.  It was released in 2013 for the PlayStation 3.  Not long after, it was remastered for PlayStation 4.  It was then remade in 2022 for PlayStation 5 and is soon to be released again for PC this year.  That means that The Last of Us has been released on four different occasions across ten years and has been a headline exclusive for three generations of PlayStation consoles.  

Getting that much value out of a single story and set of mechanics is a pretty good return on investment.  Not only that, but having a game be re-released so often means that it stays in the cultural zeitgeist and, by extension, will continue to sell due to positive and repetitive word-of-mouth.

As a result, re-releases are arguably pretty good for maintaining the history of the industry and allowing developers to complete their creative visions.  Let's not kid ourselves though, while these benefits exist, the reason they're popular is because, for publishers, they are a profitable way to milk an IP for all it's worth.

(Image property of HAL Laboratory and Nintendo)

The Bad

When it comes to criticisms of remakes and re-releases, there's usually one argument that leads the way and it goes like this: If AAA publishers are most interested in what parts of their back-catalogues they can remake, who's making the new experiences?  

This is a pretty compelling argument.  We all have games that we love to re-play, but most of us can agree that the second time around never quite lives up to how you felt when you first discovered that game.  Case in point, I loved my third playthrough of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga for letting me relive my childhood memories, but I was filled with a lot more wonder when I played Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga for the first time.

However, it would be facetious to say that remakes and re-releases  will kill all new games.  Along with all of the remakes dropping this year, we are also getting The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Street Fighter 6 and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.  These games represent the fact that the video game industry can still produce new experiences, even if publishers are leaning into re-releases.  

(Image property of Nintendo)

That being said, I'm sure you've noticed a problem with the list that I just gave you.  While all of them are original games, none of them are a new IP.  Zelda, Street Fighter and Star Wars aren't exactly 'new money' in the video game industry.  

Herein lies the rub.  While re-releases are not inherently bad, they suck of a lot of time, money and talent that could be utilised for more original projects.  As a result, once you cut out the re-releases, the vast majority of the games left over on the AAA release schedule are sequels to existing IPs.

To make matters worse, high profile bombs for new IPs, like Forspoken earlier this year, mean that publishers are likely to lean even further away from original stories and more into ones that they know already work i.e. re-releases.

(Image property of Luminous Productions and Square Enix)

This leaves a very heavy burden for indie games to carry and, while the indie-sphere is doing a great job picking up the creative slack left behind by the AAAs with games like Hades and Hollow Knight, it might not be enough.  While both are undeniably great games, high profile indie successes like Hades and Hollow Knight don't come around that often.  Usually, there's only one or two a year that hit it big which means that new ideas flowing into the AAA from the indies may be few and far between.

(Image property of Supergiant Games)

As such, while they are good for keeping old ideas popular, re-releases could pose a real problem for creativity permeating through the industry, and that's before you even get into...

The Ugly

Setting aside the debate and the issues that I've raised so far, there is one real danger lingering around the remake revolution that I just can't seem to shake, sustainability.  You see, regardless of whether you think that re-releases are choking or preserving the industry in its current state, there remains an awkward question over how long things can stay this way.

Many of the re-releases for 2023 are of high-profile games from around ten to twenty years ago (Resident Evil 4, Dead Space etc.).  But if our biggest titles in 2023 are re-releases, what will you re-release in 2033?  This may sound like I'm flirting with predicting the future but it's an interesting question.  If our big titles now are re-releases, what will there be to re-release in the future?

The answer could be one of two things.  Option A is that AAA publishers will re-release the same games again and we'll play The Last of Us: Part 1 20th Anniversary Edition or whatever.  Now, I like The Last of Us, but I'm not sure I'll want another version of the same game ten years from now.  I'd much rather see an evolution of the formula, new ideas for the franchise or new story threads.  Continuing to pump out the same story just with slightly shinier graphics would make for a pretty stagnant industry.  In short, as a man in his twenties, I don't want my hypothetical kid in the future to play the exact same games as me.  I'd much rather they play a new game made for their generation just like how The Last of Us was made for mine.

(Image property of Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Option B is that something breaks and AAA publishers realise that, if they want to keep re-releasing games in the future, they need to make something new in the present.  This would require some self-awareness, which AAA publishers aren't exactly known for, but it is possible.  Re-releases may be doing well at the moment but after a few expensive flops or very-public bombs a la GTA: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition, things could very easily change.

Verdict

Overall, I'm not too worried about the remake revolution.  For now, the games being produced are fun, (mostly) well-made and doing a good job of maintaining interest in potentially forgotten IPs.  There is a danger if this trend continues that video games may enter a creativity recession with AAA benching new ideas in favour of solid profit margins.  In this case, indie games would become all the more valuable for delivering new experiences.  

However, if there is anything to learn from the slow death of live services, it's that publishers can change when they have to.  Just like how publishers have abandoned live service games, they may also abandon re-releases if people stop buying them and demand new experiences instead.  In the meantime, there's nothing wrong with just enjoying the opportunity to revisit some of these classic games in their modern formats where they can truly thrive.  I know that I will!

All images and properties mentioned are the property of their original creators and are invoked here for the purposes of commentary and review.