lackblogger
SasqWatch
- Joined
- November 1, 2014
- Messages
- 4,762
I'm gradually working through the Nancy Drew games series by HerInteractive, there's currently 33 in the main series before you get to spin-off and mobile games and the like. Each game is its own unique work of art, in the gaming sense of art. The series is quite unique in the way it replicates itself so uniquely between games, maintaining strong familiarity while providing completely different adventures to the extent where no two games feel at all similar or like they're treading the same ground.
I went to buy another couple today (I've played just under half of them so far), I tend to buy a couple every 6 months to a year depending on when the mood hits.
This time while browsing wikipedia's list of the games, as I can never remember which I've played and which I haven't as I'm not playing them in date order, I noticed something a bit odd.
One of the titles had the phrase "game discontinued" in brackets. And it wasn't because there was now a remaster available, which is the usual reason for that phrase being used in this series.
I went to HerInteractive's website to look for a reason. No reasons were given and no mention of it was apparent on their forums. You just couldn't buy that game any more on their own website.
The game is also no longer available on Steam. It is available elsewhere, just not on these two venues.
After a bit more investigating I discovered that it was because during one small scene in the game some people could construe a one 1 minute cut-scene as racially offensive. The majority of the fan-base, including an awful lot of the ethnicity relevant fan-base think it's absurd, but HerInteractive obviously felt they wanted to do their moment of solidaity/pandering, whatever you want to call it, to the peak of the BLM movement.
However, regardless of the nature of this particular case, it is symptomatic of the nature of our hobby. At any moment and for any reason, our games can suddenly vanish - and there's not really a lot anyone can do about it.
They don't completely vanish of course, someone somewhere will usually have a salvageable copy of something they can attempt to redistribute as abandonware and the like, but it's never the same like that. In the above example, for example, would it then become an offence to do a let's play of it, an offence to try and distribute it via abandonware sites should it ever get included in a race-related videogames Bill, and all that etc.
HerInteractive, now that they've done this, would find it hard to undo this, even with BLM writing to them and telling them its OK, because they've tainted it already themselves. They could remake that part of the game, but it's kind-of a nearly forgotten game anyway, in terms of noticeable immediate profitability.
I've already played this game and I don't have any plans to replay it anyway, and many are claiming it was one of the crappiest in the series anyway, so wont be missed. But others are indeed complaining that they haven't played that one yet and will want to just to complete the series.
Although this problem is born of politics, either though morality baiting or legal copywrite suppression, this isn't really a political thread.
The thread just asks the basic question:
Does it matter if a game you like dies? Does it matter if no-one could ever play Baldur's Gate 2 ever again (without having to do it shadily)? Or Ultima 7? Or Skyrim? Or Doom? Or anything really?
I went to buy another couple today (I've played just under half of them so far), I tend to buy a couple every 6 months to a year depending on when the mood hits.
This time while browsing wikipedia's list of the games, as I can never remember which I've played and which I haven't as I'm not playing them in date order, I noticed something a bit odd.
One of the titles had the phrase "game discontinued" in brackets. And it wasn't because there was now a remaster available, which is the usual reason for that phrase being used in this series.
I went to HerInteractive's website to look for a reason. No reasons were given and no mention of it was apparent on their forums. You just couldn't buy that game any more on their own website.
The game is also no longer available on Steam. It is available elsewhere, just not on these two venues.
After a bit more investigating I discovered that it was because during one small scene in the game some people could construe a one 1 minute cut-scene as racially offensive. The majority of the fan-base, including an awful lot of the ethnicity relevant fan-base think it's absurd, but HerInteractive obviously felt they wanted to do their moment of solidaity/pandering, whatever you want to call it, to the peak of the BLM movement.
However, regardless of the nature of this particular case, it is symptomatic of the nature of our hobby. At any moment and for any reason, our games can suddenly vanish - and there's not really a lot anyone can do about it.
They don't completely vanish of course, someone somewhere will usually have a salvageable copy of something they can attempt to redistribute as abandonware and the like, but it's never the same like that. In the above example, for example, would it then become an offence to do a let's play of it, an offence to try and distribute it via abandonware sites should it ever get included in a race-related videogames Bill, and all that etc.
HerInteractive, now that they've done this, would find it hard to undo this, even with BLM writing to them and telling them its OK, because they've tainted it already themselves. They could remake that part of the game, but it's kind-of a nearly forgotten game anyway, in terms of noticeable immediate profitability.
I've already played this game and I don't have any plans to replay it anyway, and many are claiming it was one of the crappiest in the series anyway, so wont be missed. But others are indeed complaining that they haven't played that one yet and will want to just to complete the series.
Although this problem is born of politics, either though morality baiting or legal copywrite suppression, this isn't really a political thread.
The thread just asks the basic question:
Does it matter if a game you like dies? Does it matter if no-one could ever play Baldur's Gate 2 ever again (without having to do it shadily)? Or Ultima 7? Or Skyrim? Or Doom? Or anything really?
Last edited:
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2014
- Messages
- 4,762