Honestly I think this is where the industry is falling flat. Games used to be a thing where they’d put one out and once it was out that was it. They didn’t spend the next 10 years adding features, that’s what a new game was for.
I don’t think a world where a company like Square releases dozens of great games in a decade can coexist with the model of continuing to add features to a game that’s already out. Personally, I’d rather see the evolution of an idea across several iterations than a constant replacement of parts.
It used to be if you liked a game you could see what led to it by playing earlier games in the series. Now those games seldom exist and instead you have the most recent version of one game and no access to any previous version.
Since we’re specifically talking about fighting games, that very much wasn’t true. This is the genre that brought you Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Street Fighter II’: Champion Edition, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, and Super Street Fighter II Turbo. And the final product is much better off for it - World Warrior may have been revolutionary for its time but the game also had a lot of serious problems that have aged like mud.
One and done makes sense for single-player titles. But for a competitive multiplayer scene to last, developers can’t just hope that 1.0 is perfect on the first try - it never is. Just putting the game out in the hands of players who will break it to pieces is the best way to get data on what needs to be tweaked and refined for the next patch.
At the same time though, I wish we could retain old versions, like how Ultra Street Fighter IV did. I know doing so is harder, but you can lose a thing you enjoy to a new version of the game that you don’t. I didn’t like Strive season 2, but fortunately, I liked every other season. I feel like Strive is in a really good place right now, and I’m nervous about this 2.0 update they’re talking about. If it’s a major update to the software and not the gameplay, then hell yeah, I’m on board, but I’m nervous that it could be another season 2.
I think this is something that should be handled at the platform level, Steam and consoles should just let you freely roll back to any version of the game. Keep every revision archived for preservation’s sake.
Street Fighter did have a bit of a weird naming thing where we were all like “when is one of these going to be called 3?”, but those are all different games on different cartridges. Same with MK3 versus Ultimate MK3. Like, yeah, they’ve got a lot of the same bones but they didn’t release one broken, update it for 10 years and then never release anything else.
The SF2 situation wouldn’t happen in the same way today because those would all be DLCs or updates. Or like, paid alternate skins and new characters.
Honestly I think this is where the industry is falling flat. Games used to be a thing where they’d put one out and once it was out that was it. They didn’t spend the next 10 years adding features, that’s what a new game was for.
I don’t think a world where a company like Square releases dozens of great games in a decade can coexist with the model of continuing to add features to a game that’s already out. Personally, I’d rather see the evolution of an idea across several iterations than a constant replacement of parts.
It used to be if you liked a game you could see what led to it by playing earlier games in the series. Now those games seldom exist and instead you have the most recent version of one game and no access to any previous version.
Since we’re specifically talking about fighting games, that very much wasn’t true. This is the genre that brought you Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Street Fighter II’: Champion Edition, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, and Super Street Fighter II Turbo. And the final product is much better off for it - World Warrior may have been revolutionary for its time but the game also had a lot of serious problems that have aged like mud.
One and done makes sense for single-player titles. But for a competitive multiplayer scene to last, developers can’t just hope that 1.0 is perfect on the first try - it never is. Just putting the game out in the hands of players who will break it to pieces is the best way to get data on what needs to be tweaked and refined for the next patch.
At the same time though, I wish we could retain old versions, like how Ultra Street Fighter IV did. I know doing so is harder, but you can lose a thing you enjoy to a new version of the game that you don’t. I didn’t like Strive season 2, but fortunately, I liked every other season. I feel like Strive is in a really good place right now, and I’m nervous about this 2.0 update they’re talking about. If it’s a major update to the software and not the gameplay, then hell yeah, I’m on board, but I’m nervous that it could be another season 2.
I think this is something that should be handled at the platform level, Steam and consoles should just let you freely roll back to any version of the game. Keep every revision archived for preservation’s sake.
Yeah, can’t argue with that. But I wouldn’t really mind which direction the solution came from.
Street Fighter did have a bit of a weird naming thing where we were all like “when is one of these going to be called 3?”, but those are all different games on different cartridges. Same with MK3 versus Ultimate MK3. Like, yeah, they’ve got a lot of the same bones but they didn’t release one broken, update it for 10 years and then never release anything else.
The SF2 situation wouldn’t happen in the same way today because those would all be DLCs or updates. Or like, paid alternate skins and new characters.
Yes, exactly. Not having to pay full price to buy the game all over again for these updates is way better for the consumer.