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The thing they want(files.catbox.moe)

35 points34 points37 points submitted by xoenix

NastyWetSmear 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun 1 month ago

It's baffling how we came to this point.

Remakes are the most confusing thing, for me at least. Video games especially. You have fans built into your franchise. They already love the thing you own. They want more of it... Or, more specifically, they want the thing you've already made, but they want it updated with the latest graphics and voice acting and maybe some control tweaks and such. Essentially, you already have 50% of the work done - Same story, same dialog, same plot points and general game play, same items, same locations... All you need now is some voice actors, the programmers to redo these existing things with modern graphics and, if you're feeling adventurous, maybe flesh out some characters a little, add some side quests, you know, just a splash of spice...

... Then they hand out something that spits in the face of the original product, even sometimes going so far as to insult the players and the product itself, changing everything to the point where it's almost unrecognizable. Actual total plot and story changes. Maybe the one key thing that people who wanted the original again, only better, wouldn't want...

Obviously it's not about making money. They had people lined up to give them money. Even stuff like ESG investment only partially explains it, because while you obviously need to keep access to that investment money, you have to know that it's a death knell for your company to isolate, insult and upset the consumer of the product? We've seen it happen more than once, it isn't an unknown phenomenon. There has to be some element of "True Belief" at work.

It's really pretty maddening. Even a monkey throwing poop at a dart board would hit the bull's eye a couple of times a year.

Rah 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun 1 month ago

Take a look at a 95% loyal remake, Super Mario RPG. Its beautiful. Its loyal to the fanbase. But it does not generate as much revenue as being an ESG sellout. Thats the sad truth. Other companies make more money with the banks filling them with money and renegotiating their debt by accruing ESG score, product be damned.

NastyWetSmear 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun 1 month ago

I don't think that's accurate. A lot of these disloyal remakes crash and burn or ruin franchises long term. Look at all this new Star Wars content being pumped out that barely gets any views on their streaming services, or the new Final Fantasy 7 Remake that massively undersold. If anything, I'd say the fear of a remake now harming the original content is what prevents people from even purchasing the honest ones.

Rah 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun 1 month ago

It does not matter if the franchise is destroyed as long as they sold it out and keep selling it out. Banks will pay. Content harm is secondary to loans and debt renegotiation. Companies know what they are doing and its a race to see just how much they can squander their intellectual property to the highest bidder.

NastyWetSmear 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun 1 month ago

Okay, that's a slight pivot, but it returns to my original point: That's earning investment and loans by following the ESG guidelines, but that seems secondary when whole companies are closing down due to it. An example - Luminous Productions were shut down following their game, Forspoken, crashing and burning. The Rings Of Power got such low viewership, such negative reaction and so few people who started watching it will finish watching it that they've packed up the whole production and moved it out of New Zealand for whatever remaining seasons they are contracted to complete. ESG scores earning you loans to create new products is great, but when none of your products return a profit, why keep doing it?

As to the idea of them selling the property on? I don't see much evidence of that. Disney aren't selling Star Wars to someone to recoup the losses of making these dozens of shows that fail. Nobody is buying Snow White after they nearly released a film that was crashing and burning so hard they tried to CGI in Dwarves at the last second. Once these brands are tarnished, selling them on isn't going to cover the loss they made. There must be something else. "True Believers Of The Cause" is my first assumption?