I am currently Lead Developer of the slow-developing remake of System Shock 2: "Remember Citadel". Not much else other than I map and know some very light Unity and UDK. I'm also looking to hone my Source Mapping skills and am therefore looking for work. Doing my own projects doesn't give me much motivation, but having something with a deadline is like fuel to me.

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Blog #1

TheOneMuffin Blog

Alright, so I am going to go ahead and make a blog.
Whether people read this or not, I am doing it.
I just decided since i'm on Moddb a whole bunch everyday, might as well keep myself busy.

Usually these blogs will be about Mapping, things I am doing currently mod-related, rants, and anything that's trending in the news.

This week is Remakes:

So in the more recent years, remakes have became a really common thing among the media.
You see Movies, Games, Books, and Music all being remade, all the time.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I mean, of course a lot of the remade stuff is of superb quality, but if it's too good, does that smother and squash the popularity of the older title?

Let's take Black Mesa as an example.

It's game-play is better, the graphics are more detailed, and the music is better (this is really opinion).
Along with that, it's fan-base is much larger than Half-Life's currently.
Going deeper, a lot of those fans are people who have never touched a Half-Life game in their lives.

Now this is where the problem is, and here's the mindset of most of those people:
"Wow, i'm not going to touch that game, it's graphics are horrible, Black Mesa looks better".

I have experienced so many people with that mindset and simply put, while a remake can be better, it will hurt the original in many ways, especially since the same mindset could go by "Black Mesa is free, Half-Life isn't".

While in some cases this has made people aware of the Half-Life saga and urged them to try the originals, it isn't enough to combat against the fact that more people have less appreciation for original titles than the remakes.

My mod Remember Citadel, a remake of System Shock 2 may face that problem too.
While I really want a graphically advanced and more editable version of the original; the remake doing well (if it does) will really hurt what is left of the old System Shock 2 and may completely severe people from buying the original. Of course, as I call it, the Black Mesa Effect may happen and might increase the inflow of players to the original instead.

In conclusion, they are both good and bad, depending on what crowd your game attracts.