Dhivael/Anne’s Hyperactive Blog

Many game companies are opposed to the very idea of ‘abandonware’ games. It is, after all, their intellectual property and they don’t like to see people using their ideas for free.

Some companies try to halt abandonware by re-releasing the game, possibly in a “classics” CD package. I gather that this doesn’t work as well as most companies would like, since I don’t think these re-released games stay on the market for long. After all, would you pay $20-30 for a game that was obsolete 10 years ago, or would you rather spend that on a newish (from the past year or two) game?

Yeah.

So if people aren’t going to buy your obsolete games, what are you going to do?

Well, game makers could do what EA has done. You can play the original SimCity online, for free. It’s been turned into a nifty little Java game that (somewhat unfortunately) seems to only work in Internet Explorer. It’s missing the sounds and the complaints that tell you what your disgruntled citizens want, but otherwise it is the same as the original. You can even save your games, to reload later. Nice.

As you play, a scrolling message across the top suggests that you might want to play the newest SimCity game, which is just fine by me. And what better advertising is there, than right there with an already interested audience?

One thing kind of bothers me, though. The scrolling message also says that you’re playing ‘your daddy’s SimCity’. I’m old enough to have played the original and, even if I had kids when I was 18, they wouldn’t be old enough to play SimCity yet.

But, the point is, game makers could do a lot worse than emulate EA in this regard. Creating an online version of their classic games to be played on their website would be good for everyone all around. Advertising for them, fun for the rest of us.

I know I want to buy SimCity 4 now; I hadn’t realized that they were still making SimCity games.