How Steam Revived a Dead Game

Ask Stenum writes "Rock Paper Shotgun has an interesting write-up about how Unreal Tournament 3 has risen from the dead after Epic Games patched it, made a deal with Valve to put it on Steam and making it available for free for a weekend. It's interesting to see how a multiplayer game that's almost one and a half years old suddenly has become what it never could be; a game with multiple players. What other (maybe older?) online multiplayer games would you like to see make a comeback?" UT3's resurgence was mentioned here briefly last week as part of our discussion on the future of game pricing.

Comments

Re:Advertising

[Kelbear]

Further to the above, a lot of really mediocre games get great sales through advertising...

Re:Worms!

[AKAImBatman]

I would love to play worms again!

They're still making Worms games, you know. There's even a downloadable version on XBox Live with online multiplayer.

Of course, us Wii users got SCREWED when multiplayer was removed from Worms: A Space Oddity shortly before hitting the shelves. I was really looking forward to that game! But noooo. Yet another developer takes a dump on Wii players. And then the megacorp game companies wonder why third parties can't sell Wii games. (Here's a hint guys: It helps to make games that people want to buy.)

Not exactly looking good in the MP arena.

[nedwidek]

Still looks moribund.

http://www.game-monitor.com/search.php?game=ut3

700 servers and 361 players right now.

BF2 has over 5000 people playing right now.
CoD4 over 8000.
L4D over 6000.
TF2 7001.

And how is this for insult to injury. UT2004 currently has 641 players. Almost double UT3. UT3 just seemed like a tech demo. More to sell the engine to other game makers.

Re:Not exactly looking good in the MP arena.

[Endymion]

UT2004 was a perfect mix of many things.

- The graphics hit a point where things no longer looked blatantly texture-mapped (the DOOM/early-quake problem)
- The pacing was incredible
- The weapons were surprisingly balanced. It's not like Q1 where it's "rockets or nothing"; every weapon is useful at some point.
- Very customizable. (lots of FPS games have that, but it's still a point in UT2004's favor)
- A variety of modes, that were generally well done. Ok, "double dominate" blows, but I still find myself playing a Bombing Run match and such just because it's crazy and different.
- Very gameplay-oriented level design. Sure, some of the maps look totally absurd, but the look that way because they have specific choke-points, carefully designed flow, etc.
- An extra level of polish across the board. I never really found myself saying "if it only had this feature, it'd be perfect". Even the little stuff like settings to change the crosshairs on a per-weapon basis - it showed a level of caring about the gameplay (the "fun"!) that most games skimp on.

I can't speak to how customizable UT3 is, but it(and many other games sense then) skimped on many of these features. The engine is there, though. It is potentially something that could be solved by simply adding a bunch of polish, little features, and playtesting a LOT to get the pacing/balance/etc right.

Maybe we'll get lucky and see a "UT3.5" remake where they get it right... they did show they can "reboot" things once before.