An HD re-release of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Dual Destinies, and Spirit of Justice, for Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PS4.

Sales follow the tradition of supply and demand. Products come out at their highest price because of expectations and hype. Then, as interest wanes, the publisher continues to make some sales by reducing price to tempt the less interested parties.

But this isn't the formula for all games. While we might agree that games from 2000 or even 2010 are "showing their age", at this point 5 to 8-year-old games are less and less likely to be seen as 'too old' by comparison to hot releases. Some publishers have picked up on that theme, and doubled down on the commitment to the idea that their games have high longevity and appeal; making the most of their capitalistic venture for better or worse.

I recently was reminded of an indie game I had put on my wishlist several years back, but never ended up buying because it simply had never gone on sale - but looking at it now, not only did it maintain extremely positive user reviews, I also saw that its lowest all-time price was barely a few dollars off of its original price.

In the AAA space, the easiest place to see this happening is with Nintendo. Anyone hoping to buy an old Legend of Zelda game for cheap will often be disappointed - the company is so insistent on its quality, they pretty much never give price reductions. And, with some occasional exceptions, their claims tend to be proven right.

In the indie space, the most prominent example of this practice is Factorio, a popular factory-building game that has continued receiving updates, and has even had its base price increased from its original (complete with a warning announcement, encouraging people to purchase at its lower price while it's still available).

Developers deserve to make a buck, and personally I can't say I've ever seen this practice negatively. Continuing to charge $25 for a good game, years after it came out, speaks to confidence in a product (even if most of us are annoyed at AAA games now costing $70). I sort of came to this realization from doing some accounting to find that I'd likely spent over $100 a year on game "bundles" that usually contain trashy games I'm liable to spend less than a few hours in.

For those without any discussion comments, what games on Steam or elsewhere have you enjoyed that you've never seen get the free advertising of a "40% off sale"?

We get a lot of sequels in the gaming world, and a common criticism is when a series isn't really innovating enough. We're given an open world game that takes 40 hours, with DLC stretching it out 20 more, and see a sequel releasing that cut out it's late 30 hours because players were already getting bored.

Meanwhile, there's some other types of games where any addition in the form of "It's just more levels in the series" is perfectly satisfying. Often, this is a hard measure to replicate since these types of series often demand the creators are very inventive and detailed with their content - this likely wouldn't be a matter of rearranging tiles in a level editor to present a very slightly different situation.

What I've often seen is that such games will add incredibly small, insignificant "New Gameplay Features" just so they have something to put on the back of the box, but that tend to be easily forgotten in standard play (yet, the game as a whole still ends up being fun).

The specific series that come to mind for me with "Level-driven games" are:

Hitman - the way the levels are made naturally necessitates some creativity both from the level makers to come up with unique foibles and weaknesses to each target, and from the players to discover both the intended and unintended methods of elimination.
Ace Attorney - While they series has come up with various magical/unusual methods for pointing out contradictions in court, the appeal is still in the mysteries themselves, and it's never needed much beyond the basic gameplay, and the incredibly detailed and well-animated characters to hook people in.
Half-Life - For its time, anyway. While its Episodes certainly made efforts to present new features, quite often the star of Half-Life games isn't really in any core features or gameplay mechanics, but in the inventive designs of its levels, tied in with a penchant for environmental storytelling; making you feel the world was more than an arrangement of blocks and paths. For a long time, the wait for Valve-made episodes was alleviated with modder-made levels hoping to approach the inventive qualities of the original games.
Yakuza - While the series has undergone a major overhaul moving to JRPG combat mode, for 6+ games it satisfied a simple formula: Dramatic stories driven by cutscenes, as well as a huge variety of mini quests, of boundless variety and very low logic. For many of their games, they weren't doing a whole lot to re-contextualize their core gameplay, being fisticuffs combat, and it still worked out well (plus, they're continuing to go that route for games like Kiryu's last game)

To open up discussion, and put the question as simply as I can: Which games do you follow, that you wish could be eternally supported by their devs, by simply continuing to release new "level packs" or their functional equivalent, with no need to revamp gameplay formulas?

Occult Crime Police is an indie-made, Ace Attorney-inspired mystery game about a local town sheriff investigating crazy occurrences in her small, four-figure population hometown of Boomtown, USA.

The game is CRAZY-detailed with its animations, humor, tons of "Present Evidence" conversations, and it's available for FREE (or whatever donation price you'd like to offer). You don't go to any courtrooms, but it's the same idea, similar to the Edgeworth games; winning arguments to accuse the murder through contradictions and collected evidence.

The first case has been out for a while, but recently they've premiered case 2: Medium At Large.

And yes, there is at least one stepladder joke.

Just happened to come across this one on Steam, and the reviews are generally positive. Not expecting it to reach the best points of the best Ace Attorney games, but certainly seems to be worth a try.

Apparently coming to the public test beta on Steam today.

Short segment on the subject, but he was aware of the issue long before many other channels. (If timestamp code does not work, go to 11:00)

This should apply to internet purchases as well as retail, up to a $2,500 limit on a single item.

Facecamping has pervaded DBD since its release, and this anniversary, Behaviour announced a planned change to the game's core mechanics to disincentivize camping.

The changes are not live, or in any PTB, and there has been no date announced for it; nor has there been any demonstration of its particulars yet. As of yet, we've just had the concept described to us.

The summary, from their website:

With this update, whenever a Survivor is being face-camped by a Killer, a meter will build over time. This meter is only visible to that Survivor. Once it’s completely full, they will be able to escape from a Hook without need of another Survivor, gaining Endurance and the Haste Status Effect. Note that this system can activate in both the first and second Hook stages.

WHAT IMPACTS THE METER FILL-RATE?

The meter fills when the Killer is nearby, with the rate of fill increasing based on the Killer’s proximity to the Hooked Survivor. Please note that this will not impact instances of proxy-camping, nor the times when a Killer is actively defending a Hook from a group of swarming Survivors. In fact, the presence of other Survivors in the vicinity will reduce the meter fill-rate, though the rate itself will never be negative.

WHAT DISTANCE QUALIFIES AS FACE-CAMPING?

A Killer being fewer than 5 meters away from a Hooked Survivor will significantly increase the system’s fill meter. Between 5 and 10 meters, the rate of fill will still raise, albeit not quite as quickly. If the Killer is more than 16 meters from the Hooked Survivor, the system will not activate. Please note that the presence of additional Survivors will have an impact on the rate-of-fill, slowing it down.

WILL THIS INTERACT WITH PERKS?

If a Survivor can self-unhook as a direct result of being face-camped, they will be able to use any Perk that triggers following an unhook – for example, Dead Hard and Off The Record. Survivors who escape via this system will also be granted the Endurance status as usual.

WHAT ABOUT TWO-STORY MAPS?

As it stands, this system will remain active and function as intended on Maps with multiple floors like The Game or Midwich Elementary School. We’d like to clarify that this may possibly lead to edge cases where a Killer is falsely punished for face-camping, so we will be monitoring this closely following release and adjusting as needed.

What are your thoughts on this system? Do you think we'll see it hit live? Do you think it can be abused? Crucially, will it fix face-camping? Or do you think tunneling will become the next point of blame for people's fun?