In today’s episode I speak with Larry Kuperman, Vice President of Business Development at Nightdive Studios. Larry retired not long after this interview, so I was pleased to chat with such an industry veteran.

Nightdive have made a well-deserved name for themselves with their remakes and remasters of classic games including System Shock, System Shock 2, Blade Runner, Star Wars: Dark Forces, The Thing, Quake and many others.

I sat down with Larry to discuss the ups and downs of remastering and remaking games. We talk about player expectations and the legal maze involved in resurrecting these games. How missing source code, lost contracts and rights ownership make for a “fun” puzzle when it comes to getting these games to see the light of day again, as well as game preservation and the technical challenge of bringing older PC games onto modern hardware and consoles. Based on Larry’s experience, some games are far more difficult to preserve than others, and we get into the “games that got away”, at least for the time being. The studio’s current white whale being No One Lives Forever.

We talk about nostalgia and why certain games stay with players for decades. Larry talks about growing up during the early PC gaming era, the impact of studios like id Software and why games like Doom and Descent mean so much to him as games he played with his son. We also discuss the emotional connection people have to games from the 1990s and early 2000s, and why replaying them can feel like reconnecting with a specific moment in life. This leads into the pressure that comes when you, as Larry put it, “remaster the Mona Lisa of video games”.

The conversation also covers Nightdive’s early relationship with GOG, the decline of physical PC games, digital distribution, modding communities and the growing importance of game preservation, and why the goal is not to recreate games exactly as they were, but to make them feel the way players remember them.

We also get into titles like I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, No One Lives Forever and SiN. These are the games of my youth, so talking with Larry on this subject was, for me, fascinating.

The Examined Game

Each week, host Steven Lake asks the creators behind some of the world’s most influential video games about the meaning of life (in video games), leading to conversations about the personal and creative impact games have had on their lives.