Since Nov. 21, 2024, more than 1,000 video games have been released, and there have already been updates to those releases. Some games released in that year-long timespan are sequels to large titles like Hollow Knight: Sliksong, Dispatch and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Minecraft, a 16-year-old best-selling video game, has had five major updates, and numerous hotfixes this year.
All of these enduring video games beg two questions—what keeps older games relevant, and what can kill classic game series?
The sandbox Minecraft game has a mixed age of players, 43% being between the ages of 15 and 21, which leaves a 57% playerbase being 21 and above, according to searchlogistics.com. The nostalgic factor comes in the form of that larger portion of adult players coming back after a significant fall off in 2013, and the game offers a texture pack, a downloadable item that changes the textures of in-game items, called ‘Classic Textures,’ which reverts the textures back to the old 2009-2011 textures.
The new Black Ops game was released by Activision and developed by Treyarch and Raven Software on Nov. 14 of 2025. PC game seller, Steam.com has 1,752 reviews on the game, but the overall rating is negative. Metacritic rates it higher at 70% positive reviews, which shows a very odd, but common trend between positive critic reviews, but negative public reviews, or vice-versa. The game has also been mocked online on social media platforms TikTok and Reddit, people saying that it is, “failing, it’s embarrassing,” and one Reddit user says that it is the worst user-reviewed Call of Duty game since the franchise started in 2003.
“Usually the video games will often become too cliché, too repetitive. They don’t tend to come up with new ways to revamp things. They just tend to try the same thing over and over and over again,” says Brian Burrus, the e-sports coach at McDowell High School.
Older games, like God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2, games both originally released in 2018, have a steady and lively fanbase. They have large, open worlds, were produced by gaming giants and both have groups on the website Reddit, called subreddits, proving their following. These two games were developed by Jetpack Interactive and Rockstar Games respectively, and both were nominated for Game of the Year 2018. Jetpack Interactive is partly responsible for other popular titles like Dark Souls, or God of War Ragnarok, meanwhile Rockstar has released the Grand Theft Auto series, but has received some backlash due to the delays of releases.
“I do know that Rockstar is very bad with release dates. We were told that GTA VI (Grand Theft Auto VI) is going to come out in ‘22. It is now almost 2026,” says Braylon Green, a sophomore gamer at McDowell Intermediate High School.
Some older game series that were released in the early 2010s or before have found a steady stream of fans who still play. Red Dead Redemption, a highly-rated game released in 2010, had a small stream of players after the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 and got revived with a release on PC and the Nintendo Switch.
Another game called Borderlands, released in 2009, was recently renewed with Borderlands 4 in September of this year. It has both good and bad reviews, rated a 6 out of 10 by Steam, and a 4 out of 5 by Playstation, has been called the “best game in the franchise,” but also has been criticized for having the “least interesting maps,” according to an anonymous Reddit user.
Burrus, a long-time gamer, was drawn to the graphic upgrades in the new version. “I feel like overall the worlds they build are just fun, inviting, unique and something that I just want to continue to go and play with and be a part of,” he said.
All in all, with the creativity and nostalgia Minecraft offers, the public death of the Call of Duty: Black Ops franchise, and the odd middle ground Borderlands has found itself in, gamers just want to game. If companies give them something to try, they will keep coming back for more.
