It's a quick and easy way to make money. Same way Hollywood is doing a ton of remakes of old movies lately.

In general the idea of "remastering" or reworking a game is good if it was done of games from the past that might have had some problems but lots of potential. Like the Grim Fandango Remaster made sense, the original had horrible controls.
I don't see the logic behind remastering classics that are still fine to play. I know there are gamers out there who play games only for the graphics and not the gameplay, so they need something shiny but i don't think they are interested in something like Day of the Tentacle "HD", because it's 2D and doesn't run on the latest Frostbyte engine or something.

I don't see the problem. This has always happened with oldies in gaming.

Hit the nail on the head right there. Even back in the "all original" era, games didn't exist in a cultural vacuum - majority were made in order to replicate something else. Be it ping-pong replicated in pong or metal-infused b-grade horror movies seen in Doom (even legendary music in Doom isn't original, I mean, damn). It took time before fully original concepts started emerging, and even then, they were copied over and over - NES platformers, text adventures and later generally adventure games etc.

And now, decades later, we no longer necessarily need to draw from other media (which isn't to say we don't) - we finally have a heritage videogames can draw from and build upon. This is a good thing, because our beloved media can further evolve naturally, by trying new ideas (which games still do, clearly), seeing what works, what doesn't and continuing from there. I don't know of any human endeavor which would ever just pop into existence and that applies to videogames too.

Now, in respect to new material in general like new franchises, interesting spins on otherwise formulaistic genres etc. - I would dare to say there's been a lot more of that during past 10 years than ever before. However, there's also been a lot more repetition. It stems from the simple fact that a ton more games are being made on daily basis. So if you don't like trends of sequels of sequels, if you don't like remakes and remasters, just ignore them. Look at games you'd otherwise just pass and not give them a second glance. Suddenly you'll find there's loads of reasonably original content coming out - but naturally, if you choose to focus your stare on remakes and sequels, that'll be the only thing you're going to see. As for all-original games which don't really resemble anything, there has always only been a tiny fraction of such products and often enough they quite simply don't work.

I would say that there has never been so much original content created as there is today. The problem is rather that:

a) AAA games are expansive to make, therefore less risk is taken for big names
b) point a) leading to experimentation happening in the indie scene
c) indie games can be unknown or get very little press (so if you do not actively seek it out, you will not know)
d) experimentation is often received negatively by "the masses" when it departs from established conventions ("what the fuck is this shit!", "This is not a game" etc)

However, the indie scene today is much more experimental and have so much original content that you will never in a lifetime be able to cover it all. Even here on gOg, you get games like "No Pineapple Left Behind", "TRI", "Real Texas", "Undertale", "Tower of Guns" etc, each of them hugely original games.

That's happened. There are at least 2 remakes of Myst (both sold on GOG), and Another World was remade many many many times, the GOG version containing both the 15th anniversary remake and the 20th year anniversary remake. Both of these turned out fine and seem to be enjoyed by people. I am a fan of both games and own all of them here on GOG and am quite happy with the remakes.

I'm not really sure why remakes bother people so much though, it's not as if anyone has a gun to their head to buy, play or even have to care about them.

I have a huge issue with the use of the word 're-mastered' with some of them.

Slight improvements to graphics and perhaps sound doesn't count as 're-mastered' IMO.

I also agree with this.

Sure, a remaster of the remaster. And I'm fairly sure it's happened a few times already.
There's one remaster (Myst: Masterpiece Edition), one remake (realMyst), and one remaster of the remake (realMyst: Masterpiece Edition). Also ports to multiple systems.

But, as others have mentioned earlier, I would say there's a difference between a remake and a remaster.

The word remaster comes from the audio and video industries where mastering is the process of preparing the gold master by equalising volume levels, cutting, reducing noise, and doing other tasks to the original recorded audio and video.

Remastering is done when you believe you can do a better mastering job using the same original data - which often literally is "Slight improvements to ... sound" to take your own words (and also to the images, in video).

Remaking is recording the audio/video anew (and then mastering that), maybe because you found a seventy year old movie you thought might be interesting to make a new version of (so you call some current-day actors and get a shiny new 8k-resolution digital camera).

There's also another side to the idea of re-master: availability. I welcome the idea of a re-master of Day of the Tentacle, not because I think that the game needs updating (it definitely helps, though), but because that game was ridiculously hard to find legally. Why do you think I didn't mind that System Shock got a re-master despite the fact that I thought that the game was fine as it was now.

Someone mentioned compatibility with modern systems which is another good point. Some work fine without remasters (and just with unofficial patches), but there are some games with really problematic engines. For example, in my opinion, The Longest Journey desperately needs a remaster on PC (although I've heard that ResidualVM is working on adding the game to it's compatibility list, but that will take time). This is an awesome games, cherished by adventure gamers, but getting it to work on modern systems is an absolute nightmare (to the point that fans recommend watching an LP over actually playing it). Hell, it doesn't even need big changes. Just having the game actually work and fix it's numerous crashes would be worth the price alone.

Oh, I'm quite aware. I was just refuting the idea on the basis under which it was offered. Doing it for "modern compatibility" is a path to ad-infinitum, as that "compatibility" is an ephemeral thing.

I used to bitch about too many remasters, but now I don't really do that anymore. Instead, I just make good use of this improved content that I was given should I choose so. I doubt any company scraps an original IP they have funneled millions of dollars into in favor of a remaster that caters to a small percentage of potentially new audience, and barely a decent percentage of people who have already played the game. There are exceptions that stray away from these patterns, but not that many to make companies favor remasters above anything that might get them higher profits.

Exactly. In some cases the only way that you can convince publishers to republish is with remasters.

OTOH, you can wind up with "Creep Mario" syndrome if you're not careful.

Since I'm trying to run the Original DotT for a decade now (it seems to be a problem with my localised version and the copy protection) I'm very happy that it had been remastered.

Not that I can play it again after more than ten years of craving for it. I can also finally do it in ENGLISH. Something I have never done before. I'm so looking forward to it.

Beside of this one game, I'm still for remastered versions. For some that hasn't played the game or may play it again he can play it now with better graphics and sounds and maybe they cut out the problematic part of it (e.g. some action sequence that can't be won buy something higher than a 286).

Of course deepening on their work they can't put a to high price tag on it and the questions is if and how they enchant the game play, but I'm looking forward for this.

ScummVM doesn't run it? What version is that? Also, unless you're using the floppy release, there shouldn't be any copy protection at all.

Agreed.
With loads of emulators nowadays, having difficulties in running these oldies is ... difficult.