John Carmack goes off about online-only games being abandoned(pcgamer.com)
pcgamer.com
John Carmack goes off about online-only games being abandoned
https://www.pcgamer.com/john-carmack-goes-off-about-online-only-games-being-abandoned-i-believe-in-saving-everything/
233 comments
Whats most tragic is it's not expensive to just allow players to host it themselves for a game thats already multiplayer. It would do a lot for brand reputation. For some reason it seems like only in the last 2 years have publishers been just barely waking up to reputation actually mattering.
Really bizarre era of consumer behavior. 'You're gonna buy my crapware games and you're gonna like it! You're gonna read my articles shitting on you and you're gonna like it!'
Cyberpunk (as much as I love it) and Battlefield 2042 were inevitable symbolic trainwrecks. <10k daily players for the latest Battlefield title? Time to wake up.
Really bizarre era of consumer behavior. 'You're gonna buy my crapware games and you're gonna like it! You're gonna read my articles shitting on you and you're gonna like it!'
Cyberpunk (as much as I love it) and Battlefield 2042 were inevitable symbolic trainwrecks. <10k daily players for the latest Battlefield title? Time to wake up.
It's copy protection.
You can't run a hacked server that ignores license state or hacking bans if you have no access to the server software. They disguise it under a claim of convenience, a feature that you match against similar-experience players, but you're right, it's ultimately an antifeature.
Gamers put up with a lot of crap, between exploited ring0 DRM, platform exclusives, the loss of consumer rights (like refunds and resale) and crappy ports from consoles. I don't understand how they get away with it. I might just be old, but I've changed my entire purchasing game strategy to ignore games that fall foul of these things.
You can't run a hacked server that ignores license state or hacking bans if you have no access to the server software. They disguise it under a claim of convenience, a feature that you match against similar-experience players, but you're right, it's ultimately an antifeature.
Gamers put up with a lot of crap, between exploited ring0 DRM, platform exclusives, the loss of consumer rights (like refunds and resale) and crappy ports from consoles. I don't understand how they get away with it. I might just be old, but I've changed my entire purchasing game strategy to ignore games that fall foul of these things.
That, and planned-obselescence.
I'm sure that EA would love to kill Battlefield 4. But it will never die, because players can run and moderate dedicated servers.
Battlefield 1 (newer than 4), on the other hand, died years ago. Battlefield 5 is practically the same game, arguably worse, yet was able to steal most of 1's player base because support (and moderation) were effectively dropped by EA during the release of 5.
Anti-cheat is the newest (and deadliest) iteration of this pattern. CoD Warzone is free to play, so long as you run it on Windows, and not in a VM.
Worst of all, this means the burden of moderation has been moved to anti-cheat itself, even though any experienced forum moderator can tell you that moderation itself is based on social interaction, not technical behavior.
I'm sure that EA would love to kill Battlefield 4. But it will never die, because players can run and moderate dedicated servers.
Battlefield 1 (newer than 4), on the other hand, died years ago. Battlefield 5 is practically the same game, arguably worse, yet was able to steal most of 1's player base because support (and moderation) were effectively dropped by EA during the release of 5.
Anti-cheat is the newest (and deadliest) iteration of this pattern. CoD Warzone is free to play, so long as you run it on Windows, and not in a VM.
Worst of all, this means the burden of moderation has been moved to anti-cheat itself, even though any experienced forum moderator can tell you that moderation itself is based on social interaction, not technical behavior.
While I'm sure both copy protection and planned obsolescence are considerations, I think most of us neglect the bigger elephant in the room:
Gamers aren't tinkerers anymore.
Times change, gamers might have been tinkerers and hobbyists who accepted needing to mess with their software and perhaps even hardware (memory address allocations, anyone?!), but that was 30 to 40 years ago. We're in the 21st century now, more than 1/5th of the way to the 22nd, and gaming has become mainstream.
Gamers today just want to play games, messing with the computer (what's a computer?) is above their pay grade. Games today route multiplayer through their own matchmaking servers because Player-2-Player matchmaking /fucking sucks/, it's janky under ideal circumstances let alone normal. Gamers today don't want to deal with network shenanigans, they just want to play; so devs and publishers oblige by handling more things on their end simplifying the experience.
Gamers aren't tinkerers anymore.
The gamers of 30 to 40 years ago have moved on to messing with "home labs" and Raspberry Pis and 3D printing and shitposting on HN.
Gamers aren't tinkerers anymore.
Times change, gamers might have been tinkerers and hobbyists who accepted needing to mess with their software and perhaps even hardware (memory address allocations, anyone?!), but that was 30 to 40 years ago. We're in the 21st century now, more than 1/5th of the way to the 22nd, and gaming has become mainstream.
Gamers today just want to play games, messing with the computer (what's a computer?) is above their pay grade. Games today route multiplayer through their own matchmaking servers because Player-2-Player matchmaking /fucking sucks/, it's janky under ideal circumstances let alone normal. Gamers today don't want to deal with network shenanigans, they just want to play; so devs and publishers oblige by handling more things on their end simplifying the experience.
Gamers aren't tinkerers anymore.
The gamers of 30 to 40 years ago have moved on to messing with "home labs" and Raspberry Pis and 3D printing and shitposting on HN.
You say that but for games that allow self-hosting there is a rich tinkerer community. Look at Minecraft for example.
I'm not sure that's true. The games that allow or encourage tinkering have pretty decent modding communities. What were we doing 30 years ago that we aren't today? The only mainstream thing I can think of are devices like Game Genie.
Completely with you on matchmaking. The pathetic limits on these things. You've not lived until you've had a dozen friends all try to climb in/on a drop ship in Tribes 2 in a 64v64 match. That was worth carting a CRT to a lan gaming convention alone. But I don't believe players prefer this, they just don't have a choice. I much prefer the old server-list model.
Completely with you on matchmaking. The pathetic limits on these things. You've not lived until you've had a dozen friends all try to climb in/on a drop ship in Tribes 2 in a 64v64 match. That was worth carting a CRT to a lan gaming convention alone. But I don't believe players prefer this, they just don't have a choice. I much prefer the old server-list model.
>What were we doing 30 years ago that we aren't today?
Messing with computers.
PC gaming today is as simple as going out to Best Buy or Costco, buying a "gaming" desktop, come home, unbox it, plug everything in, initialize (note: not install) Windows, install Steam, and Bob's your uncle.
Most of us hailing from the 20th century learned how computers worked because we kind of had to to run the games we wanted to play. Memory address allocations, DLL hell, driver hell, registry tricks, picking out parts and putting it all together; all stuff gamers today simply don't have to deal with. Windows Update will even figure out most if not all the drivers for you.
And before anyone says it: Yes yes, I know buying a "gaming" desktop from Best Buy or Costco isn't ideal. But guess what? We are outdated oldtimers. We definitely know how to get the best stuff, but gamers simply don't need the best anymore. Computers have become household appliances, not tinkerers' toys to be handled by wizards. So what if that desktop from Best Buy craps out? They just go and buy another one like you would buy another Playstation and Bob's your uncle.
Gamers aren't tinkerers anymore, most people don't mess with computers anymore.
Messing with computers.
PC gaming today is as simple as going out to Best Buy or Costco, buying a "gaming" desktop, come home, unbox it, plug everything in, initialize (note: not install) Windows, install Steam, and Bob's your uncle.
Most of us hailing from the 20th century learned how computers worked because we kind of had to to run the games we wanted to play. Memory address allocations, DLL hell, driver hell, registry tricks, picking out parts and putting it all together; all stuff gamers today simply don't have to deal with. Windows Update will even figure out most if not all the drivers for you.
And before anyone says it: Yes yes, I know buying a "gaming" desktop from Best Buy or Costco isn't ideal. But guess what? We are outdated oldtimers. We definitely know how to get the best stuff, but gamers simply don't need the best anymore. Computers have become household appliances, not tinkerers' toys to be handled by wizards. So what if that desktop from Best Buy craps out? They just go and buy another one like you would buy another Playstation and Bob's your uncle.
Gamers aren't tinkerers anymore, most people don't mess with computers anymore.
If we only allow "tinkering" to mean fixing things that should work, sure: Stuff works better today. But I include hardware tuning and software modding in that too, and both are vastly more powerful and present than they were in the 90s.
My experience ~30 years ago involves a 386, big-box computer, Window 3.1 pre-installed. My options for tinkering (outside the battle for HIMEM) were pressing a turbo button and hex-editing File Manager to File Mangler. There was no hardware modding scene at that level, just a choice of massively expensive storage and RAM. I'm sure there was more that you could describe as maintenance but I don't consider myself any less of a hacker because I don't have to run "hdsit" before I shut down.
Did I do more stuff? Sure. I didn't have a huge number of games so writing your own, playing with tools was pretty much your only option, and I would agree with a characterisation that people fiddle with computers less because they have less contact time with an actual desktop environment outside of the browser. We are spoilt for choice.
But PC gamers still tinker. The have hardware options unimaginable in the 90s and the scale of game modding scenes for things like The Witcher 3, GTA5, Fallout 4, Skyrim, Minecraft, Souls and Rimworld eclipse those efforts in the 90s, many times over. Shader beautifiers weren't even possible. Is it niche? Probably, but PC gaming has always been niche.
My experience ~30 years ago involves a 386, big-box computer, Window 3.1 pre-installed. My options for tinkering (outside the battle for HIMEM) were pressing a turbo button and hex-editing File Manager to File Mangler. There was no hardware modding scene at that level, just a choice of massively expensive storage and RAM. I'm sure there was more that you could describe as maintenance but I don't consider myself any less of a hacker because I don't have to run "hdsit" before I shut down.
Did I do more stuff? Sure. I didn't have a huge number of games so writing your own, playing with tools was pretty much your only option, and I would agree with a characterisation that people fiddle with computers less because they have less contact time with an actual desktop environment outside of the browser. We are spoilt for choice.
But PC gamers still tinker. The have hardware options unimaginable in the 90s and the scale of game modding scenes for things like The Witcher 3, GTA5, Fallout 4, Skyrim, Minecraft, Souls and Rimworld eclipse those efforts in the 90s, many times over. Shader beautifiers weren't even possible. Is it niche? Probably, but PC gaming has always been niche.
The only online game I play right now is DayZ which has mostly player-hosted servers and most of those have mods.
Tinkering gamers aren't the audience anymore.
More importantly, their audience isn't the audience anymore.
After all, it was never a hugely significant number of tinkerers that were important, it was the audience each tinkerer brought with them.
That just isn't the business model anymore.
More importantly, their audience isn't the audience anymore.
After all, it was never a hugely significant number of tinkerers that were important, it was the audience each tinkerer brought with them.
That just isn't the business model anymore.
> Tinkering gamers aren't the audience anymore.
With gaming becoming popular I'd say tinkering gamers are the same number as before, just not the same proportion of the overall gamers pool.
With gaming becoming popular I'd say tinkering gamers are the same number as before, just not the same proportion of the overall gamers pool.
> it was the audience each tinkerer brought with them.
Could it be that said audience depended on the tinkerers to help with settings things up, but since games "just work" now, the middleman has been cut?
Could it be that said audience depended on the tinkerers to help with settings things up, but since games "just work" now, the middleman has been cut?
I think tinkerable games causes tinkerers.
> Battlefield 1 (newer than 4), on the other hand, died years ago
Hm? Not quite, there's a solid player base still playing.
Hm? Not quite, there's a solid player base still playing.
It was even on a sale on Steam a couple of months ago which brought in a lot of new players
It's probably healed a fair bit since I last tried, but when 5 came out, it was rough.
That used to be the case, now it's asset protection because the only way people will pay for skins, hats, virtual shoes, and pink guns is if you can't load arbitrary assets.
If a server says: load whatever skin you want... well, why would you pay for it?
This is also why modding got killed off, you can't sell people stuff if someone else will make better assets for free and just puts them up for download. Even if integrity or security was a big issue, that's been solved since quake 3 and ut99 with integrity checks and server-side load controls (ironically, the same ones that are now used in locked-down games to make selling different coloured virtual shirts a thing).
If a server says: load whatever skin you want... well, why would you pay for it?
This is also why modding got killed off, you can't sell people stuff if someone else will make better assets for free and just puts them up for download. Even if integrity or security was a big issue, that's been solved since quake 3 and ut99 with integrity checks and server-side load controls (ironically, the same ones that are now used in locked-down games to make selling different coloured virtual shirts a thing).
Gamers are a "special" target market that regularly purchases products from companies with contempt for them. The top examples are EA and Blizzard. I'm unsure whether to attribute it to simple addiction, misplaced brand loyalty, or something else. With regard to the DRM and anti-cheats that ironically make your system even less secure, a lot of gamers are so scared of cheaters that they'll put up with anything.
> Gamers are a "special" target market that regularly purchases products from companies with contempt for them.
How does that make gamers special - aren't most mainstream products optimized for profit at the expense of quality?
How does that make gamers special - aren't most mainstream products optimized for profit at the expense of quality?
> It's copy protection.
This is always the official explanation.
It is just pure greed.
This is always the official explanation.
It is just pure greed.
instead of shitty, addictive and expensive trash i play chess
Part of it is that a lot of kids who grew up in the current era of games only understand the game that they were handed, where creating servers is easy and matchmaking is table stakes, AA or AAA level production values are "good" and anything else that isn't "stylized" or "retro" is potentially disqualifying.
Indies who want to do the right thing face a customer base that doesn't really get it and yells at them for spending times on things they don't understand. So they pivot - making games is already risky enough as it is.
Game devs have less courage because too many are funded by publishers rather than self-publishing. Those devs that don't enjoy breakout success are safer but those that make hit games never reap the full benefit of it - publishers take too large a cut - and can't fund themselves into making something bigger, like how Half-Life set the stage for Steam.
"Early access" has become a meaningless label, incentivizing the norm towards good-enough games rather than great games, and muddying the waters for truly great games to be recognized as such, because they often don't start that way, but also used as a defensive mechanism against the entitled creeps who think it's okay to harass the social media void with their complaints, not realizing that the people on the other side of it see it and sometimes emotionally react to it.
I guess I'm shaking my cane too much, but it's not just the companies going down false paths, it's also people following them down. Put another way, the industry is systematically unhealthy.
Indies who want to do the right thing face a customer base that doesn't really get it and yells at them for spending times on things they don't understand. So they pivot - making games is already risky enough as it is.
Game devs have less courage because too many are funded by publishers rather than self-publishing. Those devs that don't enjoy breakout success are safer but those that make hit games never reap the full benefit of it - publishers take too large a cut - and can't fund themselves into making something bigger, like how Half-Life set the stage for Steam.
"Early access" has become a meaningless label, incentivizing the norm towards good-enough games rather than great games, and muddying the waters for truly great games to be recognized as such, because they often don't start that way, but also used as a defensive mechanism against the entitled creeps who think it's okay to harass the social media void with their complaints, not realizing that the people on the other side of it see it and sometimes emotionally react to it.
I guess I'm shaking my cane too much, but it's not just the companies going down false paths, it's also people following them down. Put another way, the industry is systematically unhealthy.
Ultimately as a consumer, I just don't care. Other than for nostalgia purposes, I don't get much enjoyment at all out of playing very old games. For pretty much every style of game, you can get newer, better games that pull off the concepts better.
I see gaming like most forms of entertainment which are enjoyed in the moment and then you move on. When I got to a music concert, I don't sit there and record it for watching again 10 years later. I enjoy it in the moment and move on, there will be newer ones to enjoy later.
I see gaming like most forms of entertainment which are enjoyed in the moment and then you move on. When I got to a music concert, I don't sit there and record it for watching again 10 years later. I enjoy it in the moment and move on, there will be newer ones to enjoy later.
> For pretty much every style of game, you can get newer, better games that pull off the concepts better.
Hard disagree here. Some subgenres don't even have any newer games at all.
And even for genres that have been embraced by the mainstream, often they are all polished into the same shape. Yeah, there are plenty of conveniences now that older games might not have but a lot uniqueness is also lost in the process. How many modern games still expect you to navigate an environment yourself instead of feeding you questmarkers and triply-redundant messages and reminders of what you need to be doing next? How many shooters that just focus on the shooting instead of feeling the need to add some skinner-box-inducing RPG-lite mechanics. How many Point & Click adventures that even come close to scope or engrossing art styles of the classics? Why is Planescape: Torment still considered one of the best (C)RPG stories by many when writers had almost 25 years to surpass it?
Yeah, if you pick a random game from the 90s and a random game from today, then the latter will perhaps be more playable. Many old games have plenty of jank that wouln't fly today. Because today's games are designed for just that: so that anyone with half a braincell can complete them. That means ecessive hints. It means refusal to provide challenges that might limit your market. It means limiting the amount of text because everything needs to be voiced which costs a lot. It means repeating mechanics that "work" instead of daring to try something unique.
> I see gaming like most forms of entertainment which are enjoyed in the moment and then you move on. When I got to a music concert, I don't sit there and record it for watching again 10 years later. I enjoy it in the moment and move on, there will be newer ones to enjoy later.
Yet people still listen to classical music and everything in between then and now. Some even mainting their own collection. Are you really going to say that for every Mozart or The Beetles or Black Sabbath or whatever there is a 2020s group that pulls of the concepts better? Does the warm fuzzy sound from old analog recordings prevent you from enjoying them as much as older graphics do?
Of course the answer to what is better also depends a lot of taste. Just like with music, the predominant styles of games shifts over time.
Hard disagree here. Some subgenres don't even have any newer games at all.
And even for genres that have been embraced by the mainstream, often they are all polished into the same shape. Yeah, there are plenty of conveniences now that older games might not have but a lot uniqueness is also lost in the process. How many modern games still expect you to navigate an environment yourself instead of feeding you questmarkers and triply-redundant messages and reminders of what you need to be doing next? How many shooters that just focus on the shooting instead of feeling the need to add some skinner-box-inducing RPG-lite mechanics. How many Point & Click adventures that even come close to scope or engrossing art styles of the classics? Why is Planescape: Torment still considered one of the best (C)RPG stories by many when writers had almost 25 years to surpass it?
Yeah, if you pick a random game from the 90s and a random game from today, then the latter will perhaps be more playable. Many old games have plenty of jank that wouln't fly today. Because today's games are designed for just that: so that anyone with half a braincell can complete them. That means ecessive hints. It means refusal to provide challenges that might limit your market. It means limiting the amount of text because everything needs to be voiced which costs a lot. It means repeating mechanics that "work" instead of daring to try something unique.
> I see gaming like most forms of entertainment which are enjoyed in the moment and then you move on. When I got to a music concert, I don't sit there and record it for watching again 10 years later. I enjoy it in the moment and move on, there will be newer ones to enjoy later.
Yet people still listen to classical music and everything in between then and now. Some even mainting their own collection. Are you really going to say that for every Mozart or The Beetles or Black Sabbath or whatever there is a 2020s group that pulls of the concepts better? Does the warm fuzzy sound from old analog recordings prevent you from enjoying them as much as older graphics do?
Of course the answer to what is better also depends a lot of taste. Just like with music, the predominant styles of games shifts over time.
Off-topic, but I see this strange pattern on HN a lot: You say it's hard to disagree with something, then you spend paragraphs disagreeing. What is hard disagree? Why not just say I strongly disagree?
They didn’t say it’s hard to disagree, they said it’s a hard disagree, as in they don’t agree with them at all.
I just finished playing half-life 2 in VR with a third party VR mod and it was amazing how well this game stood up to the test of time.
There's really a lot of value in retro and mods IMO. Sure it's not for everyone but what is?
There's really a lot of value in retro and mods IMO. Sure it's not for everyone but what is?
I never played HL originally so I had no nostalgia from it, but when I tried it a few years ago it just felt very dated. Sure, the mechanics and story probably hold up. But the visuals, ui, modern niceties, etc are all absent. Just doesn’t seem worth playing when you could pick up a newer similar game instead.
HN is always telling us to be outraged when an online game is shut down, but by the time they get shut down, hardly anyone cares about playing them anyway, they moved on to newer stuff.
HN is always telling us to be outraged when an online game is shut down, but by the time they get shut down, hardly anyone cares about playing them anyway, they moved on to newer stuff.
The visuals aren't absent, that's what I was trying to say. They hold up surprisingly well, though a high-res texture pack would obviously help.
And in the VR realm there aren't a ton of large story FPSes now. Especially not of this caliber.
And in the VR realm there aren't a ton of large story FPSes now. Especially not of this caliber.
I don't think any RTS pulls off the concepts in Dawn of War even half as good as Dawn of War does.
Cyberpunk seems unrelated. It will probably age better than any other multiplayer title.
The bugs have been patched but not game ruining (for me). T-posing was infrequent, but there were some issues.
The bugs have been patched but not game ruining (for me). T-posing was infrequent, but there were some issues.
Cyberpunk is related because at launch it was shoving crapware out the door. It actually worked mostly fine on my PC, so its not a personal thing. I love the game.
It's the business practice of sending the customer their boots without the sole and toe box sewn together then telling them they get most of the experience earlier this way and theyll stitch it together in a month if they have the time.
I agree it will age well, particularly with the right improvements.
It's the business practice of sending the customer their boots without the sole and toe box sewn together then telling them they get most of the experience earlier this way and theyll stitch it together in a month if they have the time.
I agree it will age well, particularly with the right improvements.
My Cyberpunk experience was actually quite good. I didn't try it on day 1, but after a patch or two my pirated copy (wanted to see if my PC could run it before I spent 60 euros on it) ran great. Sure, my poor 1080 can't do max settings or ray tracing or even good DLSS, but the graphics are gorgeous even at mid-low settings. There were (and still are) Skyrim-level bugs, but that didn't bother me too much.
I think the people that bought into the hype got severely disappointed and anyone buying the game on consoles simply got scammed, but as someone who bought the game after it had been out for a bit, I've had nothing but fun with it.
In fact, one thing CP2077 allows that most other games don't, is backing up the DRM-free installer for the patched game. Steam/PS store/Xbox Online will die one day and all their online patches will disappear forerver, but the GOG versions of most games will run in 20 or 30 years as long as you remember make a backup of the installer.
I think the people that bought into the hype got severely disappointed and anyone buying the game on consoles simply got scammed, but as someone who bought the game after it had been out for a bit, I've had nothing but fun with it.
In fact, one thing CP2077 allows that most other games don't, is backing up the DRM-free installer for the patched game. Steam/PS store/Xbox Online will die one day and all their online patches will disappear forerver, but the GOG versions of most games will run in 20 or 30 years as long as you remember make a backup of the installer.
>wanted to see if my PC could run it before I spent 60 euros on it
steam usually allows refunds in the first few hours of playtime, which supports this usecase as well.
steam usually allows refunds in the first few hours of playtime, which supports this usecase as well.
Good to know. There's a big fat warning that you forfeit your right to return the game as soon as you click download.
This is in France, where there's a mandatory 14-day return window for online purchases. But there are restrictions on some items, such as media must be "unopened", and I guess downloading is considered as "opening".
This is in France, where there's a mandatory 14-day return window for online purchases. But there are restrictions on some items, such as media must be "unopened", and I guess downloading is considered as "opening".
It's caused by ability to patch game later and rushing product to reach impossible deadline on an impossible configuration.
Which is only tangentially related. Greed is the true culprit.
Which is only tangentially related. Greed is the true culprit.
Greed isn't the true culprit. You don't make more money by making any % of your consumer base hate you.
If you don't release game by X date and for 5 year old consoles. Your stocks will definitely go down. And CDPR is a publicly traded company.
For a publicly traded company, especially one with short term oriented investors, some amount of brand tarnishing is acceptable.
For another similar example see Fallout 76.
For a publicly traded company, especially one with short term oriented investors, some amount of brand tarnishing is acceptable.
For another similar example see Fallout 76.
Greed being the common denominator makes it not the culprit. If greed were truly the culprit then they would be focused on making the most amount of money possible without constraints.
It's poor leadership and short sightedness IMO.
It's poor leadership and short sightedness IMO.
I tried Battlefield 2042 and it was really cool to see such large open fighting spaces, but they're also so large they're boring. People are so spread out a large portion of the time can be spent playing just finding an enemy to shoot at...
By comparison Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was clear the best Battlefield game of all time. And the graphics to this day still hold up.
By comparison Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was clear the best Battlefield game of all time. And the graphics to this day still hold up.
My problem with Battlefield 2042 is that it doesn’t feel like battlefield. It feels like some exec asked “what kind of shooters have gotten popular with the kids recently? Let’s rip those off”.
> Whats most tragic is it's not expensive to just allow players to host it themselves for a game thats already multiplayer.
It's infinitely expensive, because older games compete with new ones(not everyone cares for looks and there are mods that can make this argument obsolete). And new ones don't always win. Especially with introduction of game as a service. There are many tactics used by modern developers to squeeze more money from players, that modern gamers don't like. And if gamers had a choice many would go retro. This is why WoW Classic exists. This is why emulation exist. This is why people develop open engines for old games. And this is why it is in developers best interest to prevent their older games from competing with new ones. Especially if people were to learn that they could get free skins for their games in past, while modern ones demand cash for even basic palette swap.
It's infinitely expensive, because older games compete with new ones(not everyone cares for looks and there are mods that can make this argument obsolete). And new ones don't always win. Especially with introduction of game as a service. There are many tactics used by modern developers to squeeze more money from players, that modern gamers don't like. And if gamers had a choice many would go retro. This is why WoW Classic exists. This is why emulation exist. This is why people develop open engines for old games. And this is why it is in developers best interest to prevent their older games from competing with new ones. Especially if people were to learn that they could get free skins for their games in past, while modern ones demand cash for even basic palette swap.
Surprised you mention Cyberpunk as a train wreck since it was massively successful and profitable for projekt red even after refunds from low-end platform users. They've sold over 20 million copies at $60/copy. Edgerunners also super successful for them.
The reason I mentioned Cyberpunk is because it demonstrates a massive change in brand awareness, same for 2042.
5-10 years ago publishers would just ignore outrage and fix the bare minimum quietly and then leave it alone. Think of all the major bugs just left in games in the 00s and 10s, Fallout New Vegas in particular comes to mind. That might be the single game with the worst long term support ive ever seen. They released it in even worse shape, then made it barely functional, released mod tools and never touched it again because the Obsidian & Bethesda relationship fell apart.
Today both BF2042 and Cyberpunk are going out of their way to improve their games from launch state and make a marketing effort on behalf of it to recover their brand. Gigantic difference.
5-10 years ago publishers would just ignore outrage and fix the bare minimum quietly and then leave it alone. Think of all the major bugs just left in games in the 00s and 10s, Fallout New Vegas in particular comes to mind. That might be the single game with the worst long term support ive ever seen. They released it in even worse shape, then made it barely functional, released mod tools and never touched it again because the Obsidian & Bethesda relationship fell apart.
Today both BF2042 and Cyberpunk are going out of their way to improve their games from launch state and make a marketing effort on behalf of it to recover their brand. Gigantic difference.
And it's recent review rating has jumped to 87%, while all-time rating has crawled to 79% from its low 70s launch.
Companies have been aware of the reputation gains for over a decade now. Modern Warfare 2 got tons of backlash when it released without a server browser in 2009. The next CoD, Black Ops 1, had support for dedicated servers. So did Modern Warfare 3.
> Whats most tragic is it's not expensive to just allow players to host it themselves for a game thats already multiplayer.
That’s hardly true for modern games. One I’m working on currently would be on the order of a few thousand US a month to run the entire infrastructure. Trimming that down does not help me launch, and only helps the very small minority trying to run a particular game after its death.
Most modern games don’t run on a single server piece, it’s distributed.
That’s hardly true for modern games. One I’m working on currently would be on the order of a few thousand US a month to run the entire infrastructure. Trimming that down does not help me launch, and only helps the very small minority trying to run a particular game after its death.
Most modern games don’t run on a single server piece, it’s distributed.
Battlefield wasn't even EA's worst trainwreck. Look what happened to Anthem.
I'd rather sink time into a shoestrung indie studio than anything EA wants to publish, after that.
I'd rather sink time into a shoestrung indie studio than anything EA wants to publish, after that.
Recently on a whim I downloaded HL2 and logged into the deathmatch lobby. There are still self hosted servers active with dozens of players duking it out.
I joined in the fun, and for an hour I felt like I was 15 again, it's held up surprisingly well! If epic ever turns off the Fortnite server, it's just gone.
I joined in the fun, and for an hour I felt like I was 15 again, it's held up surprisingly well! If epic ever turns off the Fortnite server, it's just gone.
I like to believe that someone somewhere is still playing wolfenstein:ET
I had so much god damned fun playing that game
I had so much god damned fun playing that game
It got recently released on Steam, so there's a large surge of players lately.
> One thing that's really sad to me is that older games end up being a lot more durable than newer ones
Not just games, it's really.. everything.
I predict that a 100 years from now the collectors of old things of any kind will have a lot more from prior to 2000-2020 (depending on the item) than anything newer. Whether it is computers, electronics, games, cars, doesn't matter.
All of them are becoming so dependent on third-party cloud services and phone apps that simply won't exist and will be impossible to recreate in a century. All that will survive is the older generation of products that did not depend on anything. Very sad.
Not just games, it's really.. everything.
I predict that a 100 years from now the collectors of old things of any kind will have a lot more from prior to 2000-2020 (depending on the item) than anything newer. Whether it is computers, electronics, games, cars, doesn't matter.
All of them are becoming so dependent on third-party cloud services and phone apps that simply won't exist and will be impossible to recreate in a century. All that will survive is the older generation of products that did not depend on anything. Very sad.
> For example, you can still play games like Master of Orion 2 or Total Annihilation in multiplayer, because they rely on players hosting servers, and some people still host servers 25+ years after release (and people have even written fan patches to make that possible today, if necessary).
You make it sound like a good thing. And it indeed is for gamers. But it's the worse nightmare for established dev/pub that people play the old games, on their own servers, instead of your latest title.
It actually happened quite a lot. Starcraft I was (is?) more popular than Starcraft II in Korea, where the biggest Starcraft E-sport scenes are. I recently learned that Red Alert II is still fairly popular today in China, and Red Alert III players don't exist.
"How to out compete our previous title" is a real problem that established studios face. The lack of durability is a "solution".
You make it sound like a good thing. And it indeed is for gamers. But it's the worse nightmare for established dev/pub that people play the old games, on their own servers, instead of your latest title.
It actually happened quite a lot. Starcraft I was (is?) more popular than Starcraft II in Korea, where the biggest Starcraft E-sport scenes are. I recently learned that Red Alert II is still fairly popular today in China, and Red Alert III players don't exist.
"How to out compete our previous title" is a real problem that established studios face. The lack of durability is a "solution".
I'm glad we didn't have to worry about Mozart or Beethoven trying to bury their previous works so that they wouldn't have to compete with their previous titles. This seems like a perverse incentive unique to modern creative works.
Well without modern technology, you need a well-trained orchestra to replicate Symphone No.9. The marginal cost was a totally different beast at that time.
Well, you have to make a better title then. If people prefer Red Alert 2 to Red Alert 3, then it's not like Red Alert 3 somehow deserves or is entitled to any money or attention; it has to earn it by being a better, desirable product - and from the opposite side, the players are entitled to keep playing the older game forever, they paid for it fair and square.
Indeed. It's a form of DRM if we take the R to mean 'restrictions', whether it's intentional or not. It just goes to show that all these publishers have no interest in making great games, but to simply milk players for a little while before moving on to the next thing. That and the loot boxes are the main reason I don't buy "modern" games anymore. I stash all my cash for GOG.
Specifically, matchmaking shutting down isn't too bad as long as hosting and Direct Connect still work :
plenty of games that have lost their matchmaking by GameSpy shutting down have found a second MP life through third-party matchmaking services like Game Ranger.
But do NOT buy games where MP doesn't work at all without official servers (or only through Steam MP or equivalent).
plenty of games that have lost their matchmaking by GameSpy shutting down have found a second MP life through third-party matchmaking services like Game Ranger.
But do NOT buy games where MP doesn't work at all without official servers (or only through Steam MP or equivalent).
Community servers are also great. You get to meet people and develop relationships with them as you play. Matchmaking just dumps you with a bunch of randos, half of which are going to be angry teens.
Its never been easier to host a game server than it is today. We had to cohost and ship servers 20 years ago. There were some game hosting companies but they were usually bad performance for the price. Nowadays you can spin up a VM with a moments notice for a lot less money and investment and yet we are in the age of games not coming with dedicated server software.
you're speaking of multiplayer games, which is true, but even single-player games will face this when they have denuvo, once the denuvo server goes out you're also unable to play your single player games.
EMPRESS is the last line of defence.
EMPRESS is the last line of defence.
Maybe that’s really the place for that kind of service?
I kinda like the idea of more open gaming type systems.
I kinda like the idea of more open gaming type systems.
Isn't this just older games that are popular vs newer games that weren't?
I don’t personally know any other field whose products have deteriorated over time like the game industry’s and it being clear because the quality of software developers in that field have went down.
In other industries, changes in material usage can be cost saving in nature or more robust.
But in the games industry, new generations of players are literally losing out in features that previously existed, or quality concerns that one never had to think about before.
In other industries, changes in material usage can be cost saving in nature or more robust.
But in the games industry, new generations of players are literally losing out in features that previously existed, or quality concerns that one never had to think about before.
In my experience, game developers are some of the most talented engineers I've ever met. But they're very different from the "high quality" engineers you'd find in the rest of tech.
They're usually really good at getting the job done and balancing quality + productivity. However, most things are written with a one-off mindset because chances are your next game will need things to work completely differently. Everywhere else in tech you find "scalable" and "backwards compatible" solutions; not in gaming.
Part of this is the job description. Unlike the rest of tech, you're usually building a game that will be popular for 2-3 years then disappear. It's not common to find that model anywhere else in tech.
Just my 2 cents.
They're usually really good at getting the job done and balancing quality + productivity. However, most things are written with a one-off mindset because chances are your next game will need things to work completely differently. Everywhere else in tech you find "scalable" and "backwards compatible" solutions; not in gaming.
Part of this is the job description. Unlike the rest of tech, you're usually building a game that will be popular for 2-3 years then disappear. It's not common to find that model anywhere else in tech.
Just my 2 cents.
Wouldn't that not be true at all for a significant portion of games that are long-running franchises, perhaps even less true than for any other software product that doesn't live for longer than 2-3 years?
Either way, I would never attribute this to ICs, they're just doing the best or fastest job they can with the requirements they're given. A lot of the time anyway.
Either way, I would never attribute this to ICs, they're just doing the best or fastest job they can with the requirements they're given. A lot of the time anyway.
By the time you a a long-running franchise you gained so much technical debt that rewriting the entire engine not to have hacks is a very development intensive. Then you never know if the franchise will fad away.
100%. Everyone I know succeeding in that space is the premium top tier cowboy coder. Self starter, interested in the end product, but ultimately just able to sit at a computer and belt out 100 solutions to 30 problems a day.
The quality of developers in game dev has not declined. Studios grew and merged into massive companies that follow the established pattern of profits over people.
Profits over people has reduced the average quality of devs over time.
Cyberpunk 2077 shows they are still tossing out unfinished bug ridden messes. The only difference is so many AAA games like Assassins Creed, GTA, Call of Duty, etc are just incremental releases they have more time to polish the same crap.
Cyberpunk 2077 shows they are still tossing out unfinished bug ridden messes. The only difference is so many AAA games like Assassins Creed, GTA, Call of Duty, etc are just incremental releases they have more time to polish the same crap.
The lessons to be learned about Cyberpunk 2077 have very little to do with quality of devs. Instead it has everything to do with mismanaged timelines, misaligned expectations, marketing based on a game that doesn't even exist, securing brand deals before the game is even playable, and more micro-lessons specific to game development (like assuming your engine is capable of a different genre easily).
Speaking of Assassin's Creed, the reason they're able to polish is not because it's the "same crap". On the contrary, every time they've had to deal with an engine upgrade they've suffered huge bugs (and I'll touch on this later on). But they're able to mitigate this by having large teams operate as cogs, with higher level tools, and this has been battle tested for years. Call of Duty is another, huge teams, working on cycles. CD Projekt Red did not have this in place. Their expectations were utterly delusional.
Speaking about engine upgrades, maintaining your own custom engine is incredibly costly in every aspect. Harder to find talent, harder to maintain, harder to test. All of this compounds, and gets worse when you're trying to stretch your engine away from "the same crap" and into a new genre. This is why more studios now are relying on the likes of Unity or Unreal - including CDPR. Or EA, who once upon a time had both Eclipse (single player RPG engine) and Frostbite (FPS shooter engine), and are now betting on Unreal.
Speaking of Assassin's Creed, the reason they're able to polish is not because it's the "same crap". On the contrary, every time they've had to deal with an engine upgrade they've suffered huge bugs (and I'll touch on this later on). But they're able to mitigate this by having large teams operate as cogs, with higher level tools, and this has been battle tested for years. Call of Duty is another, huge teams, working on cycles. CD Projekt Red did not have this in place. Their expectations were utterly delusional.
Speaking about engine upgrades, maintaining your own custom engine is incredibly costly in every aspect. Harder to find talent, harder to maintain, harder to test. All of this compounds, and gets worse when you're trying to stretch your engine away from "the same crap" and into a new genre. This is why more studios now are relying on the likes of Unity or Unreal - including CDPR. Or EA, who once upon a time had both Eclipse (single player RPG engine) and Frostbite (FPS shooter engine), and are now betting on Unreal.
> having large teams operate as cogs, with higher level tools, and this has been battle tested for years.
That’s what I mean by the same crap. It’s not that the engine is unchanged and they never add new gameplay elements, but rather the team/company knows more or less exactly the kind of game that they’re making on day one and therefore what kinds of people they need etc.
Specialization isn’t a bad thing, but it does mean you can get away with less generally competent team, which very much plays a role in staffing etc.
That’s what I mean by the same crap. It’s not that the engine is unchanged and they never add new gameplay elements, but rather the team/company knows more or less exactly the kind of game that they’re making on day one and therefore what kinds of people they need etc.
Specialization isn’t a bad thing, but it does mean you can get away with less generally competent team, which very much plays a role in staffing etc.
game quality is mostly driven by story, UX (fucking launchers, tens of GB to download, absolutely shitty menus, worst in class config, everything is a lobby - driven by multi-platformness and everything being a port, everything fitting into whatever cloud shit they have)
the game part is mostly ok, just boring
they rebooted Modern Warfare 1 and 2 for fuck's sake. how more unoriginal one can get!?
that's absolutely on business and not on the coders IMHO
the game part is mostly ok, just boring
they rebooted Modern Warfare 1 and 2 for fuck's sake. how more unoriginal one can get!?
that's absolutely on business and not on the coders IMHO
> Call of Duty, etc are just incremental releases they have more time to polish the same crap.
Unfortunately, as this year's CoD release has shown, they can't even do incremental updates correctly anymore. They've broken major parts of the game, removed key features (like leaderboards), and taken months to release content.
Unfortunately, as this year's CoD release has shown, they can't even do incremental updates correctly anymore. They've broken major parts of the game, removed key features (like leaderboards), and taken months to release content.
The thing that irks me about incremental releases is that they charge full price for every new release AND include micro-transactions.
So we end up in this situation where to be consumer friendly they should either adopt a rolling release F2P model (like fortnite, dota, cs:go, etc) or at the very least pledge long term support to each release.
They do neither so games like Call of Duty end up as a money pit when they get infested with hackers a couple of years after the series moves on to the next title.
So we end up in this situation where to be consumer friendly they should either adopt a rolling release F2P model (like fortnite, dota, cs:go, etc) or at the very least pledge long term support to each release.
They do neither so games like Call of Duty end up as a money pit when they get infested with hackers a couple of years after the series moves on to the next title.
[deleted]
This same thing happens to movie stars. Twenty years ago some actors moved masses just by appearing in a movie. Nowadays actors are dispensable and movie characters are performed by different people. Massive studios also kill opportunities for actors. And I am sure that this is true in most industries. A few companies own most products and jobs and can manipulate them as they desire.
In Hollywood, actors actually do pretty well compared to VFX artists, they still have notoriety, and a really strong union, VFX artist don't.
In fact there are striking similarities between Hollywood VFX artists and AAA game developers in how shitty the work conditions are.
In fact there are striking similarities between Hollywood VFX artists and AAA game developers in how shitty the work conditions are.
[deleted]
Exactly. There’s not a ton of competition.
There is not a ton of competition in games?
I generally disagree on that if you stick to Windows based games. Now if you're playing on any of the consoles, well longevity is decided by the platform owner.
In the indie games industry there are likely more games than ever that are better than ever and can be self hosted.
The unaddressed problem here is that 'online only' skinner box style games are massive money makers when they are a hit. Couple that with ever increasing costs in making top of the line games and you can see why the people handing out funding want to go that way.
I generally disagree on that if you stick to Windows based games. Now if you're playing on any of the consoles, well longevity is decided by the platform owner.
In the indie games industry there are likely more games than ever that are better than ever and can be self hosted.
The unaddressed problem here is that 'online only' skinner box style games are massive money makers when they are a hit. Couple that with ever increasing costs in making top of the line games and you can see why the people handing out funding want to go that way.
There is not a ton of competition in AAA games.
Indie games are getting better, but if you want AAA graphics, etc. your competition is far more limited.
Indie games are getting better, but if you want AAA graphics, etc. your competition is far more limited.
I think this is a bit disingeuous. I probably fall into the category of "quality of developers in that field have went down", I've been working in games for a decade.
Many of the problems with games are to do with game engine architectural decisions made 20 years ago - anything based on Unreal Engine has code that was last touched in the mid 2000's for example, and some of that is _not good_. Lots of issues around sloppy drivers, bad memory management stem from an overuse of the "old way" of doing things, which is driven by the programmers you're glorifying in your post. Some of the smartest people I've worked with are still working on their first game, and some have been in the industry long enough to be veterans.
The quality isn't deteriorating, the market has expaned hugely. Companies that are now considered "small" would have been considered enormous productions 25 years ago, and those companies are pushing out incredible quality experiences. Companies that are absolute behemoths now are putting out iterative works that people _clearly_ enjoy because there are alternatives to them and yet they buy Call of Duty because it's fresh, fun, exciting, nostalgic.
> I don’t personally know any other field whose products have deteriorated over time like the game industry's
Ignoring the fact that I disagree about the quality having fallen (stray, tunic, and vampire survivors are some of the best experiences I've had gaming, and they're all relatively new), people lament the same way about everything. Cars aren't built like they used to be, household appliances used to be more robust, movies were better in <X> time, children's toys are just ads for <y> show, there's no good music these days. Look on any thread here and you'll see the same thing (and if you speak to your parents they'll say the same about things that were better when _they_ were younger)
Many of the problems with games are to do with game engine architectural decisions made 20 years ago - anything based on Unreal Engine has code that was last touched in the mid 2000's for example, and some of that is _not good_. Lots of issues around sloppy drivers, bad memory management stem from an overuse of the "old way" of doing things, which is driven by the programmers you're glorifying in your post. Some of the smartest people I've worked with are still working on their first game, and some have been in the industry long enough to be veterans.
The quality isn't deteriorating, the market has expaned hugely. Companies that are now considered "small" would have been considered enormous productions 25 years ago, and those companies are pushing out incredible quality experiences. Companies that are absolute behemoths now are putting out iterative works that people _clearly_ enjoy because there are alternatives to them and yet they buy Call of Duty because it's fresh, fun, exciting, nostalgic.
> I don’t personally know any other field whose products have deteriorated over time like the game industry's
Ignoring the fact that I disagree about the quality having fallen (stray, tunic, and vampire survivors are some of the best experiences I've had gaming, and they're all relatively new), people lament the same way about everything. Cars aren't built like they used to be, household appliances used to be more robust, movies were better in <X> time, children's toys are just ads for <y> show, there's no good music these days. Look on any thread here and you'll see the same thing (and if you speak to your parents they'll say the same about things that were better when _they_ were younger)
People buy call of duty because of the name regardless of the current quality vs an unknown title.
Movies were better, they made less movies which increased quality, had better actors who had more talent (singing, dancing, acting). Kids TV shows are created to sell toys. Products are cheaper and made to be thrown out vs repaired.
Profit keeps going up, quality goes down while prices try to stay the same.
Movies were better, they made less movies which increased quality, had better actors who had more talent (singing, dancing, acting). Kids TV shows are created to sell toys. Products are cheaper and made to be thrown out vs repaired.
Profit keeps going up, quality goes down while prices try to stay the same.
> I don’t personally know any other field whose products have deteriorated over time like the game industry’s and it being clear because the quality of software developers in that field have went down.
Having been playing computer games since the mid 90's I don't know if that claim is actually true. Once upon a time there were games that would delete your entire hard drive when uninstalled and wouldn't last a 15 minute game session before blue screening the whole system. Honestly, given the complexity that modern games require I don't think it's bad at all.
I think the problems we're seeing with modern games actually being worse (the new Arkham game compared to the old) are strictly dollar and cents choices. The ability is there, but the industry has become far too pragmatic.
Having been playing computer games since the mid 90's I don't know if that claim is actually true. Once upon a time there were games that would delete your entire hard drive when uninstalled and wouldn't last a 15 minute game session before blue screening the whole system. Honestly, given the complexity that modern games require I don't think it's bad at all.
I think the problems we're seeing with modern games actually being worse (the new Arkham game compared to the old) are strictly dollar and cents choices. The ability is there, but the industry has become far too pragmatic.
> would delete your entire hard drive when uninstalled
> before blue screening the whole system
TBF at the time the number of possible configurations a game could run on was close to infinity
Nowadays platform are much more stable, drivers are much more polished and you have 2/3 max manufacturers that make all the hardware gamers use which mostly is top of the gamma components specifically built to run games.
I remember assembling my PCs in the 90s by putting together components cannibalized from everywhere I could, using esotic hardware that took weeks of debugging to make it work, CPU, RAM and BUS were constantly abundantly overclocked, air flow was a joke at best and software configurations were highly customized
The fact that they even booted it's a miracle
> before blue screening the whole system
TBF at the time the number of possible configurations a game could run on was close to infinity
Nowadays platform are much more stable, drivers are much more polished and you have 2/3 max manufacturers that make all the hardware gamers use which mostly is top of the gamma components specifically built to run games.
I remember assembling my PCs in the 90s by putting together components cannibalized from everywhere I could, using esotic hardware that took weeks of debugging to make it work, CPU, RAM and BUS were constantly abundantly overclocked, air flow was a joke at best and software configurations were highly customized
The fact that they even booted it's a miracle
A lot of your concern of older games has been fixed over time by the development of emulators and wrappers. Multiplayer (and live DRM) components of modern games can't be easily RE'd in most cases. Especially with services like Xbox Live the most helpful data is actually packet captures where one can actually go through and replicate the protocol used.
I honestly would challenge you to find games from the mid 90's+ that won't work on a modern machine. Many times if there's a feature that straight up doesn't work it's due to online services being discontinued. There's been some work done to rebuild services like GameSpy or Westwood Online, but once more forms of encryption and anti-cheat or DRM were implemented in these sorts of services, the harder it's going to be to preserve their experience.
I honestly would challenge you to find games from the mid 90's+ that won't work on a modern machine. Many times if there's a feature that straight up doesn't work it's due to online services being discontinued. There's been some work done to rebuild services like GameSpy or Westwood Online, but once more forms of encryption and anti-cheat or DRM were implemented in these sorts of services, the harder it's going to be to preserve their experience.
That wasn't my argument here - the older games, at the time they came out, were often a mess. Some bugs were patched out, some weren't, but the quality at the time they were relevant wasn't any greater, it was often worse.
But yeah, we're in a new phase where publishers kill games and then they are gone forever and that's a real shame. I think there needs to be some sort of legislation around abandonware so that people can host live services and MMOs after the publishers give up on them.
But yeah, we're in a new phase where publishers kill games and then they are gone forever and that's a real shame. I think there needs to be some sort of legislation around abandonware so that people can host live services and MMOs after the publishers give up on them.
I agree. I think a lot of copyright/patent laws have gotten in the way of game preservation. What bothers me is many people in the industry have held onto old code/assets over the years, but have no legal way of sharing that with others. It's odd, sheet music can be documented and distributed, but with games being more complex and tangled it's almost an impossibility to have clean-room REs/decompilations. And yet distribution of source code while maintaining copyright is pretty darn easy. Release the source, protect the assets behind copyright.
In my experience, aside from DRM issues, it's the early 3D games from the late 90s and especially early oughts that run the worst : 3D acceleration is a pain to make to work correctly, and they are too resource hungry to be run well in emulation.
I my experience, Wine (+ dgVoodoo for some DX7/8 titles) runs these pretty well. There are exceptions of course but usually there is some way to make them work. Some also work fine in a Windows XP VM without any 3D acceleration.
The problem is the monetization strategies have completely upended the industry to the point that it's basically anti-consumer and pro-gambler/addiction.
Sadly, this is the most accurate answer.
Random number generators, premium stores, pay to win, etc... Seeing anything appurtenant to these features take top priority is frustrating.
Random number generators, premium stores, pay to win, etc... Seeing anything appurtenant to these features take top priority is frustrating.
Is the switch to always-online game services (even for single player, looking at you Diablo 3 and many more since) really driven by the quality of software developers? I’ve always assumed this was a management issue.
Prett much the same with all software as service these days, you don't own your software anymore.
Even media with all streaming going on it's sometimes just gone.
Even media with all streaming going on it's sometimes just gone.
Not convinced about programmers being worse, but printers, maybe? That's an actively user-hostile industry if ever there was one.
Bullshit. Games are being made more cheaply maybe, and some user-hostile product decisions are being made, but developer quality is better than it ever was. If you play the release version of an old game without the nostalgia filter you'll pretty quickly notice how much worse basic software quality was.
I mean... do we even know what games people played long long ago? We have a few ideas, but surprisingly few. And that isn't even getting into songs and other stories that have been lost to time.
What about recipes and such?
But, with longevity, what other industries are there? Furniture is one that frustrates me, as everyone is sold on the idea that some furniture is for a lifetime, at least. Which is borderline bullshit. There can be some things that will last with maintenance, but a lot of really pretty things that last are also done using materials that we flat don't allow the harvesting of nowadays. Such that things can only last if they aren't getting used. :(
What about recipes and such?
But, with longevity, what other industries are there? Furniture is one that frustrates me, as everyone is sold on the idea that some furniture is for a lifetime, at least. Which is borderline bullshit. There can be some things that will last with maintenance, but a lot of really pretty things that last are also done using materials that we flat don't allow the harvesting of nowadays. Such that things can only last if they aren't getting used. :(
I don't know about that, well-built solid wood furniture can last a really long time.
(Upholstered items, though, I'm with you on.)
(Upholstered items, though, I'm with you on.)
The combination of solid wood items with replaceable upholstery is the middle ground that allows the furniture to be updated with whatever is popular at the time. Of course finding a shop that does upholstery these days isn't easy or cheap.
The hardwoods that help solid furniture last forever aren't really allowed anymore. Softwood furniture is highly dependent on the level of use you throw at it. And I'm willing to let my kids go wild and live on our stuff. :D
>and it being clear because the quality of software developers in that field have went down
I don't think the decisions John is talking about are in the hand of individual devs.
I don't think the decisions John is talking about are in the hand of individual devs.
I don't feel this way at all. Played the new Call of Duty : Modern Warfare and it was a mind blowing cinematic experience. Felt like I was in a blockbuster movie.
Watching a friend playing Ghost of Tsushima and it's the same. So good. Horizon : Zero Dawn. Crazy stuff.
I don't know what these guys are doing, but the scenes are gorgeous. The gameplay is loads of fun (MW2 is sooo much fun). The choreography is great. Love it all.
Watching a friend playing Ghost of Tsushima and it's the same. So good. Horizon : Zero Dawn. Crazy stuff.
I don't know what these guys are doing, but the scenes are gorgeous. The gameplay is loads of fun (MW2 is sooo much fun). The choreography is great. Love it all.
>I don’t personally know any other field whose products have deteriorated over time like the game industry’s
Household appliances?
Household appliances?
Blizzard's reputation for quality was sourced from a stellar QA department, overworked and underpaid.
People won't grind on small details for low pay, so simplified games are the way forward.
People won't grind on small details for low pay, so simplified games are the way forward.
Once you have the QA department you still have to listen to them and implement the fixes. When a bad game comes out they usually know it's bad, they just shipped it anyway.
I love Carmack's general message here, but this part is not something a lot of developers have the luxury to do:
> "Most of game development is a panicky rush to make things stop falling apart long enough to ship, so it can be hard to dedicate time to fundamental software engineering, but there is a satisfaction to it, and it can pay off with less problematic late stage development."
When you're at id Software and don't have to answer to anyone with regards to deadlines or funding, it's fine to think like this. Unfortunately a lot of developers have a lot more constraints than Carmack did when he made his best games.
> "Most of game development is a panicky rush to make things stop falling apart long enough to ship, so it can be hard to dedicate time to fundamental software engineering, but there is a satisfaction to it, and it can pay off with less problematic late stage development."
When you're at id Software and don't have to answer to anyone with regards to deadlines or funding, it's fine to think like this. Unfortunately a lot of developers have a lot more constraints than Carmack did when he made his best games.
I took it as an appeal to management to consider the trade offs they're forcing.
That might be the case, but in games development you often have a company (studio) answering to another (publisher), and it's the publisher's management that decides the deadlines and funding. The people managing the engineers would have no control over those.
Carmack's company didn't have this problem when they made the games they eventually open-sourced. When they did get bought by a publisher, they no longer open sourced their games as far as I know, so who knows what the engineering practices were like at that point.
Carmack's company didn't have this problem when they made the games they eventually open-sourced. When they did get bought by a publisher, they no longer open sourced their games as far as I know, so who knows what the engineering practices were like at that point.
And let’s not pretend that Doom and Quake didn’t have several point releases after the fact. And that the team at id didn’t pull all-nighters to ship the games.
Those games are far simpler (by at least an order of magnitude, maybe two or three) than most of the modern AAA titles.
What was the last AAA game Carmack shipped? Rage? Hardly a smashing success, even if it was technically impressive.
I have a huge amount of respect for Carmack’s skills and work ethic and track record, but I wonder if he really has a good handle on the sheer amount of work that goes into a modern game. With often dozens of programmers, and hundreds or thousands of contributors, the coordination overhead is just massive. I think that’s why overall quality control is harder to maintain.
Those games are far simpler (by at least an order of magnitude, maybe two or three) than most of the modern AAA titles.
What was the last AAA game Carmack shipped? Rage? Hardly a smashing success, even if it was technically impressive.
I have a huge amount of respect for Carmack’s skills and work ethic and track record, but I wonder if he really has a good handle on the sheer amount of work that goes into a modern game. With often dozens of programmers, and hundreds or thousands of contributors, the coordination overhead is just massive. I think that’s why overall quality control is harder to maintain.
Games are this interesting medium of art where they're really not easily replicated, but very easy duplicated. There's practically no equivalent to a cover for a song that exists for a game. You can distribute a ROM, maybe swap some assets, but the code only exists in the binary it was compiled to. It was only up until recently (with decompilations) that a game was effectively set in stone unless it was open-sourced.
I don't know. I think it's silly for decades-old-games to run into licensing issues when trying to go open source. The tech is effectively obsolete except in the instance of that specific game.
I don't know. I think it's silly for decades-old-games to run into licensing issues when trying to go open source. The tech is effectively obsolete except in the instance of that specific game.
There have been engine reimplementations without decompilation or source releases - OpenMW being perhaps the most complex example.
I'm also not sure why you think remakes are that different from cover bands - neither are a 100% identical copy.
I'm also not sure why you think remakes are that different from cover bands - neither are a 100% identical copy.
Look up “video game demake”.
> When you're at id Software and don't have to answer to anyone with regards to deadlines or funding
actually Id Software people worked in much harder conditions than game devs of today.
https://preview.redd.it/iehd38ucuuz71.jpg?width=450&format=p...
actually Id Software people worked in much harder conditions than game devs of today.
https://preview.redd.it/iehd38ucuuz71.jpg?width=450&format=p...
Didn't id software lose a lot of relevancy in the early 2000s? They stopped producing new, interesting IP, and their engines lost popularity.
[deleted]
I think he programmed Wonfenstein 3D alone in about 4 months, it's not like he took his time
John Carmack is a strange character. Ideologically, he sees the failure of Oculus' business model; but practically, he has ignored it from the word, "go". Let the business-obsessed people deal with that.. spoiler: they did.
He's the one who made the whole thing viable in the first place! I would hate to stand in his shoes, to watch the fruits of my labor rot on the ground below, begging someone to simply reach down and pick them up: someone whose entire business model forbids them.
Was it worth it? Sure, he got to work on something really cool, and get paid lots of money... Yet it seems obvious from where I'm standing that this story could have been written with much more satisfying goals, and still played out with most of the same benefits reached.
Just look at the valve index! Huge success without any of this walled-garden bullshit or compromise, and it's still king 4 years in. The only advantage Oculus has had is affordability, but I'm still not convinced walled-garden paths are the only ones that lead to cheap.
He's the one who made the whole thing viable in the first place! I would hate to stand in his shoes, to watch the fruits of my labor rot on the ground below, begging someone to simply reach down and pick them up: someone whose entire business model forbids them.
Was it worth it? Sure, he got to work on something really cool, and get paid lots of money... Yet it seems obvious from where I'm standing that this story could have been written with much more satisfying goals, and still played out with most of the same benefits reached.
Just look at the valve index! Huge success without any of this walled-garden bullshit or compromise, and it's still king 4 years in. The only advantage Oculus has had is affordability, but I'm still not convinced walled-garden paths are the only ones that lead to cheap.
The other massive advantage Oculus Quest has over headsets that depend on a computer (besides being massively more affordable not just in the cost of the headset but also by not requiring you to have a $1000+ gaming rig) is convenience.
When I grab my Quest, because I finally got some time and want to play, now, I press the power button, grab the controllers, select a game, and play. When I consider grabbing any other headset, I realize I'll have to boot my gaming rig, connect cables, and then likely spend at least 10 minutes getting it to work properly and will encounter random software issues.
That alone makes the Quest amazing.
Now, slowly, competitors are coming out (whose main advantage is "not owned by Facebook"), but most of them either aren't released yet, don't have a broad selection of games, or both. Unfortunately, that means that for casual gamers, the Quest is still king IMO, and has created quite a bit of lock-in.
(Edit: The Quest also had the advantage of being available - while Index is still not officially available from Valve in most countries, so resellers easily drive the price up to $2k for the kit with controllers and base stations, on top of the gaming rig you need).
When I grab my Quest, because I finally got some time and want to play, now, I press the power button, grab the controllers, select a game, and play. When I consider grabbing any other headset, I realize I'll have to boot my gaming rig, connect cables, and then likely spend at least 10 minutes getting it to work properly and will encounter random software issues.
That alone makes the Quest amazing.
Now, slowly, competitors are coming out (whose main advantage is "not owned by Facebook"), but most of them either aren't released yet, don't have a broad selection of games, or both. Unfortunately, that means that for casual gamers, the Quest is still king IMO, and has created quite a bit of lock-in.
(Edit: The Quest also had the advantage of being available - while Index is still not officially available from Valve in most countries, so resellers easily drive the price up to $2k for the kit with controllers and base stations, on top of the gaming rig you need).
You don't get the other end of the spectrum, though.
I'm told state-of-the-art quest on PC is running SteamVR through windows remote desktop. It's bad. Incredibly bad.
Once the Index is set up and calibrated, all you have to do is turn on a controller, and put on the headset. It's really not as inconvenient as you have made it out to be.
But my point here is not Index vs Quest. My point is closed-platform vs open-platform. The very issues that Carmack laments here are inherent in the closed-platform business model that Oculus (and later Meta) is built around. The very business that he was a core member of was explicitly designed to fail him in these respects. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Carmack got to do most of what he wanted: create VR tech and get paid big money; but he did not get to have the result he wanted: an open VR platform that works with (instead of against) its users. It's a serious compromise that he made. He didn't need the money. This is the man who famously gave away a Porsche at a Quake tournament! He could have put more value in his legacy than in his financial stability, but he didn't. I can only speculate on how that would feel, but I would be surprised to learn it feels good.
I'm told state-of-the-art quest on PC is running SteamVR through windows remote desktop. It's bad. Incredibly bad.
Once the Index is set up and calibrated, all you have to do is turn on a controller, and put on the headset. It's really not as inconvenient as you have made it out to be.
But my point here is not Index vs Quest. My point is closed-platform vs open-platform. The very issues that Carmack laments here are inherent in the closed-platform business model that Oculus (and later Meta) is built around. The very business that he was a core member of was explicitly designed to fail him in these respects. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Carmack got to do most of what he wanted: create VR tech and get paid big money; but he did not get to have the result he wanted: an open VR platform that works with (instead of against) its users. It's a serious compromise that he made. He didn't need the money. This is the man who famously gave away a Porsche at a Quake tournament! He could have put more value in his legacy than in his financial stability, but he didn't. I can only speculate on how that would feel, but I would be surprised to learn it feels good.
> I'm told state-of-the-art quest on PC is running SteamVR through windows remote desktop. It's bad. Incredibly bad.
You weren't told that. You don't know what "Virtual Desktop" is (an app that makes using SteamVR wirelessly on a Quest a one click process) and apparently assumed it's the same as Remote Desktop, the two are unrelated.
If you're willing to do wired you don't even need Virtual Desktop, AirLink and a normal Link cable both work just fine.
You weren't told that. You don't know what "Virtual Desktop" is (an app that makes using SteamVR wirelessly on a Quest a one click process) and apparently assumed it's the same as Remote Desktop, the two are unrelated.
If you're willing to do wired you don't even need Virtual Desktop, AirLink and a normal Link cable both work just fine.
> When I grab my Quest, because I finally got some time and want to play, now, I press the power button, grab the controllers, select a game, and play.
When I grab my Quest I quickly remember how nauseating any games are that are actually good games. The only kind of decemt content that doesn't make me think "this game would be more enjoyable on my regular display" are arcade style like beat saber or pistol whip.
Personally I still don't think the current approach to VR will ever get mass appeal for gaming.
When I grab my Quest I quickly remember how nauseating any games are that are actually good games. The only kind of decemt content that doesn't make me think "this game would be more enjoyable on my regular display" are arcade style like beat saber or pistol whip.
Personally I still don't think the current approach to VR will ever get mass appeal for gaming.
The main competitor that came out is pico which is "not owned by Facebook" but it's effectively owned by the guys that own TikTok which is worse IMO.
> he sees the failure of Oculus' business model
Huh? Oculus is the best selling VR headset available, it sold way more than the Index.
> The only advantage Oculus has had is affordability
...yes, this is how consumer sales works. People buy what is affordable.
Huh? Oculus is the best selling VR headset available, it sold way more than the Index.
> The only advantage Oculus has had is affordability
...yes, this is how consumer sales works. People buy what is affordable.
Moral failure. The whole thing this article is about. For example:
> Carmack goes on to say that Bosworth greenlit the release of the Oculus Go root build (an unlocked OS allowing full access (opens in new tab)) that he had long pushed-for, but "after seeing how much internal effort was involved to make it happen, I almost felt bad about it," said Carmack. "The constraints are just different in a company the size of Meta."
The "constraints" are their business model: underprice the hardware and overprice the software. It's not a new model, this is what consoles have done since Carmack made Doom!
> Carmack goes on to say that Bosworth greenlit the release of the Oculus Go root build (an unlocked OS allowing full access (opens in new tab)) that he had long pushed-for, but "after seeing how much internal effort was involved to make it happen, I almost felt bad about it," said Carmack. "The constraints are just different in a company the size of Meta."
The "constraints" are their business model: underprice the hardware and overprice the software. It's not a new model, this is what consoles have done since Carmack made Doom!
I don't see how that's a moral failure, it's just how console businesses operate, as you noted.
If you value the fruits of an open platform, the very same qualities that Carmack espouses in the OP, and if you are critical of a closed platform for failing to hold those qualities, then your criticism is an expression of the failure of closed platforms to live up to your moral values.
> Oculus is the best selling VR headset available, it sold way more than the Index
Release date of Valve Index: 2019-06-28
Release date of first Oculus¹: 2016-03-28
There were about three years of tech adoption by consumers between these releases, Oculus was, before their first commercial HMD release, was acquired by Facebook for US$2 Billion, FB which could also use its near monopoly in social networks to place ads and thus influence billions of people to buy the product(s) of one of its subsidiaries.
In contrast:
> It sold an estimated 149,000 sets in 2019, 103,000 of which were in the fourth quarter due to the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx, which buyers received for free. The sudden demand caused the unit to be sold out in all 31 countries except Japan in January 2020. As of December 2019, 6.67% of the VR units connected to Steam are Valve Index sets. While Valve had anticipated supply for many of those that had ordered the Index in time for the March 2020 release of Half-Life: Alyx, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted production of the Index which left Valve with a reduced number of units available on the release date.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Index#Release (emphasis mine)
¹: since you didn't specify which of the range of Oculus HMDs you're referring to
Release date of Valve Index: 2019-06-28
Release date of first Oculus¹: 2016-03-28
There were about three years of tech adoption by consumers between these releases, Oculus was, before their first commercial HMD release, was acquired by Facebook for US$2 Billion, FB which could also use its near monopoly in social networks to place ads and thus influence billions of people to buy the product(s) of one of its subsidiaries.
In contrast:
> It sold an estimated 149,000 sets in 2019, 103,000 of which were in the fourth quarter due to the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx, which buyers received for free. The sudden demand caused the unit to be sold out in all 31 countries except Japan in January 2020. As of December 2019, 6.67% of the VR units connected to Steam are Valve Index sets. While Valve had anticipated supply for many of those that had ordered the Index in time for the March 2020 release of Half-Life: Alyx, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted production of the Index which left Valve with a reduced number of units available on the release date.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Index#Release (emphasis mine)
¹: since you didn't specify which of the range of Oculus HMDs you're referring to
The Quest 2 came out in 2020 and has massively outsold the Valve Index.
>> Yet it seems obvious from where I'm standing
First of all, You've never worked at a corporation? Sounds like it. Corporate politics can easily eat-up an individual influence on the direction a product goes. Especially when you're judging long periods of time, like entire history of Oculus from the looks of it.
Second of all, go read his public rant after resigning. you will find answers there.
First of all, You've never worked at a corporation? Sounds like it. Corporate politics can easily eat-up an individual influence on the direction a product goes. Especially when you're judging long periods of time, like entire history of Oculus from the looks of it.
Second of all, go read his public rant after resigning. you will find answers there.
I'm unworthy to criticize? Did you forget where you are? If you don't value my perspective, you can move on.
I'm sure the rant is interesting. I haven't really been following his life story.
I suspect that when Carmack was making PC games all the way from Commander Keen to Rage, he understood the value of PC as a free/liberated platform. Do I have proof? Well, here he is lamenting the consequences of working on a proprietary platform. I'm content with that.
This isn't some kind of trial. My point is not to condemn the man. My point is to use his character to articulate the story of my own perspective.
I'm sure the rant is interesting. I haven't really been following his life story.
I suspect that when Carmack was making PC games all the way from Commander Keen to Rage, he understood the value of PC as a free/liberated platform. Do I have proof? Well, here he is lamenting the consequences of working on a proprietary platform. I'm content with that.
This isn't some kind of trial. My point is not to condemn the man. My point is to use his character to articulate the story of my own perspective.
Knowing what I do about Carmack, if Facebook burns through billions trying to create a sad, failed VR utopia, he'd say it'd have been worth it for the opportunity to advance the tech via blue-sky development on such issues as non-cumbersome, accurate tracking hardware and high-resolution, low-latency displays.
Rather than criticize from the sidelines, Carmack should take some of his sweet Meta money, buy the rights from them, and fund the indefinite maintenance of these things himself. Or he should start a new game company that holds to these values. He'll either find himself agreeing with the business people or broke.
> Or he should start a new game company that holds to these values. He'll either find himself agreeing with the business people or broke.
He’s done it already with id software, he didn’t end broke. Feels like you don’t know who this guy is
He’s done it already with id software, he didn’t end broke. Feels like you don’t know who this guy is
He started id when he was 21 right as tech got good enough for first-person shoorters. It launched all its famous IP in its first 5 years. He left the job of maintaining legacy IP and a declining game engine to work on something new. There are different type of leaders. His strength is in building, not maintaining. His track record shows this. He's just hurt that the platform outgrew him.
[deleted]
This is a very good article. The bit at the end was especially strong:
-----------------------
"Be disciplined about your build processes and what you put in your source tree, so there is at least the possibility of making the project open source," said Carmack. "Think twice before adding dependencies that you can’t redistribute, and consider testing with stubbed out versions of the things you do use. Don’t do things in your code that wouldn’t be acceptable for the whole world to see.
"Most of game development is a panicky rush to make things stop falling apart long enough to ship, so it can be hard to dedicate time to fundamental software engineering, but there is a satisfaction to it, and it can pay off with less problematic late stage development."
The last phrase is quite the euphemism for "the game disappearing entirely, forever" and through Carmack's repeated exhortations and examples you get a sense of someone who's very frustrated at seeing things built on foundations that can ultimately prove self-defeating. We've entered an era where even many singleplayer games require some sort of server ping, while other games don't work at all if you're offline (which outside of MMOs has sometimes felt like industry overreach).
-----------------------
"Be disciplined about your build processes and what you put in your source tree, so there is at least the possibility of making the project open source," said Carmack. "Think twice before adding dependencies that you can’t redistribute, and consider testing with stubbed out versions of the things you do use. Don’t do things in your code that wouldn’t be acceptable for the whole world to see.
"Most of game development is a panicky rush to make things stop falling apart long enough to ship, so it can be hard to dedicate time to fundamental software engineering, but there is a satisfaction to it, and it can pay off with less problematic late stage development."
The last phrase is quite the euphemism for "the game disappearing entirely, forever" and through Carmack's repeated exhortations and examples you get a sense of someone who's very frustrated at seeing things built on foundations that can ultimately prove self-defeating. We've entered an era where even many singleplayer games require some sort of server ping, while other games don't work at all if you're offline (which outside of MMOs has sometimes felt like industry overreach).
I'd say it even makes a difference for single player games that don't "phone home" - I was actually thinking about this the other day in relation to the recent (and mostly welcome) trend of remastering older games, and how these releases seem to vary so widely in quality.
Obviously I don't know for sure, and there will be other factors like money / time spent on remastering, but I'd still wager that e.g. the fact that the Metroid Prime remaster was able to add in a (seemingly) whole new lighting system and control scheme whereas the the GTA trilogy remaster couldn't even get half of its weather effects working probably speaks volumes to the respective code quality of their originals.
Either way, I'm certain that I'd much rather work on porting / patching / remastering a game from a studio that's following the advice Carmack gives here.
Obviously I don't know for sure, and there will be other factors like money / time spent on remastering, but I'd still wager that e.g. the fact that the Metroid Prime remaster was able to add in a (seemingly) whole new lighting system and control scheme whereas the the GTA trilogy remaster couldn't even get half of its weather effects working probably speaks volumes to the respective code quality of their originals.
Either way, I'm certain that I'd much rather work on porting / patching / remastering a game from a studio that's following the advice Carmack gives here.
I've worked at a few small studios that have shut down games with ~200 CCU peak because the cost/benefit of maintaining the ops for these games was not worth it.
> Another alternative would be spinning off the project: Meta letting it go and allowing team members to leave, take over the rights for a nominal fee of $10,000, and maintain it.
In my experience, studios have a contradictory FOMO mindset of letting other people run the game:
* If someone else makes money off it, they want to be part of it
* At the same time, they don't want to run it themself
* It's not worth the effort to open source it, also see argument #1
What usually ends up happening is the community reverse engineers the protocol and writes their own OSS backend.
Shameless plug: I founded Rivet (W23, https://rivet.gg) to simplify multiplayer game server ops. We talk to a lot of studios with hard-to-manage old games (i.e. 3+ years old can be ancient in gaming). We often help studios move these to our standardized ops so they don't have to worry about it anymore. We also help lower the server cost for old games by auto-scaling their servers based on player demand.
> Another alternative would be spinning off the project: Meta letting it go and allowing team members to leave, take over the rights for a nominal fee of $10,000, and maintain it.
In my experience, studios have a contradictory FOMO mindset of letting other people run the game:
* If someone else makes money off it, they want to be part of it
* At the same time, they don't want to run it themself
* It's not worth the effort to open source it, also see argument #1
What usually ends up happening is the community reverse engineers the protocol and writes their own OSS backend.
Shameless plug: I founded Rivet (W23, https://rivet.gg) to simplify multiplayer game server ops. We talk to a lot of studios with hard-to-manage old games (i.e. 3+ years old can be ancient in gaming). We often help studios move these to our standardized ops so they don't have to worry about it anymore. We also help lower the server cost for old games by auto-scaling their servers based on player demand.
Hello, I am GameGPT and I create games. Drag-and-drop assets or use the prompt to generate a game!
"Hey, there was this multiplayer game my friends and I loved to play called ___ and it had the following mechanics. Here are some maps and the instruction manual. You can even check out some examples from the following YouTube links." Etc.
Reverse engineering. Please wait...
"Hey, there was this multiplayer game my friends and I loved to play called ___ and it had the following mechanics. Here are some maps and the instruction manual. You can even check out some examples from the following YouTube links." Etc.
Reverse engineering. Please wait...
I've heard people in the Interwebs ask why anyone cares so much about "old" games, since game tech advances so much. In one forum there were a couple of people referring to some five-year-old game as an "ancient relic."
Meanwhile my kids are literally playing Super Mario Bros right now while I'm typing this comment. That's a 38-year-old game. Every time Mario falls down a hole or gets nailed by a ricocheting turtle shell, I hear squeals of delight and frustration, and then they hit the "continue" option to try the level again for the 15th time. It's not really "angry mad," but "happy frustrated."
There's far more quality interaction going on with Super Mario Bros than with whatever random "modern" FPS they sometimes play, where they are mostly zoned out and are getting more "angry mad" rather than "happy frustrated" when they are killed in those games.
Meanwhile my kids are literally playing Super Mario Bros right now while I'm typing this comment. That's a 38-year-old game. Every time Mario falls down a hole or gets nailed by a ricocheting turtle shell, I hear squeals of delight and frustration, and then they hit the "continue" option to try the level again for the 15th time. It's not really "angry mad," but "happy frustrated."
There's far more quality interaction going on with Super Mario Bros than with whatever random "modern" FPS they sometimes play, where they are mostly zoned out and are getting more "angry mad" rather than "happy frustrated" when they are killed in those games.
Social manipulation works far better on children and they figured that out some time ago.
I heard my girlfriend's then 10 year old son complaining 5 years ago now about fortnite players being garbage because they had no skins and were called 'noskins'.
I didn't play it so I asked if they gave stat increases or anything and he said no, just cosmetic. I asked what a skin had to do with playing ability and was told 'Tch, you just don't get it' -replete with eyeroll.
A few months ago heard the same thing from a friend's kid (~same age) who'd just gotten his first xbox. 'Eww noskins', with the added cherry of him complaining about using a controller as it was so much harder than using a phone screen.
YouTube was the cause of it back 5 years ago, idk about now, but the companies get their messages in no matter what.
It all works far too often and worries me about where we are headed.
I often wonder how I'd have turned out if watching GI Joe and Transformers as a kid had beaten me upside the head with more than 'dont steal, drugs bad, police good, buy toys' messages of the 80s.
I heard my girlfriend's then 10 year old son complaining 5 years ago now about fortnite players being garbage because they had no skins and were called 'noskins'.
I didn't play it so I asked if they gave stat increases or anything and he said no, just cosmetic. I asked what a skin had to do with playing ability and was told 'Tch, you just don't get it' -replete with eyeroll.
A few months ago heard the same thing from a friend's kid (~same age) who'd just gotten his first xbox. 'Eww noskins', with the added cherry of him complaining about using a controller as it was so much harder than using a phone screen.
YouTube was the cause of it back 5 years ago, idk about now, but the companies get their messages in no matter what.
It all works far too often and worries me about where we are headed.
I often wonder how I'd have turned out if watching GI Joe and Transformers as a kid had beaten me upside the head with more than 'dont steal, drugs bad, police good, buy toys' messages of the 80s.
Online-only games have different dimensions of cost benefit than single-purchase games. They require studios to maintain servers "in perpetuity", which incentivizes the worst impulses of the industry like microtransactions, lootboxes, and pay-to-win.
Like Carmack says in the article, these dimensions of cost are a choice. Games which have private servers that anyone can run last forever at no cost to the company. But studios (excepting Valve with TF2) have never been able to make a game with microtransactions/etc that also works with private servers. So they chose the money instead of making a good game.
The absolute costs of running game servers is so miniscule that for a majority of the most popular games that have less than say 10k concurrent players any given day, a company's interest payments would cover their costs several times over.
I guarantee that you can run them in perpetuity. I worked for a game hosting company in my early career.
I guarantee that you can run them in perpetuity. I worked for a game hosting company in my early career.
The price of servers isn't the only cost. There is also cost to moderating the community and upkeeping tools related to that, paying people to keep the servers running reliably, dealing with privacy requests, dealing with changing laws.
That’s not even remotely true for the vast majority of games. Just look up the cost of game servers for Rust or Ark and you’ll see it tends to be over $1 per slot. With many slots unused, the per month per player cost is only sustainable with recurring revenue like subscriptions/similar or players directly paying for game servers.
That's retail price, no company is paying those
It's not far off in terms of scale. How many hours of enough extra idle slots can a one-off game purchase pay for? For most games, it's less than average playtime.
Running a process to simulate an entire game world is very expensive, far more than storing a bit of data and responding to the occasional HTTP request.
Running a process to simulate an entire game world is very expensive, far more than storing a bit of data and responding to the occasional HTTP request.
Most game servers don't process anything when players aren't on the server, and players aren't playing all day. There are peak hours.
That hardly matters, you pay for the hardware necessary to be able to accept a new connection to a slot, with the world already loaded in memory.
No, it really matters. We sold servers based on calculated loads. You make your money doing that basic math in that line of work.
You can optimise your costs around peak load, sure.
You aren’t getting away from needing to run many game servers ready for a connection. The most cost effective way to do that is bare metal for base load, which means you can’t scale down to zero. Worse still, in a game where players choose their server, most servers will have many empty slots.
You aren’t getting away from needing to run many game servers ready for a connection. The most cost effective way to do that is bare metal for base load, which means you can’t scale down to zero. Worse still, in a game where players choose their server, most servers will have many empty slots.
Public game servers are always going to be a target for hackers. Eventually libraries need updated and patched or logic exploits are discovered in the game. There is no such thing as perpetual in the computer security industry.
Of course the self hosted versus company hosted equation is much different here. If the game publisher eventually just offered the server software for self hosting and freed themselves from the management burden it in theory would be much cheaper. But likely they've boxed themselves in with license deals that make this difficult.
Of course the self hosted versus company hosted equation is much different here. If the game publisher eventually just offered the server software for self hosting and freed themselves from the management burden it in theory would be much cheaper. But likely they've boxed themselves in with license deals that make this difficult.
And I can guarantee you that this is not true. I've worked on multiple live service games in my career, and running servers for players efficiently and at scale is hard, and expensive.
No,they are not. Especially since op mentioned most popular games having ~10k concurrent users.
The added costs are studios running MMOs, and those aren't insane either. People hosted their own servers since the beginning of the net.
The odd runaway hit MMO shells out more but also makes a ton more. Even then we see companies cheap out and make us sit through server queues.
Live services these days amount to little more than checking license to play, loot-boxes, battlepass, etc.
And yet because of those evil cash-grabs I can only play the game a few years even for single player games.
Live services have become a worse dlc, as we knew it would in tge beginning.
The added costs are studios running MMOs, and those aren't insane either. People hosted their own servers since the beginning of the net.
The odd runaway hit MMO shells out more but also makes a ton more. Even then we see companies cheap out and make us sit through server queues.
Live services these days amount to little more than checking license to play, loot-boxes, battlepass, etc.
And yet because of those evil cash-grabs I can only play the game a few years even for single player games.
Live services have become a worse dlc, as we knew it would in tge beginning.
You're arguing a strawman here, and responding with emotion to the question of "are dedicated servers for old games expensive to keep running?". I'm going to skip the rant about single player games and queues.
> No,they are not. Especially since op mentioned most popular games having ~10k concurrent users.
> The added costs are studios running MMOs, and those aren't insane either. People hosted their own servers since the beginning of the net.
Do you know how much it costs to run an online game?
Assuming we're not talking about MMOs (because you're the one who said the added costs are studios for MMOs), a game with 10k peak concurrent users, and 10 players per session will need 1k concurrent sessions. Assuming the server needs ~ 2 cores and 4GB ram, you'll need 2000 cores and 4000GB/4TB RAM. We're talking "old games" here, so I think it's reasonable to assume that we're not running autoscaling containers, and frankly it's probably a bit of a stretch to assume that there's anything other than a fixed set of servers if we're talking games from the 2005-2012 era.
Hiring a 32 core/128GB Server is ~$1000/month from OVH, so to keep the peak capacity for the game available, you're talking ~$60k/month, plus various online services (login, auth, party, matchmaking, etc), licenses for things like SQL server, windows (yes, windows is commonly used in game development even up until recently). That's assuming no maintenance, or development costs happen. You have to budget for handling things like log4j, keeping CI/CD pipelines up to date to keep SSL certs valid and rotated, handling player support for those games, etc.
That's not nothing, and while it might be manageable for EA/Ubisoft for your game, what about the other 10 games they have with 10k players each?
> No,they are not. Especially since op mentioned most popular games having ~10k concurrent users.
> The added costs are studios running MMOs, and those aren't insane either. People hosted their own servers since the beginning of the net.
Do you know how much it costs to run an online game?
Assuming we're not talking about MMOs (because you're the one who said the added costs are studios for MMOs), a game with 10k peak concurrent users, and 10 players per session will need 1k concurrent sessions. Assuming the server needs ~ 2 cores and 4GB ram, you'll need 2000 cores and 4000GB/4TB RAM. We're talking "old games" here, so I think it's reasonable to assume that we're not running autoscaling containers, and frankly it's probably a bit of a stretch to assume that there's anything other than a fixed set of servers if we're talking games from the 2005-2012 era.
Hiring a 32 core/128GB Server is ~$1000/month from OVH, so to keep the peak capacity for the game available, you're talking ~$60k/month, plus various online services (login, auth, party, matchmaking, etc), licenses for things like SQL server, windows (yes, windows is commonly used in game development even up until recently). That's assuming no maintenance, or development costs happen. You have to budget for handling things like log4j, keeping CI/CD pipelines up to date to keep SSL certs valid and rotated, handling player support for those games, etc.
That's not nothing, and while it might be manageable for EA/Ubisoft for your game, what about the other 10 games they have with 10k players each?
[deleted]
Oh no! Who to believe!
Or they could price the games initially the way things like annuities are priced. Or free (or license) the games so that others can run the servers.
Given the throughput increase in computational power and broadband this should be a decreasing cost even if the use stays static in perpetuity.
Given the throughput increase in computational power and broadband this should be a decreasing cost even if the use stays static in perpetuity.
"Your company suffers more harm when you take away something dear to a user than you gain in benefit by providing something equally valuable to them or others."
Google Reader.
Google Reader.
…is not the only RSS reader in the world and there's no reason you should've been upset for more than a day before getting NetNewsWire.
I think there's a huge opportunity for indie developers to clone popular games and make them more consumer friendly.
It seems like a lot of huge corporations will blindly chase profits with zero consideration of what their fans want.
I've been building a company (https://hyperspacelogistics.com/) where we believe that doing what's best for the fans is actually best for the company. In fact, we state "We strive to support actively used products for as long as possible" as one of our core values.
Our upcoming game GunZone will even include a dedicated server so players can still play even if the company dies out. Funny that this standard of old games is now considered a big feature.
It seems like a lot of huge corporations will blindly chase profits with zero consideration of what their fans want.
I've been building a company (https://hyperspacelogistics.com/) where we believe that doing what's best for the fans is actually best for the company. In fact, we state "We strive to support actively used products for as long as possible" as one of our core values.
Our upcoming game GunZone will even include a dedicated server so players can still play even if the company dies out. Funny that this standard of old games is now considered a big feature.
I've been going through a bunch of old games recently for a project involving a regular LAN party some friends and I hold. If I can make a suggestion, bundle as much documentation as you can with the dedicated server.
It's infuriating how many times I've run into games where the potential commands/switches have been documented online across 30 websites, but every site is incomplete. Tons of games don't even document how to set the listen address or port, or even what runtimes might be needed in order to run.
It's infuriating how many times I've run into games where the potential commands/switches have been documented online across 30 websites, but every site is incomplete. Tons of games don't even document how to set the listen address or port, or even what runtimes might be needed in order to run.
I can't help but think of SimCity 5.
I've always loved the SimCity series and at various times have spent a large number of hours tinkering with a large city. It's relazing. SimCity 4 was a great entry to the series. it had some oddities (eg regions allowed you to just send trash into the void) but it's a single player game so who cares? Much like No Man's Sky and "balance", as an aside.
But EA decided SimCity 5 had to be played online. Why? Because reasons. Often there's hand-waving about "piracy" but really it's just about control and "encouraging" micro-transactions as a future revenue source. Being able to flaunt your city to other players is a prime driver for people buying digital cosmetics.
But this meant SimCity 5 was vastly more complicated as software. The city size was a lot smaller. They wasted time on multiplayer features nobody cared about. Basically they had zero understanding of who their target market was and what theye liked. As long as some VP can put up a graph in PowerPoint showing projections on micro-transaction revenues and get a fat bonus, who really cares about what the players want.
So what happened/ SimCity 5 was a flop nobody even talks about anymore and it caused Cities Skylines to come into existence.
Fallout 76 [1] is another big example of turning something people loved (ie Fallout 3 and New Vegas) into something despised just because you, the publisher, can't get out of your mind that "online = more revenue".
Old games are loved, so much so that people build software emulators of hardware that is no longer made just to play them.
As for two of John's points:
Why not allocate a single developer at Meta to maintaining the game? Because that's career suicide for that developer. You'll never get promoted for that. You'll probably be viewed as non-essential and gently shown your way to the door with a subpar performance review when some director later needs a better rating for someone they care about and the ratings have to fit a bell curve.
Why not sell it off? Because then it's gone. if you hold ownership you might be able to sell it for a lot in the future. Sell it for $10,000 now and you've gained money that is immaterial and lost any future potential. It just doesn't make sense. You'll spend more than that on lawyers just reviewing the contract.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyeCdd-dl8&t=1s
I've always loved the SimCity series and at various times have spent a large number of hours tinkering with a large city. It's relazing. SimCity 4 was a great entry to the series. it had some oddities (eg regions allowed you to just send trash into the void) but it's a single player game so who cares? Much like No Man's Sky and "balance", as an aside.
But EA decided SimCity 5 had to be played online. Why? Because reasons. Often there's hand-waving about "piracy" but really it's just about control and "encouraging" micro-transactions as a future revenue source. Being able to flaunt your city to other players is a prime driver for people buying digital cosmetics.
But this meant SimCity 5 was vastly more complicated as software. The city size was a lot smaller. They wasted time on multiplayer features nobody cared about. Basically they had zero understanding of who their target market was and what theye liked. As long as some VP can put up a graph in PowerPoint showing projections on micro-transaction revenues and get a fat bonus, who really cares about what the players want.
So what happened/ SimCity 5 was a flop nobody even talks about anymore and it caused Cities Skylines to come into existence.
Fallout 76 [1] is another big example of turning something people loved (ie Fallout 3 and New Vegas) into something despised just because you, the publisher, can't get out of your mind that "online = more revenue".
Old games are loved, so much so that people build software emulators of hardware that is no longer made just to play them.
As for two of John's points:
Why not allocate a single developer at Meta to maintaining the game? Because that's career suicide for that developer. You'll never get promoted for that. You'll probably be viewed as non-essential and gently shown your way to the door with a subpar performance review when some director later needs a better rating for someone they care about and the ratings have to fit a bell curve.
Why not sell it off? Because then it's gone. if you hold ownership you might be able to sell it for a lot in the future. Sell it for $10,000 now and you've gained money that is immaterial and lost any future potential. It just doesn't make sense. You'll spend more than that on lawyers just reviewing the contract.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyeCdd-dl8&t=1s
Sim City 5 was so strange to me.
It was going to be an instant buy for me but then as I read the developer statements before release ... it started getting really weird. It was clear it wasn't going to be Sim City, or at least a lot of design decisions had nothing to do with what I thought of as Sim City.
Such a sad waste.
Really strange too because if there was an obvious formula to make a ton of money there it was and they still screwed it up.
It was going to be an instant buy for me but then as I read the developer statements before release ... it started getting really weird. It was clear it wasn't going to be Sim City, or at least a lot of design decisions had nothing to do with what I thought of as Sim City.
Such a sad waste.
Really strange too because if there was an obvious formula to make a ton of money there it was and they still screwed it up.
"Your company suffers more harm when you take away something dear to a user than you gain in benefit by providing something equally valuable to them or others."
I'm glad a game developer is saying this to other game developers. Maybe they'll listen.
I know that as a player, I think twice before buying games from publishers like Ubisoft that have a history of shutting down games - even games that I don't play.
I'm glad a game developer is saying this to other game developers. Maybe they'll listen.
I know that as a player, I think twice before buying games from publishers like Ubisoft that have a history of shutting down games - even games that I don't play.
I don't doubt Carmacks legacy as a game developer, but which was the last game he had a significant hand in? I wonder if the industry has changed far too significantly under his feet for us to take his word like we used to.
Why would you take anybody's word? You listen to knowledgeable people's arguments and decide if they hold together for you. You don't pick idols and just repeat what they say. Carmack shouldn't shut up because you've decided that his "legacy" is stale.
Carmack has had a material role in advancing VR gaming tech even recently.
Just one example is that he petitioned Samsung to remove the requirement for triple-buffering on their screens, to allow for better latency and in-game experience.
Samsung declined, so he hacked apart his phone to make a proof-of-concept prototype of the screen without the triple-buffering. He demoed this to Samsung, and they agreed to make the change because the experience was so much better.
It's tough to say "what game has Carmack had an impact on lately", because the scope of his role has was to impact the ecosystem of games and VR as a whole.
You don't see pushback on Joe Biden along the lines of "But what has he done for Scranton lately?", because the role of president encompasses a larger scope.
Similarly, the role of John Carmack has been larger in scope than improving one game at a time (and has been for a while).
Just one example is that he petitioned Samsung to remove the requirement for triple-buffering on their screens, to allow for better latency and in-game experience.
Samsung declined, so he hacked apart his phone to make a proof-of-concept prototype of the screen without the triple-buffering. He demoed this to Samsung, and they agreed to make the change because the experience was so much better.
It's tough to say "what game has Carmack had an impact on lately", because the scope of his role has was to impact the ecosystem of games and VR as a whole.
You don't see pushback on Joe Biden along the lines of "But what has he done for Scranton lately?", because the role of president encompasses a larger scope.
Similarly, the role of John Carmack has been larger in scope than improving one game at a time (and has been for a while).
It should be self evident to everyone that with all those "cloud" services you don't own shit. Even if you are more of a prosumer say, hosting your app in a cloud account or your digital assets there is always enough EULA wiggle room there for the vendor to wash their hands if your data goes in a puff of smoke. Your interest is secondary to profit maximization. I'm sure most count on you getting over the inconvenience or outright data loss. I bet they run game theory scenarios to figure out what they can get away with and still see profits rise.
Caveat emptor.
Caveat emptor.
> It should be self evident to everyone that with all those "cloud" services you don't own shit.
No, it shouldn't be, and isn't.
And claiming it is sounds like an argument by megacorp lawyers, when there's finally a huge class-action suit led by someone who is out for precedent-setting blood:
"It should've been self-evident that we rigged this in such a way that it would suddenly stop working, at a time of our choosing."
When that wasn't what they said in the marketing when they sold it, nor when customers invested many hours creating artifacts within it.
Like it's not self-evident that when you buy a bicycle, the shop will later come steal it back.
Or, when you buy canvas and oil paint, the art supply store won't break into your house and destroy your paintings.
No, it shouldn't be, and isn't.
And claiming it is sounds like an argument by megacorp lawyers, when there's finally a huge class-action suit led by someone who is out for precedent-setting blood:
"It should've been self-evident that we rigged this in such a way that it would suddenly stop working, at a time of our choosing."
When that wasn't what they said in the marketing when they sold it, nor when customers invested many hours creating artifacts within it.
Like it's not self-evident that when you buy a bicycle, the shop will later come steal it back.
Or, when you buy canvas and oil paint, the art supply store won't break into your house and destroy your paintings.
Then may I ask after a decade of this behavior, why have we not seen a successful lawsuit against said megacorporations? At least in US law I don't think there is a chance of the consumer winning in our current legal environment.
Two of my truly-beloved games are gone or about to go.
Titanfall: Assault was a great 5 minute mobile auto-battle-arena game, shut down in 2018. I've never had a game that built & escalated into such a fun little conflict before or since.
Dreadnought is a lovely paced spaceship brawler, a great slugest, and is shutting down end of the month.
Neither of these games had anywhere near 10,000 active users, I'd guess. I still there was a chance for the really excellent niche things to do more than fizzle over time & disappear.
Titanfall: Assault was a great 5 minute mobile auto-battle-arena game, shut down in 2018. I've never had a game that built & escalated into such a fun little conflict before or since.
Dreadnought is a lovely paced spaceship brawler, a great slugest, and is shutting down end of the month.
Neither of these games had anywhere near 10,000 active users, I'd guess. I still there was a chance for the really excellent niche things to do more than fizzle over time & disappear.
On the topic of Titanfall ... Titanfall 2 is probably my favorite online FPS (in addition to having some really great single player) and Respawn has been letting it slowly degrade for years now. It'll be really sad when it's completely unplayable. Calling down Titans in it and the original Titanfall was such an experience. So fresh and different, in addition to the really sharp and refined player movement.
EA did them no favors by launching Titanfall 2 at the same time as a CoD and Battlefield title (EA was competing with itself which makes no sense). Had they launched in the spring, away from those two behemoth titles, the game would have had a much better life.
EA did them no favors by launching Titanfall 2 at the same time as a CoD and Battlefield title (EA was competing with itself which makes no sense). Had they launched in the spring, away from those two behemoth titles, the game would have had a much better life.
Thankfully, Northstar makes Titanfall 2 completely independent of EA if need be. Right now they still check the EA client ID against EA's servers to get around copyright/legal issues, so you have to own the assets according to EA in order to play a modded private hosted version, but there is no reason the EA-check couldn't be removed. The loader is open source, so anyone who wants to could fork it and do that.
I suspect, however, that this time people got lucky: the Titanfall 1 and 2 games contained most, almost all of the server-side requirements/assets, so hosting a server was mostly a matter of breaking in to one DLL file and a few game script modifications to get access to the entire source engine and game features. As far as I understand, the main missing content were the navigation meshes for the AI, a few scenario scripts, and some party/lobby features. Most, if not all of those have been reverse-engineered or created by the community, so that's not even an issue anymore.
But the more games get individually specialised engines, less and less server features included in the client-side game releases, the harder it becomes to do this type of stuff. In the case of idTech, unreal engine and Source, most things outside of the main menu and settings panel are 'maps' and those are either 'hosted' by your own game client, or by a remote server. That means that due to the architecture, the client package has to have at least some server features. If games have training modes, or explore/tryout/singleplayer modes, there has got to be more server-logic/code/assets in the client package to enable that.
I suspect, however, that this time people got lucky: the Titanfall 1 and 2 games contained most, almost all of the server-side requirements/assets, so hosting a server was mostly a matter of breaking in to one DLL file and a few game script modifications to get access to the entire source engine and game features. As far as I understand, the main missing content were the navigation meshes for the AI, a few scenario scripts, and some party/lobby features. Most, if not all of those have been reverse-engineered or created by the community, so that's not even an issue anymore.
But the more games get individually specialised engines, less and less server features included in the client-side game releases, the harder it becomes to do this type of stuff. In the case of idTech, unreal engine and Source, most things outside of the main menu and settings panel are 'maps' and those are either 'hosted' by your own game client, or by a remote server. That means that due to the architecture, the client package has to have at least some server features. If games have training modes, or explore/tryout/singleplayer modes, there has got to be more server-logic/code/assets in the client package to enable that.
Dreadnought and Fractured Space both deserved better than they got. Makes me sad I can't just go hop on games anymore, they were a lot of fun.
I would like online tools that are purchased for a onetime fee have significantly more regulations.
Give people either a defined time period that their purchase will be supported for or open source the server side so it can be run after the company decides to discontinue support.
IMO, if you charge a one time fee, and stop supporting something for economic reasons, users should be entitled to a refund. Or, more specifically, don't sell an infinite commitment for a fixed price.
Give people either a defined time period that their purchase will be supported for or open source the server side so it can be run after the company decides to discontinue support.
IMO, if you charge a one time fee, and stop supporting something for economic reasons, users should be entitled to a refund. Or, more specifically, don't sell an infinite commitment for a fixed price.
To me it seems confounding that Meta doesn't just figure out a long term strategy to do the opposite of acquihire. Basically while forming a highly experimental group like EchoVR and/or acquire hiring like EchoVR, prepare to have the optionality to do a micro-spin off where the team gets some equity and Meta maintains a 50% stake, which enables a future spin-in.
I could see how EchoVR might not make much of a dent in Meta's earnings, but that'd be a significant customer base to start off with.
This applies to other FAANG companies too - like Google. Why not take a handful of Fuschia engineers, group them together and then have them partner with say, Framework.
I could see how EchoVR might not make much of a dent in Meta's earnings, but that'd be a significant customer base to start off with.
This applies to other FAANG companies too - like Google. Why not take a handful of Fuschia engineers, group them together and then have them partner with say, Framework.
Where should that strategy come from? In the end of the day, Meta is just the company of one huge and profitable product (Facebook) that just happened to be successful, not the result of a great strategy. There is no history of a great strategy to support the expectation of having one now. But they have a lot of money, so acquisitions are easy.
Agree - probably the better way to structure the deal would have been to do a partnership where the smaller company uses the SSO of the FAANG company and future profit sharing in exchange for cash, equity and server infrastructure.
Alas - definite agreement - likely structuring acquisitions to account for higher interest rates and future layoffs a decade into the future is probably asking too much of management.
Alas - definite agreement - likely structuring acquisitions to account for higher interest rates and future layoffs a decade into the future is probably asking too much of management.
His actual statement here. It's very realistic and well thought out.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230206155610/https://uploadvr....
https://web.archive.org/web/20230206155610/https://uploadvr....
But leaving things out to slowly die is maybe just as bad. I spent hours and hours playing TF2, and while I can still play it, last time I did it was full of hackers. It has ruined the memory for me.
I've had two internet ratio players that were bricked because they'd phone home to the server, and the company running the server would go bust.
Microsoft would say their biggest competition is previous versions of Windows. I assume the same could apply to games, especially networked games with high replay ability. Given the choice between supporting the ‘competitor’ or killing it I can understand why studios would kill it.
All I can say is that I love this man.
Warcraft 2 and 3 both got illegitimate Battle.net servers. It seems to work very well. Not sure it’s legal but it’s a model that I could see a sensible game company adopting: give out the server code as part of abandoning support.
Indeed and have been running for quite a while, even wow had the classic servers up until blizzard came after them when blizz decided to make their own.
They also afforded options blizzard had been too lazy to bother with, such as playing on a favorite patch, etc.
They also afforded options blizzard had been too lazy to bother with, such as playing on a favorite patch, etc.
"The default today may be a distributed mess of spaghetti, but that is a choice."
I'd like to hear more of his thoughts on this. The distributed and service orientated the stuff I work in gets, the less we ship. It's glacial.
I'd like to hear more of his thoughts on this. The distributed and service orientated the stuff I work in gets, the less we ship. It's glacial.
Microsoft Allegiance is a good example of a company opening the source to the community to keep it alive after they closed their doors.
It's a model I'd like to see included down the road when we can abstract the compute costs
It's a model I'd like to see included down the road when we can abstract the compute costs
[deleted]
Not related to the content, the amount of ads in this website makes the article barely readable, especially on mobile.
Thank Microsoft they didn’t abandon age of empires 2
is it better to keep pouring money into something that only 10,000 love? or is it better to use that money to create something that millions would love?
Arguably you can do both, if you let the community sustain the old thing (like what Carmack did with Quake).
> Arguably you can do both, if you let the community sustain the old thing (like what Carmack did with Quake).
For games like Quake 3 it was quite open before it was old. The game was community mod'able during its prime. You had mods like OSP being "the" mod for competitive game play (1v1 DM, Team DM and CTF). It being fully open sourced later on was icing on the cake.
Wikipedia said it sold 319,970 copies for about $15 million[0]. It was a 1 time purchase game for like $50 at release. It took 1.5 years to make with a team of 9. Not a bad turn out for a single purchase and open game with a self hostable server component. Keep in mind that was 20 years ago when gaming was way less popular.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arena#Sales
For games like Quake 3 it was quite open before it was old. The game was community mod'able during its prime. You had mods like OSP being "the" mod for competitive game play (1v1 DM, Team DM and CTF). It being fully open sourced later on was icing on the cake.
Wikipedia said it sold 319,970 copies for about $15 million[0]. It was a 1 time purchase game for like $50 at release. It took 1.5 years to make with a team of 9. Not a bad turn out for a single purchase and open game with a self hostable server component. Keep in mind that was 20 years ago when gaming was way less popular.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arena#Sales
Exactly. Besides, "pouring money into something millions would love" is an absurd statement.
1. Success is not guaranteed. At all
2. Things enjoyed by the masses don't need additional support to stay alive
1. Success is not guaranteed. At all
2. Things enjoyed by the masses don't need additional support to stay alive
Release the server code and let the 10,000 maintain it themselves.
Even that requires significant effort that companies are not willing to invest. They'd have to scrub the server of proprietary code, like integration with an account server, and update the client to work with the new system.
I'm not in the game industry, so I may be wrong, but there doesn't seem to be any push in the game industry to use open source for common problems.
Why should a matchmaking/game browser use proprietary code? Create standards and use off the shelf components for common problems. Whenever I go into the settings menu of a game I wonder how much time has been spent reinventing it.
Why should a matchmaking/game browser use proprietary code? Create standards and use off the shelf components for common problems. Whenever I go into the settings menu of a game I wonder how much time has been spent reinventing it.
Remember when we had mods and games like desert-combat (bf2 devs) and counter-strike got created.
I'd like to see DLC die tomorrow please and we get back to passionate people making maps and mods again.. maybe have a community where people build things, become game developers because they enjoyed the hobby.
I'd like to see DLC die tomorrow please and we get back to passionate people making maps and mods again.. maybe have a community where people build things, become game developers because they enjoyed the hobby.
Its something that has pained me greatly in the last couple of years.
I completely agree. Game devs have stripped so much away from the user. Matchmaking, lack of server hosting, no mods. It feels like much of the community has gone.
I play BF5 regularly and there's still a large number of 64 player servers full all day, every day. However, there's very few community servers and cheaters are so common. EA/Dice have abandoned it and there's no way for the community to keep it going.
Another game I used to play, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, is free to download [1] and still has plenty of community hosted servers/mods. That's a game coming up to its 20 year anniversary.
[1] https://www.splashdamage.com/games/wolfenstein-enemy-territo...
I completely agree. Game devs have stripped so much away from the user. Matchmaking, lack of server hosting, no mods. It feels like much of the community has gone.
I play BF5 regularly and there's still a large number of 64 player servers full all day, every day. However, there's very few community servers and cheaters are so common. EA/Dice have abandoned it and there's no way for the community to keep it going.
Another game I used to play, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, is free to download [1] and still has plenty of community hosted servers/mods. That's a game coming up to its 20 year anniversary.
[1] https://www.splashdamage.com/games/wolfenstein-enemy-territo...
Should we only have 3 television channels so that we are all homogeneously talking about the same topics, or should we have 100 channels so that we all end up in echo chambers?
There are pros and cons to both. But is this a forced choice, or can we have both?
There are pros and cons to both. But is this a forced choice, or can we have both?
tv shows get cancelled all the time because there aren’t enough viewers to warrant subsequent seasons. it is better to spend that money on other shows that you bet will be enjoyed by many more people, otherwise you’re wasting the subscription people are paying.
For some shows I'd prefer an alternative funding scheme. I bet that some could be supported into further seasons by fan donations.
Is it better to build something that is beloved for a month or 10 years?
Is it more expensive to find a new customer or keep an existing one?
Sure, for lots of these games, continuing support means pouring money into a product which has already been paid for, and that investment means little to the continuing payoff of that product. However I would argue at this point in VR's tenuous life, Meta is burning its existing customers (its early adopter evangelists) in the hope that new ones will materialize.
But then again they've run the numbers and I haven't,
"I didn't set out to build a car that would be all things to everyone. I set out to build a car that would be everything to someone." - F. Porsche (who doesn't seem to have much trouble making money)
Answer: Let's do neither!
To me Meta was always a big PR stunt to steer people away from all the negative press FB was getting. I really don’t think the creator of Quakes opinion is all that important, sorry.
Why was an Internet Archive link posted? https://www.pcgamer.com/john-carmack-goes-off-about-online-o...
HN didn't want to accept the direct link (the error message was something along the lines of it being expired or broken, even though it loaded fine in Chrome), so I tried some workarounds, and this attempt worked.
We've changed the URL now from https://web.archive.org/web/20230206154619/https://www.pcgam....
Typically that would be to get around a paywall. As far as I know PC Gamer doesn’t have one so this is peculiar. Someone can correct me if I’m mistaken about that.
It does not have a paywall.
John have strong beliefs about how a business should operate. I bet he also has strong beliefs about politics, music, you name it. I love the act of software preservation, playing old games, seeing longer product cycles, but what ground do we have to criticize Meta’s business decision here? None.
> what ground do we have to criticize Meta’s business decision here
We are people in the world. The reality that our public square--which includes the ways in which we play--is being controlled by businesses who do not answer to us and do not care about that public square except in the way that value can be extracted from it is well within our rights to criticize. And, frankly, legislate.
We are people in the world. The reality that our public square--which includes the ways in which we play--is being controlled by businesses who do not answer to us and do not care about that public square except in the way that value can be extracted from it is well within our rights to criticize. And, frankly, legislate.
I guess the thing is to distinguish when the private park turns into a public square. Ideally, I'd like them either to be supported, or open sourced. Then the community could really pick it up if they want to, or if the publisher doesn't want that, they could just support it for longer.
Carmack successfully co-founded one of the most legendary game studios of all time, and then he had a leadership role at Meta. Meta is pivoting to being a game company (in the sense that the "Metaverse" is a shitty game).
Carmack's strong views on politics and certain other topics are indeed silly and uninformed, but his commentary in this case is interesting and valuable. He may be wrong in the end, but he's also not speculating like other business pundits.
Carmack's strong views on politics and certain other topics are indeed silly and uninformed, but his commentary in this case is interesting and valuable. He may be wrong in the end, but he's also not speculating like other business pundits.
>but what ground do we have to criticize Meta’s business decision here? None.
I don't get it. What qualifications or grounds does anyone need to criticize a large corporations anti consumer actions? None needed, so not having special permission or be pre-qualified for some random person's satisfaction literally doesn't matter.
Anyone can criticize meta and no one needs a grounds aside from their criticism existing.
I don't get it. What qualifications or grounds does anyone need to criticize a large corporations anti consumer actions? None needed, so not having special permission or be pre-qualified for some random person's satisfaction literally doesn't matter.
Anyone can criticize meta and no one needs a grounds aside from their criticism existing.
It’s not clear where the line to draw about calling corporations behavior to be anti-consumer. Was this falsely advertised? Did anybody promise the online games to live long?
> what ground do we have to criticize Meta’s business decision here?
The expensive hardware would be my first, second lock in to their store and third why should people stop playing a video game they like.
But modern games that rely on matchmaking through the developer/publisher? Forget it, when they go down, there's no saving them, alas.
So really this is a pretty clear-cut case of functionality deteriorating because the maker of the game has way more power than before to change the game _after_ the customer bought it (the recent brouhaha where BMW or whoever offered a subscription to boost your car's top speed by unlocking a speed lock in software also comes to mind, not to mention "purchased" streaming-only movies disappearing forever once the streaming service dies, etc.).