The good thing was that games were complete and they didn‘t try to suck ever last penny out of you post-launch. Also, no updates meant they actually couldn‘t just ship them broken and fix later…
I can literally only think of a handful of games that had serious bugs.
There was that ninja turtles game for nes with the impossible jump, there was enter the matrix for PS2/xbox that was completely not done. There were a few games that were poorly conceived in the first place like ET for Atari…
There was plenty of terrible, buggy games you just didn’t see because stores would drop them. PC had it far worse than console did back in the day. I think it’s also that games are just way fucking cheaper now, adjusted for inflation a SNES game was around 120 bucks and a PS2 game was around 75 bucks.
I just don’t see how games that don’t meet QA requirements and subsequently aren’t shelved are in any way comparable to every game on the market today…
I mean I never had to encounter those bugs, games that weren’t shelved didn’t exist in any meaningful way because nobody spent money on them. But nearly every probably half of the games I buy and play today have serious bugs on day 1 (and many still have them on day 300). That feels like a different paradigm to me.
Well the new Tekken games launch with more and more characters, besides 7 which did launch with less than 6, and if you consider that the price of games has gotten cheaper due to inflation since the first Tekken it starts to make sense that they’re trying to make more money off them. Games have been costing more to make while costing less to buy for decades now and the industry is reaching a point where that’s become unsustainable but people just won’t accept a larger sticker price and longer development cycles so studios are finding new ways to make money. Personally I think selling characters as they come out for a few bucks is actually not a bad thing in fighting games, it keeps the games alive and interesting for much longer so long as it’s done well.
Edit: To be clear this comment was referencing what OP’s post was likely trying to convey. Of course Minecraft has been moddable on Java for years but as the Minecraft help page says it isn’t officially supported. I know about data packs and their support/limitations.
Yeah what I was asking about is official support in Java; that’s probably what OP is referencing. I looked it up and the answer is no.
It’s a bit like saying Skyrim didn’t have mod support in 2011 when it released until 2017 when Creation Club content was added. Of course there were mods in 2011 but not officially supported ones.
He says a lot of stuff, including a lot of stuff he shouldn’t. Jokes aside, his intentions were made clear when he bought out Bukkit than proceeded to tear it apart for the crime of being a better server hosting software than the garbage they had. Pretty cut-and-dry.
For those paying attention that was the first hint the guy might be a little bit of a nazi before he went completely mask-off on twitter.
What are you on about mate. The one who brought the whole bukkit project down was one of the bukkit developers not Mojang. The bukkit developer had contributed 1/3 of all code to the project iirc and protested that Mojang now owned bukkit and DMCA’d the entire thing to hell and back.
At that point it was easier to kill of bukkit and start over rather than to de-tangle and re-write 1/3 of the code.
You think they might have had a reason to do that, something that had to do with them completely stiffing them out in the agreement? You’re acting like they were being unreasonable but this is just a continuation of the white man’s treaty, a tactic where you take a minority of a community, whoever’s the cheapest and buy them out, and then have them represent the entire community. That’s exactly what they did and if it wasn’t for the fact that they had a controlling stake in the project they would have gotten away with it too. Is it at all surprising that one of the developers who ‘played ball’ in the scheme ended up becoming the CEO?
As with all things, if you zoom out and squint you can see the reality of the situation; and what you see is a capitalist organization shutting down a project that wasn’t even competing with them or even a threat because they weren’t under their absolute control. All capitalists do this, and it’s the biggest reason why capitalism is such a dysfunctional and shitty system where inferior products end up as monopolies, by simple dint of hunting down and killing or assimilating anything better than them.
“Mod Support” means (or at least, it used to) the game has structures in place to allow modifications, not that the company is paywalling mods that they “approve”. I’m not sure what the latter is called, but I’m quite sure there’d be a massive uproar if MS/MJ did that for java edition. I know I’d never play the game again, that’s for sure.
I never thought adding a paywall was necessary. I was more thinking along the lines of a game being made easier to mod and its developers embracing the idea of modding like you kind of mentioned. This could be done by releasing tools to make it easier like Cities: Skylines 2’s recently released editor and Hatred adding Workshop support. I don’t know if official mod support Java would entail something like a built in mod manager, updates to improve modding capabilities, or some kind of universal package for mod files.
This doesn’t need to be done through a service that the developer has any control over. SimCity 2000 had a Build Architect Tool players could use in the mid 90s and sites like ModDB and the Nexus exist.
I’m not sure what the latter is called, but I’m quite sure there’d be a massive uproar if MS/MJ did that for java edition. I know I’d never play the game again, that’s for sure.
There will always be the option of raw dogging files into the game directory or developing external tools like people did with Mass Effect.
I remembered I gave it a quick try on PS3 but as my brain was very rotten with COD games at the time it never grabbed too much of my attention… But I still have it in my backlog.
The PC port of FC2 is a disaster though. I remember sitting through that long intro cutscene so many times, it just kept crashing before the first save point…
People complain about PC ports now (and rightfully so) but man there was a constant stream of garbage ports in the late ‘00s that were never fixed.
I have both the disc and the Steam version and I’ve never had a problem getting either to run. Especially that first cut scene never once crashed on me, and I must have started about a dozen playthroughs over the past 15 years, on vastly different hardware configurations.
To be fair the original might as well be a diffrent game. More simialr to crisis than today far cry whereas far cry 2 is basicaly the modern far cry with one incredibly stupid decision ruining the game thats probably fixed by some mods.
Which is the stupid decision. The malaria or the guns falling apart every fifth bullet they fire? I like the idea of both, but they’re far too fast with too few ways to deal with them.
I can’t speak for everyone, but the transition from one version to another loses almost as many features as it gains. It is especially crappy about its provided sprites, to the point where we keep losing entire sprite types, many sprite sets are just plain unfinished or untested, and they insisted we move from sprites that people could somewhat take seriously to chibi/moe sprites that nobody on Earth can take seriously for an adventure game.
Another issue is that the series keeps releasing new versions that are incremental improvements at best, and they want us to pay a lot of money for each installment and half-sequel with said very few improvements, and also pay for a lot of content packs. There are things that should have been added 15 years ago and still aren’t here. They can’t even allow us to customize menus, and countless other issues. Honestly the dev team seems like they’re not very good at programming or art in the first place, and they’re just raking in money from incremental improvements over many decades. People try to excuse the engines’ lack of basic features with “but you can program it in Ruby/Javascript yourself!” Which is a really bad thing to rely on for a game-creation engine of this type.
I’m sure other people are annoyed by things I’m not even thinking of right now.
Nothing stops a game dev company from operating as a cooperative, and paying the employees their share of the full value of revenue, minus costs involved in production and distribution and presumably some amount of seed funding they all agree to set aside for the next project.
But then, splitting the revenue means splitting the risk. So if the game doesn’t sell enough to recoup costs then the workers get nothing.
The whole tradeoff of wage labor is that you agree to do a thing for an amount of pay, regardless of what the employer gains from that labor. You typically don’t get the full value of your labor, but are also insulated from business risks. If this usually didn’t pay off for the employer, then basically every business would be a co-op (because no one would be willing to pay someone to do a job if they weren’t willing to take a share of the risk), but successful co-ops of any scale are pretty rare which suggests a general unwillingness for workers to take on a share of the risks of the business.
Nothing stops a game dev company from operating as a cooperative
Apart from existing in a sea of capitalist companies than can ruthlessly outcompete them. Co-operatives don’t stand a chance.
paying the employees their share of the full value of revenue, minus costs involved in production and distribution and presumably some amount of seed funding they all agree to set aside for the next project.
That would only be feasible in a very small company, with sufficient profits to spread among the workforce.
But then, splitting the revenue means splitting the risk. So if the game doesn’t sell enough to recoup costs then the workers get nothing.
Yep, like I just said.
The whole tradeoff of wage labor is that you agree to do a thing for an amount of pay, regardless of what the employer gains from that labor.
I’d frame it as: you need money to live. Therefore, you suck it up and let someone exploit you so they can profit from your work, and give you scraps out of that profit.
You typically don’t get the full value of your labor, but are also insulated from business risks.
Those “business risks” only exist as a result of the same system that necessitates wage labour: capitalism. The risks generally have to do failing to increase growth and therefore going under due to lack of owner capital. A democratic economy has no owners, only a collective workforce who will together use their resources to fund the company and pay their own wages - this means there is no need for growth. That huge risk no longer exists.
If this usually didn’t pay off for the employer, then basically every business would be a co-op
That’s not even worth thinking about. We live in capitalism. Of course working with a capitalist model would work best - it’s the only way to ensure profits for the owners.
(because no one would be willing to pay someone to do a job if they weren’t willing to take a share of the risk)
You’re still assuming an owner. A democratic workplace wouldn’t have an owner - they’d all share responsibility for the business. And pay would be agreed democratically.
but successful co-ops of any scale are pretty rare which suggests a general unwillingness for workers to take on a share of the risks of the business.
No, it suggests that co-ops are ill-equipped to compete. It’s a moral decision, not a business one, and an incredibly risky one. Any company that isn’t willing to exploit its workers will be beaten out by one that is willing to do that, because the competitive, capitalist one will inevitably have more resources to throw behind it.
Think about this: for a company to be a co-op, it either has to be founded that way, or changed some time afterward. A company that runs in a traditionally capitalist way can only have fundamental changes happen at the behest of its owner; workers have no say how their business is run. This means that the small amount of co-ops has nothing to do with workers’ willingness to take risks. It has to do with owners not wanting to relinquish power and profit - an owner can only lose when transitioning to a co-op.
I’m not saying that Re-Logic should be a co-op. I’m saying our entire economic system demands that they exploit their workers.
My comment wasn’t aimed at Re-Logic precisely, and I admit I was only making assumptions. My assumption was that their company fit into the mold of how capitalist companies operate. If they are a co-op, and practise profit sharing, then I admit I was wrong in my assumption, but I hope you agree it’s an assumption closely related to the reality of capitalist economics.
EDIT: Re-Logic has an owner. Sorry, my original comment stands.
<span style="color:#323232;">Nothing stops a game dev company from operating as a cooperative
</span>
Apart from existing in a sea of capitalist companies than can ruthlessly outcompete them. Co-operatives don’t stand a chance.
Why not? Why do workers and owners being exactly the same set of people make it impossible to successfully develop games? This is an extra-important question to answer because a lot of these indie dev companies are a dozen or so people in total.
Could it be that the upfront costs, and the delayed nature of turning any profit at all (along with no profit being assured) means that getting paid a fixed amount to do game dev labor regardless of success is a safer option for most developers, rather than actually being a stakeholder?
<span style="color:#323232;">paying the employees their share of the full value of revenue, minus costs involved in production and distribution and presumably some amount of seed funding they all agree to set aside for the next project.
</span>
That would only be feasible in a very small company, with sufficient profits to spread among the workforce.
Most indie game devs ARE very small companies.
<span style="color:#323232;">But then, splitting the revenue means splitting the risk. So if the game doesn’t sell enough to recoup costs then the workers get nothing.
</span>
Yep, like I just said.
That’s the nature of dealing with a market economy - you make a thing or provide a service, there are costs involved in doing so, and if you earn more in revenue than your costs then you profit. If not, you don’t. Either way in a typical company it’s the owners that benefit or lose as a consequence, as paying employees to do a thing is one of those costs. In a co-op, those employees are the owners, and win or lose accordingly.
<span style="color:#323232;">The whole tradeoff of wage labor is that you agree to do a thing for an amount of pay, regardless of what the employer gains from that labor.
</span>
I’d frame it as: you need money to live. Therefore, you suck it up and let someone exploit you so they can profit from your work, and give you scraps out of that profit.
You don’t have to - you could go into business for yourself. Make a thing and sell that thing, and reap the full profits of your labor. This is an especially possible thing to do in the game development world where some of the largest games ever literally started as someone’s pet project or as soe other project that got trashed and repurposed. The Warcraft franchise (as in WoW) for example, started as an attempt at making a Warhammer RTS that Games Workshop wasn’t interested in. Sierra Online started as a couple making PC games at home. Notch sold Minecraft to Microsoft for 4 billion dollars, and it literally started as a one man project being sold on a cheesy looking website for a few bucks.
<span style="color:#323232;">You typically don’t get the full value of your labor, but are also insulated from business risks.
</span>
Those “business risks” only exist as a result of the same system that necessitates wage labour: capitalism. The risks generally have to do failing to increase growth and therefore going under due to lack of owner capital. A democratic economy has no owners, only a collective workforce who will together use their resources to fund the company and pay their own wages - this means there is no need for growth. That huge risk no longer exists.
Yes, yes, once there’s a communist revolution that actually results in “real” communism and thus utopia get back to me. But, umm, we’ve had several attempts at communist revolutions and they never seem to actually turn out that way, largely because of a combination of people being greedy (good luck fixing that) and communist revolutions tending to create the sort of power vacuums that lead to authoritarian takeovers in relatively short order. Although, under that system good luck creating games that don’t glorify the Party, because that is of course the purpose of all art.
Failing to increase growth is not necessarily a problem. Failing to generate revenue in excess of costs is a problem. The need for endless growth is specifically an issue for publicly traded companies, because the charter almost necessarily says the function of the company is to increase shareholder value, and shareholders are going to do whatever they have to do to increase both their dividends and hypothetical sale value of their shares as much as possible, because that is what most benefits them. The incentive model is a bit different for a co-op.
<span style="color:#323232;">If this usually didn’t pay off for the employer, then basically every business would be a co-op
</span>
That’s not even worth thinking about. We live in capitalism. Of course working with a capitalist model would work best - it’s the only way to ensure profits for the owners.
Of course it is worth thinking about.
You’ve got basically two scenarios - one in which a business owner assumes the risks of operating the business and pays workers an agreed upon wage regardless of the revenue that results. In this case the worker gets the same benefit for their labor no matter what, and the owner is attempting to get more value from the worker’s product than he paid for it in wages, supplies, and materials. If he does, he reaps the benefit and if he doesn’t he eats the loss.
In the other scenario, the workers and the owners are the exact same people. Meaning the workers assume the costs of operating the business and the risks that it won’t result in revenue in excess of those costs but also reaps the benefit if it does. Sometimes this occurs as a co-op, but more often as an entrepreneur in which someone starts a small business in the hopes that they can generate revenue in excess of their costs and thus profit.
<span style="color:#323232;">(because no one would be willing to pay someone to do a job if they weren’t willing to take a share of the risk)
</span>
You’re still assuming an owner. A democratic workplace wouldn’t have an owner - they’d all share responsibility for the business. And pay would be agreed democratically.
I’m assuming a free market instead of a centrally controlled economy. I’m specifically talking about the reason why we trend towards wage labor over entrepreneurs or co-ops, even in fields where the barriers to entry are as low as can be. Most of the workforce is unwilling to accept the financial risk of failing to generate revenue in excess of costs, and so sell their labor at some agreed upon fixed rate that they will receive regardless of month-to-month revenue for better or worse.
Why not? Why do workers and owners being exactly the same set of people make it impossible to successfully develop games? This is an extra-important question to answer because a lot of these indie dev companies are a dozen or so people in total.
Lot money divided by many people = little money
Lot money in one person not divided. Still lot
Thanks for coming to my ted talk
Also - didn’t say it made it impossible to develop a game. Nice go making weird assumptions, though.
You do realize indie devs consisting of one or two people are also businesses, right?
seems to me that there’s some sort of critical mass they need to achieve first before the fuckery sets in, small teams aren’t “evil” (yet) simply because they can’t be (yet)
EDIT I mean “evil” as in “we want profit above all else, let’s milk this cow dry until she dies”
I guess I have the fact that I wasnt alive for that ‘era’ of gaming, so its maybe a bit more fascinating to me to see a more utilitarian design over what we get now.
I dislike the move in PCs and consoles where everything has RGB (you’ll see it everywhere on SBC retro handhelds), or just looks garish. To me this boxy-box just looks BEAUTIFUL. Gray/beige hardware wins me over every time
Similar to how the NES was made to look like a VCR, the PlayStation was made to look right at home as part of a fancy 90s home hi-fi setup. Functional/industrial grey was the aesthetic du jour, and gave it a look that said this isn’t just a toy; it’s the future of home entertainment.
Yeah, to me, the PlayStation might seriously be one of the ugliest major home consoles of all time (beaten out by the PSOne which looks like a cheap toy). And this isn’t even a generational thing: a grey N64 and Sega Saturn stand head-and-shoulders above the PlayStation in terms of looks. Cool how compact it was, at least.
I dunno. I think you just prefer rounded aesthetics. IMO the Saturn just looks like an oversized CD player. Boring and no personality. The little ridges and whatnot on the PlayStation were just plain neat to me , and I greatly prefer boxy to rounded. It’s why the PS One was such a disappointment by comparison.
Maybe one grenade, though. Or two. I can take three, maybe. Look, I'm saying there is a right number of grenades in my tank and it's not very high, but it's definitely not zero.
id Software led the way, decades ago, making Doom and then Quake engines open source. I wish more studios would donate their old software to the public domain.
Fingers crossed one day we will get Unreal source code. I wonder if it even still exists.
Old Bungie also opened up the Marathon engine and released the assets before the Microsoft takeover. You can play that game on any modern platform while Oni is lingering in abandonedware land, unplayable and unprofitable.
If the combat is frustrating, turn the difficulty down. There will still be a learning curve, but it’ll be the difference between surviving and having to do an hour of work again because you forgot to quick save and get slapped by a foglet.
The combat is just generally unintuitive. Which early in the game is frustrating. And if you’re like me and spend weeks between sessions you can forget all the timing and buttons you need to press.
All the online/user created content was lost for all these games too, iirc. Sony took the servers down for maintenance and never brought them back. A decade of work, dusted.
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