As much as this seems like an obvious ask now, I feel like there’s a lot of tightly pressed popular indie games now where this would be impractical, and require constant maintenance to have a “private server” version ready for the game’s end of life.
Take Helldivers 2. Their lobby system (the ship) is wrapped up around this online representation of the global war effort. Sure, there’s ways to change the game for a simplification with a Join Server By IP system, but that’s UI development you’d have to do while the studio still has money to do it - before some decline towards expiration. Often, it would have to somehow elevate priority above other bugfixes and expectations that are taking charge during the popular phase, especially since it will involve the core networking problems.
So, like anyone, I want this; I found Knockout City fun and it sucks we don’t have it anymore. But realistically, I also understand how this situation can happen.
If people can run pirate MMO servers, then they can run private Helldivers 2 servers. It’s very conveniently impractical for private servers to be distributed when the game has microtransaction revenue streams, because private servers would inevitably provide opportunities to sidestep them. They’d still make plenty of money though, because most people would choose to play on official servers regardless, but they see it as a threat to their business model, which is why they don’t do it.
It still stands in the way of preservation, and it’s not good enough to release private servers after the game is sunset, because there’s no guarantee while the game is still supported that it’s going to happen to keep the game alive. Plus, even in a best case scenario, private servers are necessary to get around server downtime, DDOS attacks, queues when the servers are at capacity, or just the ability to play with some friends if you’re in a cabin in the woods.
That’s true; I tend to think of a private server hosting a single game session of 1-4 players, but I haven’t interacted with private reimplementing of large community interactions. Generally, the commercial implementation would involve many connected servers, so it’s perhaps a bit more complicated than giving a separate address in a launcher option, but becomes less of an excuse overall.
That said, while the game is alive and well, the only motivating reason for that option’s existence is to support piracy of their game. Depending on how much they care, it’s something they’d have to keep under wraps in a development folder until the day the game dies out.
You may as well say the same thing about DRM-free games then, since this is effectively just a gimmick to disguise DRM. You don’t provide the server to endorse piracy. You do it because anything less is giving your customer an inferior product. Even if the preservation aspect of this didn’t upset me, I’d still have a hard time buying a game like Helldivers 2 because it comes across as phenomenally poor value compared to buying a game that’s built to last.
I heard he only hits the speed of sound when he's rollin' around.
But part of the legacy of Desert Bus is that it was a big charity series that kind of set the stage for GDQ later in gaming history. A sort of virtual road trip.
So a lot of people have nostalgia for it.
Desert Bus was released as a protest game. In the 90s video games were demonized for being nothing more than violence simulators. Penn & Teller took that as a challenge and had some developers make the most non-violent game they could think of.
Did you see the news The Crew is Shutting Down their servers in April? If you bought this game, and live somewhere where your consumer protection agencies might have teeth you could help this guy put up a defense against companies bricking games you paid for.
I did some research on quest system design and found a Unity plugin that reduced them down to basically eight core tasks, which means you treat it like data entry. Just have the writers draft up the elements at each part of the timeline and fuck it. Have to think more holistically and probably do the writing first, tasks once you’re happy with where to go.
Wanna try some super entertaining pills, or would you prefer a syringe so you can pump entertainment straight into your veins? First round is free, don’t you want to be entertained?
Somewhere in here there’s a joke about the cocaine laced with fentanyl that I keep getting told is a massive problem that requires more police funding to deal with.
The feds can’t imprison me for making cocaine “too entertaining”!
In some respects, I can see this. Games such as unscrupulous MMOs are often carefully engineered to distort your ability to manage time and money. However, many games are still produced as entertainment products meant to compete on a basis of artistic or entertainment value. The addictive aspect doesn’t come from a manipulative design, but Rather just plain old fun, and in those cases similar arguments could be made about strawberries or books.
I would like to reiterate that there are addictive video games which really do try to manipulate you. Just like how a breakfast cereal might market itself as healthy and balanced while loaded with sugar and deceptive portion sizes, leading to unhealthy habits, a money first video game will contain elements carefully crafted to distort player’s perception and reasoning.
Gamers can understand this. Casinos understand this. But how do you articulate the difference to a court or actually legislate against it? FOMO is usually used in a predatory way, like with daily rewards. Paid random lootboxes are definitely predatory, but other rng systems can be genuinely fun. Not an easy problem to solve without stepping on toes.
Dailies are probably something that could be solved with targetted legislation. Harmful to player mental health just to boost stats for investors. Some games need to limit progression, but there are loads of ways to do so other than dailies.
I can’t get into the whole debate because I’m not knowledgeable enough to articulate the difference between a genuinely good game and games using skinnerbox mechanics to force operant conditioning. However, I have an anecdote.
I used to play a mobile game that was mid level fun, but a very obvious skinnerbox with time based turns (energy? Mana stones? Hell, I don’t remember), daily and weekly battles, sporadic new releases where you had a chance to get some kind of cool stuff, and clan activities. I had to put it down for a couple of weeks due to real life and just never picked it back up. I still talk to some of the guys on discord but after not being on every day I stopped caring about the game entirely.
I know people tend to joke about having a Civ addiction, but the number of people who have in fact binged an entire night or more playing civilization and have experience addiction like relationships with it should tell you that the line is thinner than I think most people are comfortable with.
Few games are “just good old fashioned fun.” Every game is designed to draw our attention. The distinctions between intent/accident, “it’s just fun”/designed to be addicting, etc. are not always very clear.
It’s not a gaming addition that’s the problem, it’s that many of these games basically follow the same playbook that casinos do. They’re gambling disguised as a video game.
You can get addicted to literally anything, but that has more to do with your personality than the vice. I knew a guy who was addicted to advil. Didn’t have chronic pain or anything, but couldn’t stop taking it.
I mean, there kinda is. Gambling addiction is a fairly well known phenomenon and while the vast majority of games aren’t purely gambling, many of them do share mechanics with gambling games. One could argue that if a game shares too many mechanics normally seen in gambling and are associated with addiction, then gambling addiction could apply.
Another thing to note is that, if I understand correctly, the modern professional definitions of “addiction” aren’t exclusive to substance abuse but include anything that can cause someone to repetitively engage in a particular behavior despite any negative effects it may have. You could argue that if someone is engaging in gaming to the detriment of their own lives, then they’re addicted. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the developers fault though, people can get addicted to just about any system that triggers some kind of reward in the brain.
However, to add onto the previous statement, it is fairly well documented that some games (World of Warcraft is an infamous example) are specifically designed to keep players engaged for as long as possible without any regard for the player’s wellbeing. If a game has a lot of systems that are designed to keep the player hooked for as long as possible then it’s reasonable to argue that the game is designed to be addictive. The catch is that you’d likely have to prove that the developers were being intentionally malicious.
So, what exactly does Minecraft (one of the primary games mentioned in the lawsuit) do to cause this? Because that seems like a major outlier compared to the other listed games.
I was speaking in a general sense. You’re right that it seems like an outlier, but it’s also possible they were playing on custom servers which could implement addictive mechanics like lootboxes. However, at the same time, it’s not the fault of Minecraft’s devs if a custom server has lootboxes. Again though, I was speaking in a general sense because I was replying to someone saying that gaming addiction is unproven boomer shit; and not about this specific case.
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