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.
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’ve heard this argument thrown out before but my issue is always that you have a permanently declining user base since you can’t buy more copies. This is a band aid delaying the inevitable. It will not allow a game like this to live forever.
There’s one thing, however, that Harrison recommends studios do above all others when sunsetting a live service game: let players keep playing the game on their own servers. Before shutting down Knockout City, Velan released the game as a standalone Windows executable with private server support. It’s still available to download.
How hard is it for game devs to organize themselves and start companies that respect them? Worker-owned game studios. Is that hard? Are they unionizing?
The expected profit margin when you try to make a genuinely good passion project is razor thin, if it’s there at all. There are two kinds of games that make money: outliers and whale hunters. When we think of good games proving the games industry wrong, we’re thinking of outliers. The rest of the industry is whale hunters.
In theory you could create some kind of game dev collective where a bunch of indie devs all work on their own thing under the same umbrella, and if any of them make it big, they all split the take to fund the group going forward. But you run into all the same logistical difficulties that normal communism runs into: what does leadership look like? how do you hold members accountable? what does contributing look like when development hell can look like not delivering anything for years, or forever? who pays the lawyers who have to figure that all out?
Silicon valley often had “incubators” which are kind of a middle ground between collectivism and capitalism. An investor funds a shoe string budget to several start up ideas to create minimum viable products. If one looks promising they all switch to shipping that and they’re all part owners.
I’m kinda surprised we don’t see more game dev incubators. Maybe indie outliers are just that rare.
Thousands of hours on high brightness with a static image and it will start to retain elements of the image.
The torture test is important but what ya boi needs to do now is to create a more realistic test. Using static elements for maybe 6 hours at a time every day. That’s still “torture” as most users are probably not playing the same game for that long, but still within the realm of possibility.
You'll definitely have users gaming on the thing for 8+ hours every day, so I don't see much value in that. Like I said, you might as well just wait for users to report their experiences.
You’ll definitely have users gaming on the thing for 8+ hours every day
Yes, that’s exactly my point. Definitely some but not many.
Like I said, you might as well just wait for users to report their experiences.
Report them to whom, exactly? Not everyone is going to hop onto the internet to publicly report their issues. How are you going to account for the conditions? What if there’s nothing to report?
Not everyone is going to hop onto the internet to publicly report their issues.
But enough people are. People are talking about every small thing they did, what happened, whatever.
Also, with all the different plugins or stats available on this thing to track everything, you can probably create a pretty detailed breakdown of what someone did with their Steam Deck.
It’s unfortunately a case of developers being required to stay “on mute” because of their inherent power - much like being rich, male, and white.
I play a lot of Dead by Daylight, and many friendly content creators will offhandedly say comments like “If you can’t outrun a Hag who’s not using her traps on Garden of Joy, you should probably uninstall.” It’s an exaggerated sentiment, definitely in a mean spirit; but unfortunately that brand of sarcasm won’t work with everyone, and in the case of most people, they could react with “Well, fine, I don’t care about YOU - surely the developers agree with me.” But people feel MUCH more powerless when developers speak, even if it’s for a topic the community has consensus on. Even Dead by Daylight had its period of outcry when the developers effectively stated through changes “Camping survivors that are downed is not fun and we’d like to discourage it.”
It’s unfortunately a case of developers being required to stay “on mute” because of their inherent power - much like being rich, male, and white.
How does the quote go? “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
Ridiculous comparisons aside, primary issue is that there are basically no upsides and a lot of potential downsides to a developer actively like an ass in customer facing channels.
And feeding the cycle of “clapbacks” isn’t going to do the community any favors.
While I’m very much on board with the equality quote for the white-male thing (If you’re privileged, you shouldn’t be making comments about welfare and employment), I don’t know if that has so much equivalence to being a game dev. In the end, a small team of people are the ones with the control to make and update the popular game, and that power will never be spread among its playerbase.
The thing is, as obvious as it sounds to say “never act like an ass”, conversational spontaneity is unpredictable, and the simplest and fastest way to achieve that is with the directive “Never speak”. I’ve even seen that issue with coding standards - the best way to never be blamed for a bug is to just never put up any code changes. In social settings, if people try to act in ‘honest’ ways, that can involve sometimes speaking in slightly inflammatory ways towards concepts that they think the group should agree are bad. In this very comment chain, for instance, we’ve made metaphors to oppressive patriarchy from controlling white men. (I’m a white guy with above-average income, by the way, and I’m very okay with that comparison)
So, these developers decided to be more vocal than others in the past (think of every publisher that responds with stock “We recognize your concerns and appreciate your feedback”) and, this unfortunately can be the consequence of that. I know it seems plausible to expect them to be perfect, but they’re human - not much different from all other internet commenters. I’d even question whether everyone here knows the full context of the comments that are receiving complaints. Quite often, when people are putting attention on you, they can selectively quote you to make you seem terrible. (“I KILLED EARL MILFORD.”)
If your position is simply “Devs shouldn’t speak outside of patch notes and press releases”, that’s kind of a fair stance, I just want to make sure that’s what you intend.
Honestly, I don’t personally think that developers stop speaking to players directly. But doing so can have consequences, especially if you decide to take a more antagonistic attitude. And dealing with those consequences is the price you pay for more direct communications.
All of this drama is dumb for many reasons. It was dumb for the original comments from players that were insulting towards the devs. It’s dumb for a developer to respond in kind. And it’s dumb that people get so worked up in turn for the developer’s comments (especially the “they should be fired” cries).
But the clear point in the chain that can be severed here is on the developer’s shoulders. We’ll never get rid of 100% of the negativity/toxicity in gaming, but we can limit how much it becomes a part of the community.
Oof. You’d think if they wanted to surprise people with twists and turns they’d just make a new game instead of altering the plot of a remake (unless I’m misunderstanding).
The narrative director had little to do with the technical elements of the game; that jab should've been directed at the higher ups who forced this game to be pushed this game out the doorway too soon! I'm sure the developer team was disappointed with the broken launch of their game, but we need to be reminded that CDPR doesn't get off scot free. The hype they're trying to build needs to be cooled with reminders of their past behavior.
As always with the Crown Prosecution service in the UK they love to bully and make an example of Autistic people. Only added by corporation running the court system, The CPS' Prosecution barristers are known to enjoy a life of luxury and gifts from them but you cant touch any of it.
Following an assessment by a psychiatrist, however, the judge in the case determined that Kurtaj was unfit to stand trial, and so the jury was asked only to determine if he had actually committed the hacks, but not whether it was done with criminal intent.
pcgamer.com
Ważne