this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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You can emulate machines that can run Windows, and that's very effective at preservation. Wine is already better than modern Windows at running software that relies on deprecated dependencies. But live service is just purposely killing games that didn't need to die.
Hmm... I'm unaware of this, but I guess it's theoretically possible. Still it's a lot harder to emulate x86 + some graphics hardware than it is to emulate a Gameboy.
Agreed, but it's not a silver bullet and A LOT of stuff is going to be shaken up now that x86 is starting to be challenged. For a long time PCs have been entirely operating on x86 (which is arguably part of why Java died ... the abstraction just wasn't necessary). That x86 dominance I think may have given a false sense of security for software longevity.
It's not even that it's hard to port the games, but without the source code, it's just not going to happen.
I kind of wish there were laws where source code had to be released after X years of inactivity, especially for games for the cultural preservation aspect. Like if you have abandoned a game and not released any new content (especially if you haven't released even any bug fixes/have totally abandoned the game), after 10 years the game code must be released.
I don't necessarily think it needs to be a release of rights, assets, or anything like that ... but being unable to operate a game you've bought just because it was built for an older piece of hardware is 👎.
Bad live services are killing (in many cases bad) games that didn't need to die (and might have been better if less time was spent trying to force something to be a live service that didn't need to be one).
There's a big difference between Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League and say... PUBG, Fortnite, Hunt Showdown, WOW, RuneScape, etc
The inevitable outcome for every live service game is that it becomes inoperable and unplayable, even the good ones. It doesn't matter if it's Suicide Squad or Fortnite. They all should still be preserved. Open source is appreciated but not necessary.
I don't think Fortnite can be meaningfully preserved anymore than say, Cedar Point can personally.
Live services can also certainly transition out of a live service state; or if the source code is disclosed (per my previous statement) they can be transitioned by the community after they seize operation. Building a game like Fortnite or RuneScape just doesn't work without it being a centralized "destination." The experience is about the large number of players as much as it's about the game play.
Live services are more of a destination than a product ... and for match made competitive shooters and things of that ilk ... I think that's fine.
If someone 50 years from now wants to see what this game Fortnite was all about, they should be able to get a reasonable approximation of it by booting it up and playing with 100 other people. That's what it means to preserve it. We've had and will continue to have competitive games that are not live service.
Interesting question... What competitive games from the last 10 years would you consider to be not live service games?
I'm way into fighting games. Even the ones with a battle pass and such can still be played offline (except maybe for 2XKO and Brawlhalla) and quite frankly can't match the content churn that other genres do in the live service space.
I've never really been into fighting games; I did some Smash Brothers when I was younger but that's about it. I think fighting games are a fairly different beast entirely; they're a far more "couch friendly" genre.
They also don't tend to have the absolutely massive operating costs where "it costs literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to make this map" and server costs of "it cost hundreds per month to run just a few servers (because of the complexity of processing all of the elements of an individual match" that Fortnite, PUBG, and Hunt Showdown have to deal with.
Live Service:
Never adopted a live service (but a big name):
Live service is worse for the shooter genre on "eventual death" ... but so far none of the popular live service shooter games have really died. Meanwhile games that haven't and are still trying to compete with the "buy the new game for a premium price tag" (like Battlefield) are hurting. Calling of Duty is another big name that almost certainly is suffering from this problem but it can't be charted because they reorganized their game as "everything is under 'Call of Duty'".
The fighting games on steam don't even come close to any of the shooter numbers.
Other big genres like strategy do fine with the big release (in no small part because a big part of their game play is single player or "play with a well known group of friends"), e.g., https://steamcharts.com/app/289070 and https://steamcharts.com/app/413150 (both of those games also have seen almost "live service-like" levels of service via additional content throughout their lifespan).
Live services get a lot of hate on Lemmy ... but there genuinely is something to them when they're done well. They're often better for shooters because the incremental changes allow developers to back off and fix things without totally fragmenting their community.
Battlefield 2042 and Hunt Showdown: 1896 are great examples of this ... They both had rocky launches. Battlefield is a bigger franchise but because they made "extreme changes" vs incremental changes Battlefield 2042 is in much worse shape than Hunt Showdown: 1896 is and Crytek will in all likelihood be able to fix the things that people are upset about and get their numbers higher than they were. Dice/EA's best chance is "try again next year" at this point with their model (which will almost certainly cost players another $70 minimum to get into). Even then the game will remain fragmented with all the different Battlefield games out there and the expense of getting a new one.
If you're frugal you could've played Hunt Showdown from 2018-present for its original price of $29 for the battlefield community for the same time frame to play on release you would've needed to spent $180 minimum.
I don't think it's a good argument to say that it's okay for a game to inevitably die because they're doing better right now. Brink, Overwatch 1, and HyperScape are fully dead, btw. I'd rather be able to pay $60 and have a game I can play forever than save money on a game that's designed to self destruct.