Quoting: eldaking

Quoting: a0kamiExclusively multiplayer games, MMO's, battle royales, moba's..
Wouldn't they'd immediately loose their appeal ? But sure, we should still always be able to host a private server and have some fun among friends.
But in the end, that's where preservation would end up the costliest, MMO publisher won't spend the slightest cent for the devs to either release a commercial customer solution or even open sourcing the whole thing.
As players we perceive games as art, they are merely cash machines to most publishers.
Indies will go the preservation route but indies are mostly able to fund offline single-players.

The FAQ to the project covers that. There have been MMO games that have been kept online, maybe you can't keep the same number of players or will lose some features but smaller server is still better than no server, etc etc.

Finally, I initially drafted huge pseudo philosophical paragraphs, but I'll just ask directly, what are your opinions about loss ?
It's somehow both the most tragic and beautiful thing. You might react virulently to that statement, I get it, loss is tough, that's why.
But have we collectively decided yet to archive and digitize every single bit of our existences from now on ?
As an example, I can barely play my most favourite game ever, maybe 'cause I'm depressed, but more specifically I think it's because I used to play it in a very specific setting that's long gone and forever lost.

I think this is something that people involved with actual preservation initiatives, archivists, curators, libraries and so on have dealt with for a long time. Because it is not possible to preserve everything, so everything that is preserved is what someone chose to put effort into preserving. The reasons for that can vary wildly, but the more meaningful something is and for more people, the more likely it becomes that someone will preserve it. And while computers and the internet make it seemingly very easy for a lot of people to make and distribute copies, over longer time scales digital media is just less durable, requires more maintenance, tech changes more often... and we might actually lose more than we did in terms of books and tapes and films (and that is even without DRM and planned obsolescence).

The problem in this case is who controls our shared cultural experiences. Because something can be extremely meaningful to a lot of people that would like to keep it, but it is entirely controlled by a company that won't do it - or might even hinder their independent efforts. The power imbalance means that the interests of a few matter while that of thousands does not. And people get understandably upset about their own powerlessness, about the control others have over their memory, over their culture, over their lives. And in particular regarding companies, the value of something as a commodity - as a product that can be sold - is rarely equal to its cultural significance.

It is the same as when a platform like yahoo answers decide to erase their entire archives. It is not that nothing should be lost... but that people can't choose what to keep, it is entirely up to the platform "owner". Even though the contents are the shared experiences and memories of many people, those people are not part of the decision process, and their desires are ignored.

But in this case worse, as the destruction can affect all extant copies even in personal archives! And the time scales involved are so short that it is not just memories.

There has to be a way I can "like" this more than once.

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Quoting: slackSorry, I see it differently. It's one thing what you think you're buying and another thing what you're paying for. In my opinion, you can never buy a game because it will always be the property of its creator.

In my opinion, that's utter nonsense, and also rapidly becomes incoherent if one starts to compare it with one's ideas about various other kinds of things you buy that have creators. If I buy an item of clothing directly from the person who designed and sewed it, who certainly "created" it and put their artistic talent into designing it, so that it embodies their "intellectual property", does that mean that (unlike if I buy a cheap shirt made in a sweatshop to old designs) they can come by my place and repossess it? No. So how is the video game different conceptually?

The difference with video games is all about what sellers are able to do, not with ethical differences in the nature of purchase. Then they come up with excuses to justify the bad behaviour they've discovered they are capable of with a digital good that can communicate on the internet.

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: Liam DaweBut this does happen, with all these "smart" products. See news all the time about features removed, suddenly subscriptions needed to keep certain features going and so on. It's not just gaming it happens. Sadly.

I honestly didn't know that - as with not buying into the sorts of games afflicted by these issues, I've never bought into those sorts of appliances either. A fridge really doesn't need to be connected to the internet, y'know? :tongue:

This is very much reminding me of that Cory Doctorow story Unauthorized Bread [External Link], which of course isn't in any way a satirical call to action on all this stuff.

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Wow, that's just adorably violent.

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So I guess, if Nintendo gives you lemons, make Lemonade.

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I can see where VR would work very well with this genre. It would feel a lot more like escaping, what?

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Quoting: PenglingAll sensible stuff, and this is why I love using Mint as my daily-driver OS. :smile:

Yup, yup. Likewise.

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Quoting: skinnyraf

Quoting: CatKillerhttps://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/03/steam-survey-for-february-2024-shows-a-big-bump-in-simplified-chinese/comment_id=258957

If you want the post-Deck trend, shift the red trend up and then steepen it by the gradient of the green trend.

You can, of course, pick whichever date range you're interested in on the Steam Tracker to see the data and trend for that period.

So desktop Linux usage growth pretty much stopped around the release of the Steam Deck? We're still around 1.0-1.1%. All the growth can be attributed to new Steam Deck users.

It might mean though that some users of Linux desktops no longer play on their PCs, but on their Decks, so no growth on Steam doesn't mean no growth in general.

Yeah, 'cause it seems like outside the Steam universe, Linux growth in "computers used to access the web" is pretty robust, so it would be weird if at a time when gaming on Linux works better than it ever has, none of those new probably-desktops were used for gaming.

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Among those, I've just been playing Terraformers. It's pretty decent. The learning curve isn't bad, and it does have a fair dose of that "just one more turn" feel. I'm not sure how much mastery it really takes, though. After only a few playthroughs I'm feeling like I pretty much get it.

I do find one thing rather gratifying--so, like, there's this mechanic of how happy the colonizers are with things. And the game does "rising expectations" where over time, the amount of "support" you need to have increases, fairly steeply. And depending, all the little bonuses you can create, entertainment centre kind of things and tourist attractions and so forth, probably aren't going to be enough. But when you do various things that make Mars a bit more terraformed, it makes the whole population happier, giving you a massive ongoing bonus. So if you're doing a decent job at that stuff, you'll be getting the bad news that "rising expectations" are going to put you in deep, but then you bump up the heat level and the atmosphere level, plant a forest, and the penalty gets totally wiped out and you're golden again.

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I started playing some Terraformers.

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