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Stop Killing Games

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Re: Stop Killing Games

#261

Post by john_strinlai »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #255
john_strinlai wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right, but if BG3 had to be free as in FSF free, it would not have been made.

This is almost certainly untrue. it would have cost the same amount and all the same people would have bought it for all the same reasons.

>and all the same people would have bought it for all the same reasons.

you have to be trolling, right?

if people can get the game for free, because freedom 2 demands the game be freely redistributable by anyone with no restrictions, people are not going to pay for it. they are going to get it for free.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#262

Post by john_strinlai »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #256
john_strinlai wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the games are free, and we aren't talking about donations, how are the studios being paid?

Same way as now. Selling the game. Free as in freedom not as in price

>Free as in freedom not as in price

free as in freedom = i give away the game to everyone i know for free, and the studio loses out on those sales.

edit: oops, just noticed you are the same person i suspect is trolling. so, probably best for us both to end the conversation here.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#263

Post by dijit »

duped wrote: post #254
dijit wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the 7 AAA games I’ve been part of making, not a single one used HTTP (well, not as a primary driver of anything), HTML, CSS or anything that could be construed as a “web technology” so, what are you talking about please?

s/web/networked computers/g What I'm saying is you have programs running on user machines, and programs running on your machines. There's an interface between those two over a network. There's a problem that consumers face today where they pay to play games that are not functional without data flowing over that interface. There's a claim that implementing the backend side of that interface is so complex and impossibl…

idk, lets use things you know.

Why do you use Ruby on Rails, why not rewrite it so you can release it without relyig on that?

Re: Stop Killing Games

#264

Post by singpolyma3 »

john_strinlai wrote: post #262
singpolyma3 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way as now. Selling the game. Free as in freedom not as in price

> Free as in freedom not as in price free as in freedom = i give away the game to everyone i know for free, and the studio loses out on those sales. edit: oops, just noticed you are the same person i suspect is trolling. so, probably best for us both to end the conversation here.

Definitely not trolling. On the contrary I run a profitable business where all the code is free software. As do many many other people.

It's fine to say you don't think it works in theory. But in practise many people have made their living this way for many years.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#265

Post by singpolyma3 »

john_strinlai wrote: post #261
singpolyma3 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost certainly untrue. it would have cost the same amount and all the same people would have bought it for all the same reasons.

> and all the same people would have bought it for all the same reasons. you have to be trolling, right? if people can get the game for free, because freedom 2 demands the game be freely redistributable by anyone with no restrictions , people are not going to pay for it. they are going to get it for free.

This is not true in practise. In practise people can get the software for free no matter what the license is. And in practise people click the "buy on steam" or "buy on Google play" button and you still make money.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#266

Post by Telaneo »

djaro wrote: post #242
Telaneo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was always at unease growing up, wondering what would happen to video games when they no longer became popular. Would I be able to enjoy them when I got older? Would my children ever be able to play the games that shaped my teenage years? The worst thing, at least to me, is that the worst case scenario, as long as the devs don't go out of their way to kill a game permanently, is still not all that bad. There's em…

Games in general are a very difficult thing to preserve because of how they are often "on-going" things rather than definitive objects like books or films. Minecraft has gone through 27 major version updates, most of which having had in the range of 3-10 sub-versions. So that's potentially ~100 versions, just for Java edition. Should all of those be archived? Or just the final version, when it one day arrives? At thi…

> So that's potentially ~100 versions, just for Java edition. Should all of those be archived?

Minecraft is a great example here, because the answer it brings to the table is yes. You can play any version of Minecraft (barring some really early versions that are lost to time) natively in the launcher. Yes, even the stupid sub-versions. If Minecraft can do it just fine, I see little reason other games can't (barring licencing issues, ugh).

> What about games in which major features regularly get removed, like Fortnite?

Give the option to revert back. Provide the relevant files so someone can do it by themselves. Be a decent human being.

> Maybe we should just accept that big online games are more like cultural happenings than media objects.

Fuck off. You had to be there for WoW Classic too. Doesn't mean we can't still have it. There are WoW Classic server up right now, with people playing it. Not that that has much to do with Blizzard (they caved only after illicit Classic servers became stupid popular, and it's not like setting up those servers was an easy feat).

Re: Stop Killing Games

#267

Post by Telaneo »

M95D wrote: post #224

I don't understand what all the fuss is about. There are so many old games on GOG to play for 10 lifetimes. On a 1GB RPi.

There are many old books in the Library, and yet I still choose to buy new ones.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#268

Post by fasterik »

F3nd0 wrote: post #23
nerdjon wrote: post #8

This is basically advocating for open source games which is a completely different story than what stop killing games is trying to do. There are tons of closed source games that have zero online component to them. I don't see how you can actually argue that this is a good thing, especially when they say: > The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. A…

> That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. > > Am I missing something serious here or is this really trying to advocate for that. What you might be missing is that the author advocates for free software (which is framed differently from open source), while games typically aren’t pure software, but rely very heavily on art assets. The movement for free software traditionally draws a distinction between soft…

Why is there a distinction between software and art? Can't you make the same argument on both sides, either that artists should make their work freely available, or that programmers should retain the rights to their work?

Re: Stop Killing Games

#269

Post by duped »

dijit wrote: post #263
duped wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/web/networked computers/g What I'm saying is you have programs running on user machines, and programs running on your machines. There's an interface between those two over a network. There's a problem that consumers face today where they pay to play games that are not functional without data flowing over that interface. There's a claim that implementing the backend side of that interface is so complex and impossibl…

idk, lets use things you know. Why do you use Ruby on Rails, why not rewrite it so you can release it without relyig on that?

I'm not interested in hypotheticals. In AAA games that you have worked on, concretely what 3rd party code did your servers rely on that would prevent you from distributing either the server itself or sufficient description of the servers' behavior to allow a reimplementation?

And even if we're talking hypotheticals: stupid example. I haven't worked on a backend where the actual server infrastructure wasn't open source, trivial to open source because it was first party, or irrelevant because the only thing that matters would be the API and protocols, which again, trivial to make open.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#270

Post by nearbuy »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #234
john_strinlai wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can buy or rent such without too much trouble. for... thousands of dollars a month. the goal of the regulation is that regular people can keep playing their games. not just rich people.

Only one group needs to do it for everyone to keep playing. Everyone running their own server isn't very interesting for multiplayer... Usually you'd do it in groups.

Most of the time, no group of players will run a server at that cost. So regular players still can't play.

It's not unheard of though. WoW and City of Heroes had/have large, expensive fan servers. But realistically, this legislation would save maybe 0-2% of games in the thousands-per-month cost range. According to the parent commenter, we might lose many more than that from the legislation causing studios to decide not to make them to begin with.

Games with cheap servers are a different story.

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