4 ms·

it saddens me as a vintage games conservator that my present day PS4 will be a brick in a few years. When I have consoles and games going back 40 years. It just

by rusk 3y ago

it saddens me as a vintage games conservator that my present day PS4 will be a brick in a few years. When I have consoles and games going back 40 years. It just doesn’t seem right.

deergomoo 3y ago
The thing that has me concerned is that even if you keep the consoles working, and even if you have an extensive library of physical media, these days what’s on the disc is probably an unpatched, incomplete, possibly unplayable mess. That’s not intended as a criticism of game development, just an expression of fear for the preservation implications. It’s no longer enough to preserve what’s in your hands—which is difficult enough where electronics are concerned—but now someone must find some way to extract, archive, and reapply all the day one patches, bug fixes, DLC packs etc.
- rusk 3y ago
  > someone must find some way to extract, archive, and reapply all the day one patches, bug fixes, DLC packs etc. This is what has to happen. I believe that as these consequences become more and more widely felt you’ll have a pretty strong mandate for some kind of change in thinking. I mean, if you’ve actually bought the game (as opposed to streamed it) I think there’s a strong case to be made that you should be entitled to its use beyond the wishes of the copyright holder.
theodric 3y ago
I mean this as earnestly as possible: remember that pain and don't buy a PS5, or a PS6, or [...] Don't build any more emotional relationships with products built by rentiers that refuse to respect your ability to enjoy the perpetuity of your license (and god forbid even considering actually owning anything). Take on an allotment and breed a new hybrid chili pepper, or brew some beer and share it with your neighbors. Beat Galaga for the 11,000th time. Whatever it takes. To hell with Huxley's Brave New World-- a better one is possible if we force it to exist by refusing to continue enabling the system enslaving us.
- nerdawson 3y ago
  Should we stop playing video games altogether then? If you stick to PC instead, you’re still at the mercy of platforms like Steam. They can, and will, remove games over time. GTA being a great example.
  - hananova 3y ago
    As far as I'm aware Steam has never removed a game. They have unlisted games for several reasons, but that has never affected previous purchases.
  - theodric 3y ago
    I don't know. Maybe. I've gone back and forth on this many times. Wanting to play a video game, and having to learn how to free up enough conventional memory in DOS that I could do so without giving up sound and joystick control, was really my entry into tech. I can't say my life would have been better without them. On the other hand, they're as much of a time sink as you allow them to be, and in the last decade are increasingly also vying to be an unlimited money sink in the form of microtransactions, lootboxes, gimped free-to-play (or even pay-to-play!) with progression held back without paid boosts, etc. Should we want to engage with such dark patterns? Once I got into Linux in the mid 90s, and especially once I really bought into the whole FL/OSS-as-an-ethos activist/evangelist stuff as a late-teen, my gaming options became quite limited. I spent a long time saying playing video games was bad, and a sign of poor life choices. I dialed back my rhetoric as I entered my late 30s, and I own and occasionally use a Steam Deck now. I even "own" Diablo 4 - failing to take my own advice here - but I do find it difficult to convince myself to invest time in what is essentially an MMO that will probably be reset or switched off at some point. There's no sense of permanence, and I have no faith that MicrosoftActivisionBlizzard will keep running D4 services for the next 25 years the way Blizzard did for Diablo II. But I've got the farm now, and that will outlast me, so whatever. "Touch grass" as the kids say, but as a(n a)vocation. That's certainly more than you wanted to read. Sorry.
    - honkycat 3y ago
      Games are better than they ever have been before, by FAR. You just have to look past the mainstream junk. Design has gotten a lot better and they have figured out ways to add fun progression to arcade style games.
codetrotter 3y ago
OTOH, has there really been any actually culturally significant video games released in recent years? I enjoyed for example the Uncharted games a lot. But I don’t think anything significant will have been lost if future generations of people don’t get to play the Uncharted games, no matter how much I enjoyed them myself. Whereas, things like Pong, and Pac-Man and the first Super Mario games and the Pokémon Red and Blue and Yellow games feel much more important for me, and of course the original Doom, all of these are important on a whole other level. And thankfully they are all sure to be able to be preserved at least in some form.
- softfalcon 3y ago
  Based on the massively positive response both inside and out of the gaming community… I’m gonna say Baldur’s Gate 3 Seriously, it’s converting people I never in 100 years would have expected to become gamers.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    Funny because it is the first time I hear there has been 3rd opus of the Baldur's Gate series
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  > OTOH, has there really been any actually culturally significant video games released in recent years? Yes, like -random example here- Uncharted :-P. TBH i do not think what is "culturally significant" is something that we can answer right now, but something that will be up to future people to decide. Though i do think that Uncharted is culturally significant in how it was part of a series of influences from the original Indiana Jones, to Tomb Raider, to Uncharted and back to Tomb Raider (in that each one of those influenced the next) - with some Prince of Persia thrown in for good measure. But for people to be able to tell, judge and discover these things, the games must be available to them - preferably in their original condition (remasters, rereleases, remakes, etc often tend to change things - though those should also be available so these changes can also be seen and perhaps talked about in the future). Also not only "good games" or "influential games" are worthy of preservation - even bad or just mediocre game are worthy of that, for a variety of reasons. Games are often a snapshot of the times they were made at and multiple "snapshots" are always better than a single one. Even from a design perspective, a bad game can be interesting: for example the original Prince of Persia 3D seems to have been largely lost in the sands of time and yet it is an interesting game in its own right despite its flaws, in how its interpretation of (classic) Tomb Raider's controls combined with ideas from the original 2D games around realistic/captured animation ended up creating something inferior to its clear inspirations (but that is clear only really if you know about/have played the games that inspired it and know about/have played the game itself). Of course if you just want to have fun, whatever is available on Steam will more than suffice.

by rusk 3y ago

it saddens me as a vintage games conservator that my present day PS4 will be a brick in a few years. When I have consoles and games going back 40 years. It just doesn’t seem right.

deergomoo 3y ago

The thing that has me concerned is that even if you keep the consoles working, and even if you have an extensive library of physical media, these days what’s on the disc is probably an unpatched, incomplete, possibly unplayable mess. That’s not intended as a criticism of game development, just an expression of fear for the preservation implications. It’s no longer enough to preserve what’s in your hands—which is difficult enough where electronics are concerned—but now someone must find some way to extract, archive, and reapply all the day one patches, bug fixes, DLC packs etc.

rusk 3y ago
> someone must find some way to extract, archive, and reapply all the day one patches, bug fixes, DLC packs etc. This is what has to happen. I believe that as these consequences become more and more widely felt you’ll have a pretty strong mandate for some kind of change in thinking. I mean, if you’ve actually bought the game (as opposed to streamed it) I think there’s a strong case to be made that you should be entitled to its use beyond the wishes of the copyright holder.

theodric 3y ago

I mean this as earnestly as possible: remember that pain and don't buy a PS5, or a PS6, or [...] Don't build any more emotional relationships with products built by rentiers that refuse to respect your ability to enjoy the perpetuity of your license (and god forbid even considering actually owning anything). Take on an allotment and breed a new hybrid chili pepper, or brew some beer and share it with your neighbors. Beat Galaga for the 11,000th time. Whatever it takes. To hell with Huxley's Brave New World-- a better one is possible if we force it to exist by refusing to continue enabling the system enslaving us.

nerdawson 3y ago
Should we stop playing video games altogether then? If you stick to PC instead, you’re still at the mercy of platforms like Steam. They can, and will, remove games over time. GTA being a great example.
- hananova 3y ago
  As far as I'm aware Steam has never removed a game. They have unlisted games for several reasons, but that has never affected previous purchases.
- theodric 3y ago
  I don't know. Maybe. I've gone back and forth on this many times. Wanting to play a video game, and having to learn how to free up enough conventional memory in DOS that I could do so without giving up sound and joystick control, was really my entry into tech. I can't say my life would have been better without them. On the other hand, they're as much of a time sink as you allow them to be, and in the last decade are increasingly also vying to be an unlimited money sink in the form of microtransactions, lootboxes, gimped free-to-play (or even pay-to-play!) with progression held back without paid boosts, etc. Should we want to engage with such dark patterns? Once I got into Linux in the mid 90s, and especially once I really bought into the whole FL/OSS-as-an-ethos activist/evangelist stuff as a late-teen, my gaming options became quite limited. I spent a long time saying playing video games was bad, and a sign of poor life choices. I dialed back my rhetoric as I entered my late 30s, and I own and occasionally use a Steam Deck now. I even "own" Diablo 4 - failing to take my own advice here - but I do find it difficult to convince myself to invest time in what is essentially an MMO that will probably be reset or switched off at some point. There's no sense of permanence, and I have no faith that MicrosoftActivisionBlizzard will keep running D4 services for the next 25 years the way Blizzard did for Diablo II. But I've got the farm now, and that will outlast me, so whatever. "Touch grass" as the kids say, but as a(n a)vocation. That's certainly more than you wanted to read. Sorry.
  - honkycat 3y ago
    Games are better than they ever have been before, by FAR. You just have to look past the mainstream junk. Design has gotten a lot better and they have figured out ways to add fun progression to arcade style games.

codetrotter 3y ago

OTOH, has there really been any actually culturally significant video games released in recent years? I enjoyed for example the Uncharted games a lot. But I don’t think anything significant will have been lost if future generations of people don’t get to play the Uncharted games, no matter how much I enjoyed them myself. Whereas, things like Pong, and Pac-Man and the first Super Mario games and the Pokémon Red and Blue and Yellow games feel much more important for me, and of course the original Doom, all of these are important on a whole other level. And thankfully they are all sure to be able to be preserved at least in some form.

softfalcon 3y ago
Based on the massively positive response both inside and out of the gaming community… I’m gonna say Baldur’s Gate 3 Seriously, it’s converting people I never in 100 years would have expected to become gamers.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  Funny because it is the first time I hear there has been 3rd opus of the Baldur's Gate series
badsectoracula 3y ago
> OTOH, has there really been any actually culturally significant video games released in recent years? Yes, like -random example here- Uncharted :-P. TBH i do not think what is "culturally significant" is something that we can answer right now, but something that will be up to future people to decide. Though i do think that Uncharted is culturally significant in how it was part of a series of influences from the original Indiana Jones, to Tomb Raider, to Uncharted and back to Tomb Raider (in that each one of those influenced the next) - with some Prince of Persia thrown in for good measure. But for people to be able to tell, judge and discover these things, the games must be available to them - preferably in their original condition (remasters, rereleases, remakes, etc often tend to change things - though those should also be available so these changes can also be seen and perhaps talked about in the future). Also not only "good games" or "influential games" are worthy of preservation - even bad or just mediocre game are worthy of that, for a variety of reasons. Games are often a snapshot of the times they were made at and multiple "snapshots" are always better than a single one. Even from a design perspective, a bad game can be interesting: for example the original Prince of Persia 3D seems to have been largely lost in the sands of time and yet it is an interesting game in its own right despite its flaws, in how its interpretation of (classic) Tomb Raider's controls combined with ideas from the original 2D games around realistic/captured animation ended up creating something inferior to its clear inspirations (but that is clear only really if you know about/have played the games that inspired it and know about/have played the game itself). Of course if you just want to have fun, whatever is available on Steam will more than suffice.