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Online games that aren't sold as services (like WoW with a subscription) wouldn't need to work online or with servers. The bare minimum this asks for is some st

Online games that aren't sold as services (like WoW with a subscription) wouldn't need to work online or with servers. The bare minimum this asks for is some state of playable which could include just the ability to run around on the map on a local machine... Ross Scott has talked about this a lot. We would love more, but we are asking for bare minimum. I'm really skeptical of modern online infra. I've worked on two MMOs as a Tech Artist and the way artists, designers, etc worked on the game was with a local only build! One of these companies actually barred WAN access from our dev machines so LAN only also worked for internal playtests! Trends to make dev builds online only are quite awful for developers in the trenches and are more about exec control than any usefulness added by such requirements. Complex server infrastructure that you mention is also not needed if you ask me, at least not to the point to make it too hard to widely ship. I'd be fine if someone still had to stand up a centralized matchmaking server still, just allow any player to do it. As an example, compare Helldivers 2 and WoW. WoW is vastly more complex but Helldivers 2 uses more modern cloud "tech" that didn't exist 20 years ago. Both had issues keeping up with player demand on launch. So what's the point of this newfangled tech? Well, it's devs convincing players they're getting a better service or good (don't know which!) and that this complexity based lock in is worth it. And it's also cloud providers like AWS and Azure convincing devs to create architectures like this which lock devs into these platform holders. I'm not convinced were seeing real improvements on the dev or player side... Scamming turtles all the way down if you ask me. It also turns out a lot of this stuff is able to reverse engineered. I'm right now playing original Demons Souls with full multiplayer connectivity (including matchmaking from a central private server) which required PSN support of the PS3 days. WoW private servers also required a great deal of reverse engineering. If online randos can do it... Plus WoW private servers literally revealed a new revenue stream to Blizzard in the form of WoW classic: "After a month or so of large scale protests, Blizzard invited the Nostalrius team to the Blizzard HQ to present the case for Vanilla. An eighty-page "post-mortem" document describing the development of Nostalrius, the problems that happened and some marketing strategies was presented to Blizzard, and after some time, released on the Nostalrius forums" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft_Classic Others have also mentioned middleware licenses as a problem. Those licenses would adapt just fine. A single game will ship with multiple binaries of RAD Tools, Havok, SpeedTree, etc. So now a player has potentially hundreds of copies of different versions of all these binaries and libraries. This is a completely solvable problem that won't stifle development or even require leaking of trade "secrets". Also, this is relatively new problem in the industry. The market grew just fine allowing for players to use their goods more freely. That any such regulation would hurt the industry is dubious at best, corporate speak at worst. In fact, I'd argue that enabling player freedom an creativity over their purchased goods has helped the industry grow to where it is today! Counter Strike was a mod, TF2 was a mod, PUBG was a mod (Fortnite wouldn't exist with out it), DOTA was a mod! Minecraft in part exploded cause of mods. A healthy and innovative free market demands player and user freedom!

maccard 2y ago
> I've worked on two MMOs as a Tech Artist and the way artists, designers, etc worked on the game was with a local only build! One of these companies actually barred WAN access from our dev machines so LAN only also worked for internal playtests! Trends to make dev builds online only are quite awful for developers in the trenches and are more about exec control than any usefulness added by such requirements. I'm an online dev for multiplayer games, and I disagree with your take. In my experience the sheer number of bugs we've seen from "I tested it in the local only build mode so it's fine" and the impact that has on the project makes it worth _not_ supporting an offline mode. I'm not an exec, but practicing good habits during development (there's a phase where it's not worth it sure, but by the time you're on a live project...) makes actually building a game easier. > As an example, compare Helldivers 2 and WoW. WoW is vastly more complex but Helldivers 2 uses more modern cloud "tech" that didn't exist 20 years ago. Both had issues keeping up with player demand on launch. So what's the point of this newfangled tech? https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1760077808146014340 https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1760077808146014340 - helldivers backend team was 4 people. _That's_ the point of this newfangled tech. > Those licenses would adapt just fine. Handwaving away this problem doesn't make it just og away.
- sighinggoldfish 2y ago
  > I'm an online dev for multiplayer games, and I disagree with your take. In my experience the sheer number of bugs we've seen from "I tested it in the local only build mode so it's fine" and the impact that has on the project makes it worth _not_ supporting an offline mode. I'm not an exec, but practicing good habits during development (there's a phase where it's not worth it sure, but by the time you're on a live project...) makes actually building a game easier. Both should be available cause yes, you need to test like you said. But if I'm setting up skinning on a character or cloth simulation on a cape, I want my turn around time as fast as possible from DCC to engine. Maybe I just want to validate my PBR materials with a specific level's lighting rig and baked GI/reflection probes. Those specific examples are client side only, so I absolutely want that to work on an offline build. The longer a roundtrip to the engine takes for content (including the time it takes to start the game up), the harder it is to iterate and thus quality also falls. Forcing online always for devs at the very least, makes booting the game slower (or just fail) and you need to reboot the game constantly (even with hot reload). That cost adds up quick across many devs and many years. You need both lest you drive your artists and TAs insane. My last company hemorrhaged artists to literally go work next door on very similar styled art content from one live service game to another just because our tools were so exhausting to them to roundtrip, and online wasn't even forced! >https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1760077808146014340 https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1760077808146014340 - helldivers backend team was 4 people. _That's_ the point of this newfangled tech. WoW took 4-5 years to develop with "The original World of Warcraft was created by a team of 40 people, which eventually doubled in size as the launch drew close." https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/20/21070494/world-of-warcraft-history-development-chaos-wow https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/20/21070494/world-of-warcraft... Where as as Helldivers 2 has about 100 devs at the end of development taking 8 years according to their CEO. So not seeing the wins there. In terms of concurrent players around launch, WoW had around 0.5 million within months and Helldivers 2 seemed to have peaked at 0.75 million across PC and PS5. 19 years apart and not really seeing that 5x in practice... None of this suggests to me that this "tech" is a useful as many think. > Handwaving away this problem doesn't make it just og away. I mean, we have tons of precedent of these middleware licenses working just fine when redistributed as binaries to users' devices, so how is this handwavy? Like yes, there's an issue with already shipped games that make use of such licenses, but after such a law passes, the licenses will have to adapt to licenses similar to what already exist. And prior to this recent problem in games, middleware licenses worked just fine too and often shipped with server binaries. These licenses are not the norm as explained by all the middleware that does get packaged with almost every game today...

maccard 2y ago

> I've worked on two MMOs as a Tech Artist and the way artists, designers, etc worked on the game was with a local only build! One of these companies actually barred WAN access from our dev machines so LAN only also worked for internal playtests! Trends to make dev builds online only are quite awful for developers in the trenches and are more about exec control than any usefulness added by such requirements. I'm an online dev for multiplayer games, and I disagree with your take. In my experience the sheer number of bugs we've seen from "I tested it in the local only build mode so it's fine" and the impact that has on the project makes it worth _not_ supporting an offline mode. I'm not an exec, but practicing good habits during development (there's a phase where it's not worth it sure, but by the time you're on a live project...) makes actually building a game easier. > As an example, compare Helldivers 2 and WoW. WoW is vastly more complex but Helldivers 2 uses more modern cloud "tech" that didn't exist 20 years ago. Both had issues keeping up with player demand on launch. So what's the point of this newfangled tech? https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1760077808146014340 https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1760077808146014340 - helldivers backend team was 4 people. _That's_ the point of this newfangled tech. > Those licenses would adapt just fine. Handwaving away this problem doesn't make it just og away.

sighinggoldfish 2y ago
> I'm an online dev for multiplayer games, and I disagree with your take. In my experience the sheer number of bugs we've seen from "I tested it in the local only build mode so it's fine" and the impact that has on the project makes it worth _not_ supporting an offline mode. I'm not an exec, but practicing good habits during development (there's a phase where it's not worth it sure, but by the time you're on a live project...) makes actually building a game easier. Both should be available cause yes, you need to test like you said. But if I'm setting up skinning on a character or cloth simulation on a cape, I want my turn around time as fast as possible from DCC to engine. Maybe I just want to validate my PBR materials with a specific level's lighting rig and baked GI/reflection probes. Those specific examples are client side only, so I absolutely want that to work on an offline build. The longer a roundtrip to the engine takes for content (including the time it takes to start the game up), the harder it is to iterate and thus quality also falls. Forcing online always for devs at the very least, makes booting the game slower (or just fail) and you need to reboot the game constantly (even with hot reload). That cost adds up quick across many devs and many years. You need both lest you drive your artists and TAs insane. My last company hemorrhaged artists to literally go work next door on very similar styled art content from one live service game to another just because our tools were so exhausting to them to roundtrip, and online wasn't even forced! >https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1760077808146014340 https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1760077808146014340 - helldivers backend team was 4 people. _That's_ the point of this newfangled tech. WoW took 4-5 years to develop with "The original World of Warcraft was created by a team of 40 people, which eventually doubled in size as the launch drew close." https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/20/21070494/world-of-warcraft-history-development-chaos-wow https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/20/21070494/world-of-warcraft... Where as as Helldivers 2 has about 100 devs at the end of development taking 8 years according to their CEO. So not seeing the wins there. In terms of concurrent players around launch, WoW had around 0.5 million within months and Helldivers 2 seemed to have peaked at 0.75 million across PC and PS5. 19 years apart and not really seeing that 5x in practice... None of this suggests to me that this "tech" is a useful as many think. > Handwaving away this problem doesn't make it just og away. I mean, we have tons of precedent of these middleware licenses working just fine when redistributed as binaries to users' devices, so how is this handwavy? Like yes, there's an issue with already shipped games that make use of such licenses, but after such a law passes, the licenses will have to adapt to licenses similar to what already exist. And prior to this recent problem in games, middleware licenses worked just fine too and often shipped with server binaries. These licenses are not the norm as explained by all the middleware that does get packaged with almost every game today...