The Death of Traditional Gaming Journalism and the Rise of Independent Creators
Several users discuss the shift away from traditional gaming journalism to independent content creators on platforms like YouTube and Twitch. This shift is seen as beneficial, providing deeper and broader coverage of games, especially niche titles.
- "Traditional gaming journalism as once existed with magazines and later websites modeled after those magazines is wholly obsolete. For game discovery, reviews, and game tricks and tips, it has been replaced by independent youtubers and streamers. We're all much better off for this too, the new system gives much wider and deeper coverage to much more obscure games than the magazines ever could or would" - "lupusreal"
- "Or Mortismal Gaming who only covers CRPGs with more depth and passion than any legacy gaming journo." - "lyu07282"
The Importance of Luck and Marketing in Game Development Success
Some commenters argue that factors like luck, timing, and effective marketing are crucial to the success of indie games, possibly even more so than raw "honesty" or intrinsic quality.
- "Literally every indie game dev says exactly the same thing. It had nothing to do with "honesty", just luck again." - "kgwxd"
- "Unfortunately this is the truth." - "NotGMan"
- "Yes, but luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - "munchler"
- "ninetyninenine": "Luck is a huge factor for many forms of success. It is also the least attributed factor. Partly because it’s the least controllable factor."
- "There are so many fantastic games made with just as much heart out there that don't have a tweet go viral and revitalize the playerbase. Developers that aren't able to support their families by doing what they love. While it's always nice to see game development pay off, the real lesson here isn't honesty or values; it's good marketing and good luck." - "shayway"
The Challenge of Maintaining Online Multiplayer Games
A recurring theme revolves around the difficulty of keeping online multiplayer games alive in the long term, with discussions on server hosting, matchmaking, and the role of cloud providers. The lifespan of online games is perceived to be limited.
- "Games that are focused on online only play basically have an expiration date from the day that they launch. Some may live longer, some may be dead on arrival. But, make a good game that's playable by friends together at any time on a rainy day? If the game is good, it never dies." - "CorpOverreach"
- "I think the cloud providers should figure out some kind of service for perpetual matchmaking/hosting of private servers. Devs are not always going to open source things but if you could fit your game server in some kind of package for Amazon to host then you can skirt that issue. In theory, enthusiasts could pay to keep the lights on even after the developer went out of business." - "jayd16"
- "The reason for the “de facto expiration date” is that eventually not enough people will want to play the game for matchmaking to be consistently available." - "chatmasta"
- "So, yeah, it'd be great if we could ship a package for Amazon to host perpetually, but first you could just get Amazon to care enough to ship a stable platform to build upon that wouldn't get depreciated." - "Arelius"
- "Honestly Valve had it right with offering dedicated server packages. I respect any studio that does the same, like TripWire and Killing Floor. I run my own private server for a live service game that shut down in just 1 year. We got lucky because they seemingly bundled the server code into the client. But the game was never meant to allow for that..." - "Gamemaster1379"
The Preference for Couch Co-op vs. Online Multiplayer (And Pushback)
While some yearn for more couch co-op experiences, acknowledging the longevity it can bring compared to online-only games, others point out that player expectations are shifting towards online multiplayer.
- "I wish more games would prioritize couch co-op modes over online play. Games that are focused on online only play basically have an expiration date from the day that they launch. Some may live longer, some may be dead on arrival. But, make a good game that's playable by friends together at any time on a rainy day? If the game is good, it never dies." - "CorpOverreach"
- "We did a couch coop game (CTHULOOT) and the number 1 refund reason we have is that it doesn’t have online. (It doesn’t because we lacked budget) So I’d say players now really expect online over local." - "valryon"
- "What you have described is survivorship bias. What matters is whether the refund request rate is higher than other games. The people who enjoyed your game because it has couch coop (and therefore don’t request a refund) aren’t represented in that refund request stat." - "janalsncm"
The Instability of Cloud Platforms and Dependencies
One commenter highlights concerns about the frequent deprecation of dependencies by cloud providers, forcing developers to divert resources to maintain compatibility, impacting their ability to support older games.
- "It's astounding the frequency I get an email from some cloud provider, or mobile app store that says something to the effect of: '(Version X) of Dependency Y that we convinced you to use 5+ years ago is getting deprecated on August 1st, if you don't upgrade to Version X+5 you're service will go offline' And we're stuck looking at the minimal amount of players running of that platform, and the hard choice of do we move precious human resources off of some in-progress game, that's already running late to learn a system that they never worked on, because the original people are long gone?" - "Arelius"
Steam's Backend Services
Some commenters highlight Steam's features like free matchmaking backend and P2P proxies.
- "I would have totally agreed, but it looks like Steam offers free matchmaking backend and P2P proxies. Why isn't this widely known???" - "numpad0"
- "Steam has all sorts of extra functionality to justify their 30% cut on sales, they're not just taking it while doing nothing." - "Jach"
- "It is well known. But also not all developers want to/ can afford the risk to tie all their networking services to Steam." - "Arelius"