Cerebralbore101 said:
librarian13579 said:
Fundamentally, in order to keep our medium alive for future generations, discs need to be dumped, hashed, and stored in secure databaes for future dissemination.
That's INCREDIBLY tough to do when more and more developers are turning towards primarily-online-multiplayer games in persistent worlds, like Bungie, BioWare, Blizzard, Valve, Rockstar, etc.
Inevitably, some of those games will not be able to be properly preserved, even if we try our best to round up all of the day-one patches and microtransactions and DLC. As more and more games become like that, more and more titles will inevitably start to be lost.
It's already been happening with some old MMORPGs like the original version of Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes, and with some early-PS3 games like MAG. And it's expanding outside of MMORPGs to encompass an increasingly greater share of gaming. What happens when 50% of games are GAAS, persistent world games that require server-side game engine logic to properly function? That's right----it all vanishes into the ether the moment Activision Blizzard / EA / Take-Two decide it's not profitable anymore.
Our art is taken hostage by the clutches of massive corporations who are only held accountable to their shareholders.
And what happens when they finally take the step and pull a Simcity 2013 on us or a Diablo III on us....and require that the SINGLE-PLAYER game always be connected to the Internet? That's when game preservation becomes simply untenable.
I don't bother with systems after the 6th gen. I know that 99.9% of everything (minus a few titles like Final Fantasy XI) can be preserved right up to that point. Anything beyond that is uncharted territory.
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A lot of those developers don't really make anything all that good anymore though. Blizzard just has Overwatch. Valve doesn't make new games anymore. Andromeda, and Destiny were mediocre games.
Microsoft took that route with the XB1, and look where it got them. I think that will eventually be the future of games, but it isn't here yet. Instead of having an always online connection they will likely sell games as a service. You must pay $15.00 a month in order to play our game, and it's all on the servers, etc. That's when I'll cut my ties to modern games though. If a game doesn't let you outright own it, then it isn't worth playing IMO. The only exception to that are indies because they are so cheap it doesn't matter.
Most of the PS4 games I own would run 95% the same without patches. Eventually that will change though. I expect once PS5 rolls around 50% of games will be the likes of Destiny, Shadow of War, etc.
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If you've noticed, subscription models are popping up literally everywhere. Dropbox, Photoshop, Sling TV, Windows, Microsoft Office, MMORPGs, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, CBS All Access, Spotify, countless delivery services, etc.
I agree; subscriptions where data is streamed from the cloud is inevitably the future because of the convenience fallacy. "I just have to pay $30 a month and I can play all the PlayStation games I want! That's much better than paying $60 for one game!" Sooner or later, when the tech is fully there, they're going to propose that model and people are going to take it because they think they're saving money. And, they already do it with everything else, so why not video games as well?
Microsoft is orienting Xbox to follow that model in the future. Sony continues to become increasingly dependent on PSN Plus revenues.
The future is here, and it's a scary one for us old-timers.
