There are many great games out there that had to shutdown because they couldn’t fund their servers (for smaller player bases, 100 US$/mo. should be ok). I know someone personally that wanted to downsize the server because of costs, but that would mean fewer max players in the server, which would mean snowballing is gone and the hype dies. I personally know a few myself, and generally died due to DDOS, one due to constant security threats or other general lack of technical know-hows.
There are also many open source games out there that just needs some extra nudge. So the three thresholds that makes it hard for such games are
- Funding/sustainability
- Reaching critical number of players
- Content creation/marketing
So how about a donation-based community (mostly for server costs), where the community tries a new game every week or month (like a flash mob), and maybe have fun make some videos about it? This is more cost efficient at least in terms of server costs, because potential capacity would be utilised better with multiple games. Just simple social hang place out where we stick it up to the AAA game studios while we breathe some new life into the old games that didn’t deserve to die.
Would you join such a community?
Your money wasn’t stolen if a game was de-listed. If you already paid for the game, you can still download it. De-listed just means that people who don’t already have it in their library cannot purchase it anymore. That’s not theft.
Sorry, I meant ‘removed’ and all other forms of it.
So like a grant organization? They exist: https://indie-fund.com/
I don’t see how community servers help your case, though. Those don’t help things like security vulnerabilities.
I also don’t know what you mean about delisting being stolen money. Delisting just means it stops being sold. You can still download and play the game.
No, mostly because I don’t like MP games. Interacting with randoms just isn’t my idea of a good time.
However, I like the idea.
Well, the multiplayer games could have single player modes also. I believe one of the problems previously was because the single player games required Internet connection and sign in and whatnot.
Are you talking about MMO games, or anything with persistent worlds? Because anything that is match based doesn’t really need those kinds of dedicated servers to be revived.
The thing is that big companies killed P2P, DirectTCP from their games because that allowed pirates to play online, even if limited.
It can be any game. The idea just stemmed from these problems. I mean, who’s to say no other types of games will face similar fate in the future?
So, these games failed because they did not have:
- Funding/sustainability
- Reaching critical number of players
- Content creation/marketing
And you can bring them back if you can just get:
- Funding/sustainability
- Reaching critical number of players
- Content creation/marketing
This feels like tautological reasoning. Like “X would be true, if X were true”.
Good point, but there are other reasons, like just be social, as well as sticking it up to the AAA studios.
