I should be able to host my own WoW server on my LAN, play CoD split-screen on my TV, or run my own Battlefield tournament on my own LAN.

Using the internet as an option for multiplayer or other optional features of games is fine, but there is absolutely no reason why a video game should ever require an internet connection.

People deciding that it is somehow acceptable to require an internet connection to play a game is a big part of the reason why we have DLC, buggy releases, microtransaction riddled games, and shitty, invasive DRM.

If you have ever been involved in the creation of games that require an internet connection then I hope your asshole itches until the day you die.

Edit: if the game is only available through digital distribution then an internet connection is a requirement to play the game because you have to be able to obtain the game to play it.

Back in the day releasing a buggy game was costly because it meant you would have provide the option to your users to receive updates by mail or in stores. DLC (or expansion packs) would have to be meaningful, because it would mean having to press new discs or make new cartridges in order to provide that content to your users and it wasn’t worthwhile for the users to buy if it wasn’t substantial. Loot boxes and other microtransactions wouldn’t really be a thing because you would have no guarantee that anyone would be willing to buy them because they would have to be provided by mail or in stores on some sort of physical media.

DRM would consist of needing to have a disc in the drive and maybe having to verify that you had a unique activation key by verifying a cryptographic hash against a public key on the disc.

All of this made for better games because the games had to be worth the hassle of going to the store to buy them or waiting for them to be delivered in the mail.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    Neverwinter Nights included the game server with the game (nwserver.exe).

    I’m talking about this NWN, which is why I put the year (wrong by one, but eh) in parentheses. Quoting from a commenter in that piece that claims to be Scott Gries, the game’s project manager: “I will confirm that there was no offline game mode. The game required a connection to AOL’s NWN server.”

    A lot of MMOs from that era also had self-hostable servers at the time. Pretty much every MMO prior to WoW had some way to run your own server.

    I think you got it backwards, MMOs were, by design, games that the players couldn’t host their own servers, they needed to get a hold of leaked or reverse engineered server files off the internet if they wanted that. Everquest, Asheron’s Call, Star Wars Galaxies, Ragnarok Online, Anarchy Online, Phantasy Star Online, Final Fantasy XI, all of these predate WoW, none of them offered players the files to host their own servers.

    Keep in mind, a number of MMOs of the time charged by the hour.

    I am arguing that there were fewer of them as a percentage of the total games market

    Fair enough

    I’m also arguing that there were fewer (as in near zero) games that engaged in predatory practices

    Among offline or mostly offline games, that’s true. For online only, the predatory tactics hadn’t been perfected yet, but they were there. The absurd grind for MMOs that charged by the hour/minute was the first step, vanilla WoW had blazingly fast leveling compared to the competition of the time. In game cash shops, while not as complete or purposefully obtuse as the ones today, predate WoW.

    In this regard, yes, the internet is part of the problem, as you can’t have all these predatory tactics without it.