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.

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.

I would have totally agreed, but it looks like Steam offers free matchmaking backend and P2P proxies. Why isn't this widely known???

I would hope it actually is more known among developers. Even big titles like Tekken 7 used it. Insistence on crossplay with consoles causes a stumbling block, but still, that's not most games.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/api/example provides a good example, too. Steam has all sorts of extra functionality to justify their 30% cut on sales, they're not just taking it while doing nothing.

It is well known. But also not all developers want to/ can afford the risk to tie all their networking services to Steam.

Honestly, it's probably simpler than this, and the root of the problem often comes down to the Cloud Providers to begin with.

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?

So, that's often why our network services, and mobile versions of our games are being taken offline while the single binary we shipped to one of the serious console vendors 10-20 years ago is still running, and now running on consoles 2 generations newer.

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.

Isn’t that just a matter of building your server with PHP or something similar that never deprecates functionality? Absolutely not node.js.

Maybe...

But then, having also lived it, upgrading to newer versions of PHP and it's required modules is also not trivial.

And it's often not just your language, the cloud vendors have a lot of incentives to get you to use their hosted Postgres, or AuroraDB, or GameLift. Or even something as simple as we built all of our deployment scripts/images for our PHP system on Amazon Linux X, and now for reason Y, only Amazon Linux X+2 is supported.

This isn't a technical problem. It's a legal and corporate political one. Copyright and patent issues are no more likely to go away with Amazon. Also Amazon's gaming division may make them a potential competitor.

I also doubt that such a could service would be immune to corperate restructuring by the like of Amazon. We need gaming companies to be more comfortable providing server binaries if we want anything that lasts.

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.

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...

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.

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.

I mean, you can make both available.

If you can afford to develop both. Presumably as an indie dev they chose where to invest their development time

I picked up a copy of Hypercharge back in 2020 after spotting it on one of the gaming subs.

While it is technically a shooter, it turned out to be a 3D tower defense game - you place your turrets, shields and whatnots to protect against waves of enemies and then run around managing the defence and occasionally shooting at the baddies. It's not PvP. This was a bit of letdown because I was really hoping for a remake of an old Unreal Tournament mod when all players were inch tall and were running around a house, hiding in cupboards, closets, climbing curtains, etc. That was crazy fun. Anyone else remember it?

Shogo had a mod called Squishie where one player was normal size and on a team by themselves, and all the other players were tiny and on the other team. It was the most fun I've ever had at a LAN party in those early 00's. I'm surprised no one ever picked this up and turned it into a real game.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/squishie

I assume those asymmetric multiplayer games are hard to maintain an audience. Everyone wants to be the super charged monster, nobody wants to be the squishie. Unless you can shore up the difference with bots, you are going to have to play dramatically more rounds as the less-fun squishie.

I think you could argue that Battlefront 2 allows this kind of asymmetrical multiplayer game.

The heroes on the other side are largely over powered compared to the standard trooper. While everyone wants to play the hero, it takes time to build up points to switch to it. It allows every odd character models, where we have bb8 running around quickly and extremely small hitbox.

I do think there are opportunities in this area. When I play fortnite I get disappointed that everyone has to fit into a specific skeleton. Let games be weird.

Never played Battlefront, but that sounds like a short duration powerup mode?

I was thinking of something like Evolve[0] where it is a 4v1 kind of humans vs monster affair. There are also horror games that follow this formula -one psycho killer vs regular humans. I assume all the fun is being the monster, less amusing to be the weakling running and hiding.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolve_(video_game)

Dead by Daylight has stayed pretty popular. It's an asymmetric multiplayer game where one player plays as a horror movie killer, while the other four try to accomplish objectives and escape. Balancing the game can be a bit tricky though, since when 80% of your population plays as survivors, there's an incentive to keep them happy.

There have been various attempts at that type of asymmetric multiplayer over the years and most of them have had serious issues with game balance. I think the most successful has been Dead by Daylight and at high levels of play usually turns into a deadlock.

Most FPS's of the era had that sort of map. Return to Castle Wolfenstein had Kung Fu Grip, which I played many, many hours of. The map was built by a clan member and we used to have map test nights.

Rats maps! If your mutliplayer game had a map editor, you'd be sure there'd be one of those massive house maps available.

I don't remember that one, but I loved de_rats (same idea) so much I stopped playing CS when it fell out of favour.

ut2004 had the make something unreal contest which really kicked maps and mods up a notch.

i think even ut99 had some of those "we're small" maps like Simpsons house, etc.

but yeah, kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms, all seemingly covered.

I love their honest answer. Very retro.

Literally every indie game dev says exactly the same thing. It had nothing to do with "honesty", just luck again.

Says the spermatozoon that beat the others to the egg.

As original as the hacker news cynic

Yes, but luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Unfortunately this is the truth.

This speaks to the power of social media.

Article calls it a third person game but from the gameplay footage I see online it's clearly first person. Have games journalists already been replaced with LLMs? Or maybe they should be.

In any case, I'm glad the devs found some success.

The video on Steam shows both first- and third-person perspectives. Speaking of LLMs, Gemini says: "Hypercharge: Unboxed is both a first-person and third-person shooter. You can switch between perspectives based on your preference."

This is not a criticism of the developers at all, and certainly not their sentiments. I am behind those 100%. But.

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.

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's a motto in our house:

"Gaming is complaining" or "When you're gaming, you're complaining."

Wtf does this even mean?

Maybe this is me sounding really cringe, but the world needs more people like this.

Now more than ever.

TBH, I think the problem is not a lack of people like this, but that there's no oxygen for them anymore. Tech/gaming journalism is on life support (at best). All the remaining platforms are huge and corporate. Big tech is laying everyone off ... The current ecosystem doesn't really reward passion and competence anymore.

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. Just as one example, Master Hellish creates an absolute ton of OpenTTD tutorials and showcase videos. The most the old games journalism industry would ever make for a game like that is one or two articles highlighting it as an obscure novelty, but never going I'm depth with the game mechanics.

Or Mortismal Gaming who only covers CRPGs with more depth and passion than any legacy gaming journo.

Instantly reminded me of Toy Commander.