3mo ago

Palworld faces the difficult choice of whether to become a live-service game or stay buy-to-play, PocketPair’s CEO says

automaton-media.com (UPDATE) Palworld faces the difficult choice of whether to become a live-service game or stay buy-to-play, PocketPair’s CEO says - AUTOMATON WEST

Palworld developer's CEO Takuro Mizobe talks about the possibility of the game switching to a live-service model.

Games @sh.itjust.works

automaton-media.com /en/news/palworld-faces-the-difficult-choice-of-whether-to-become-a-live-service-game-or-stay-buy-to-play-pocketpairs-ceo-says/

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Meanwhile I avoided playing because I wanted to wait until it was out of early access and had its full release... Seems like I'll either never get that, or by the time I do, the game will already be dead
- If it's dead by then, it wouldn't have been a good investment. I'd rather not waste time in a game that won't live past the hype.
  
  I feel like I already got way more than my money's worth out of the game, and I'm happy to have moved on to other games. Not every game has to last forever.
  
  Any game that doesn't last forever was robbed of doing so arbitrarily. If they never updated Palworld again, in its current form, it will last forever.
  
  That's not really true... No closed source software that isn't actively developed should be expected to last forever. Eventually the binaries will get to the point where nothing will run them.
  You also can't emulate Windows. Maybe you could virtualize Linux and use wine, but even that is a tall order for "forever".
  
  You can emulate machines that can run Windows, and that's very effective at preservation. Wine is already better than modern Windows at running software that relies on deprecated dependencies. But live service is just purposely killing games that didn't need to die.
  
  You can emulate machines that can run Windows, and that's very effective at preservation.
  Hmm... I'm unaware of this, but I guess it's theoretically possible. Still it's a lot harder to emulate x86 + some graphics hardware than it is to emulate a Gameboy.
  Wine is already better than modern Windows at running software that relies on deprecated dependencies.
  Agreed, but it's not a silver bullet and A LOT of stuff is going to be shaken up now that x86 is starting to be challenged. For a long time PCs have been entirely operating on x86 (which is arguably part of why Java died ... the abstraction just wasn't necessary). That x86 dominance I think may have given a false sense of security for software longevity.
  It's not even that it's hard to port the games, but without the source code, it's just not going to happen.
  I kind of wish there were laws where source code had to be released after X years of inactivity, especially for games for the cultural preservation aspect. Like if you have abandoned a game and not released any new content (especially if you haven't released even any bug fixes/have totally abandoned the game), after 10 years the game code must be released.
  I don't necessarily think it needs to be a release of rights, assets, or anything like that ... but being unable to operate a game you've bought just because it was built for an older piece of hardware is 👎.
  But live service is just purposely killing games that didn't need to die.
  Bad live services are killing (in many cases bad) games that didn't need to die (and might have been better if less time was spent trying to force something to be a live service that didn't need to be one).
  There's a big difference between Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League and say... PUBG, Fortnite, Hunt Showdown, WOW, RuneScape, etc
  
  The inevitable outcome for every live service game is that it becomes inoperable and unplayable, even the good ones. It doesn't matter if it's Suicide Squad or Fortnite. They all should still be preserved. Open source is appreciated but not necessary.
  
  I don't think Fortnite can be meaningfully preserved anymore than say, Cedar Point can personally.
  Live services can also certainly transition out of a live service state; or if the source code is disclosed (per my previous statement) they can be transitioned by the community after they seize operation. Building a game like Fortnite or RuneScape just doesn't work without it being a centralized "destination." The experience is about the large number of players as much as it's about the game play.
  Live services are more of a destination than a product ... and for match made competitive shooters and things of that ilk ... I think that's fine.
  
  If someone 50 years from now wants to see what this game Fortnite was all about, they should be able to get a reasonable approximation of it by booting it up and playing with 100 other people. That's what it means to preserve it. We've had and will continue to have competitive games that are not live service.
  
  We've had and will continue to have competitive games that are not live service.
  Interesting question... What competitive games from the last 10 years would you consider to be not live service games?
- same
- Same boat, waiting for 1.0, now worried I'll miss the boat entirely, but I'm not going to buy their early access for that fear mongering. They made millions, they can ensure their game lives on one way or another.
- Doesn't matter if it's "dead" or not, it's not really meant to be a massively multiplayer game.

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