Comment on Thief has a new spiritual sequel, built by the Deus Ex and System Shock devs

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leftzero@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

I’m not sure what you mean by

get your customers to make the content for you for free

I mean that (besides always-online DRM, and scamming your victims with subscriptions and microtransactions) the main reason for perpetrating an online multiplayer computer game is that you can get away with not writing a story, or lore, or quests, or puzzles, or NPCs, or AI, or any actual gameplay, or anything even remotely resembling a proper game through the magic of scamming your customers (or rather victims) into paying you for the privilege of filling in the gaps and acting as NPCs, and gameplay, and whatnot.

You get away with selling the rotting carcass of what could have been a game, and scamming your customers into believing it’s still alive just because it’s (temporarily) crawling with maggots.

I can get any old single player game and, provided I can replicate its environment, play it and enjoy it just as much as I could have when it came out, or even more.

Even if it was possible to enjoy an online game, on the other hand, it will have been stillborn to start with, a mere shell of a game, an insult to real games, a sad parody only resembling a game as long as there’s enough victims trapped in the scam; the second they start leaving (supposing the scammers don’t turn the servers off before that, to drive their victims to their latest shiny defecation) it’ll go back to being the empty unplayable shell it’s always been, utterly devoid of enjoyability or replayability.

The very concept is insulting, revolting, and a clear intentional predatory attack on computer game players and the very concept of computer games.

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