HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

> While not rioting in real life, it feels familiar.

The Ultima Online postmortem session from GDC 2018 has some similar stories about in-game protests. The stories in said session are quite entertaining, and there is a lot of other interesting information too in the session. The whole thing is worth a watch.

https://youtu.be/lnnsDi7Sxq0

Related: a GDC 2018 presentation with Richard Garriott and other people from the UO dev team sharing stories from UO's early days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnsDi7Sxq0

⬐ philliphaydon

Wow, they seemed to have really creative.

- Sharding

- Paid early access

- Pre-paid game time in a box

Really pioneers of the gaming industry it seems.

⬐ andrepd

Those GDC postmortem talks have some absolute gems.

⬐ wolfhumble

Interesting :-)

Seems like the word 'shard' when used to define splitting up DB's etc. on different servers, actually originates from this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnsDi7Sxq0&t=1490s

" As longtime poweruser all the dark patterns and user hostile behavior was astonishing."

Two or more computers in a network become and behave as a single PC, so if you buy any client-server software you are literally stealing programs for yourself. Because all programs are the same to a PC. AKA all programs executables can be divided into two or more exe's and run over a network it's called the client-server or mainframe dumb client model of computing and you don't want that because that's the end of the personal computer you own and control. Client-server apps are the ultimate security risk because you can't audit the code.

The last 23 years there's been a war to kill the general computer.

If you've touched steam, xbox live or mmo's, they are all client-server exe's, windows 10 is a client-server operating system.

They've been stealing software from 1997 with ultima online, how can you be astonished when valve and everyone were stealing PC games from 1997 onward?

See this patent by microsoft here:

https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_...

On games:

It's not, the average gamer and PC buyer has been stealing software from himself for the last 23+ years. Straight, steam/mmo's are just back ended c applications, there's no reason for any piece of software to require a "internet connection" (aka a second computer) half a world away.

The 1990's were great because it was before the computer illiterate got internet. Everyone was expecting level editors and free maps, mods and skins

Level editors

https://icculus.org/gtkradiant/

Free maps mods and skins

https://ws.q3df.org/models/

... to continue in all the big budget games but that didn't happen because the computer illiterate masses gave up game ownership giving birth to all the evils of modern gaming (shut down games, mtx, always online drm, which is the same as mmo's, aka client-server back ended c apps). So we're losing game history down the shitter and games just disappear from history because stupid got internet.

Pub g and Apex, are just back ended quake 3 and UT2004, minus game ownership.

When the computer illiterate started buying MMO's (which were just rebranded rpg's with stolen networking code), the game industry started stealing PC games on a massive scale, notice how Transformers fall of cybertron a game from 2014, doesn't have basic features like dedicated servers and server lists like every fps from 1996-2004. (aka pre-steam, pre-mmo).

Once game developers realized gamers were stupid in 1997, there was a war on on local applications.

Don't think so? Don't think mmo's killed quake 1-3 and warcraft 1-3?

See here the ultima dev's themselves:

https://youtu.be/lnnsDi7Sxq0?t=1134

Ultima 9 was cancelled for the scam game ultima online, so there was no ultima 10, ultima 11, ultima 12, with dedicated servers and level editors. So we didn't get the awesome future of PC gaming, we got the computer illiterate dumbass future that undid the personal computer revolution taking us back to mainframe computing of the 60's and the average gamer is unaware of it.

Everyone was expecting diablo 2+ to have server browsers and level editing and huge modding, that never happened because they started stealing RPG's and rebranding them mmo's and just started back ending the shit out of every PC game, once they realized the public was stupid as fuck at computers.

Don't think so? We already had infinite multiplayer game sin the 90's with quake 2, until the shit for brains who bought UO and everquest fucked up the future of the personal computer and gaming more generally, taking us back to mainframe computing of the 60's.

"No limit to the # of players - JC, quake 2

https://youtu.be/TfeSMaztDVc?t=95

We could take quake 2 engine an clone all "MMO's and have those same games run locally with ability to host multiplayer from your machine with no logins, subscription fees.

If you have to infinity multiplayer videogames, one allows you to own it and costs $60, and the other has an upfront costs + sub.... guess who got swindled?

Two or more computers in a network become and behave as a single PC, so if you buy any client-server software you are literally stealing programs for yourself. Because all programs are the same to a PC. AKA all programs executables can be divided into two or more exe's and run over a network it's called the client-server or mainframe dumb client model of computing and you don't want that because that's the end of the personal computer you own and control. Client-server apps are the ultimate security risk because you can't audit the code.

The last 23 years there's been a war to kill the general computer.

https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_...

>This language seems unnecessary,

It's not, the average gamer and PC buyer has been stealing software from himself for the last 23+ years. Straight, steam/mmo's are just back ended c applications, there's no reason for any piece of software to require a "internet connection" (aka a second computer) half a world away.

The 1990's were great because it was before the computer illiterate got internet. Everyone was expecting level editors and free maps, mods and skins

Level editors

https://icculus.org/gtkradiant/

Free maps mods and skins

https://ws.q3df.org/models/

... to continue in all the big budget games but that didn't happen because the computer illiterate masses gave up game ownership giving birth to all the evils of modern gaming (shut down games, mtx, always online drm, which is the same as mmo's, aka client-server back ended c apps). So we're losing game history down the shitter and games just disappear from history because stupid got internet.

Pub g and Apex, are just back ended quake 3 and UT2004, minus game ownership.

When the computer illiterate started buying MMO's (which were just rebranded rpg's with stolen networking code), the game industry started stealing PC games on a massive scale, notice how Transformers fall of cybertron a game from 2014, doesn't have basic features like dedicated servers and server lists like every fps from 1996-2004. (aka pre-steam, pre-mmo).

Once game developers realized gamers were stupid in 1997, there was a war on on local applications.

Don't think so? Don't think mmo's killed quake 1-3 and warcraft 1-3?

See here the ultima dev's themselves:

https://youtu.be/lnnsDi7Sxq0?t=1134

Ultima 9 was cancelled for the scam game ultima online, so there was no ultima 10, ultima 11, ultima 12, with dedicated servers and level editors. So we didn't get the awesome future of PC gaming, we got the computer illiterate dumbass future that undid the personal computer revolution taking us back to mainframe computing of the 60's and the average gamer is unaware of it.

Everyone was expecting diablo 2+ to have server browsers and level editing and huge modding, that never happened because they started stealing RPG's and rebranding them mmo's and just started back ending the shit out of every PC game, once they realized the public was stupid as fuck at computers.

Don't think so? We already had infinite multiplayer game sin the 90's with quake 2, until the shit for brains who bought UO and everquest fucked up the future of the personal computer and gaming more generally, taking us back to mainframe computing of the 60's.

"No limit to the # of players - JC, quake 2

https://youtu.be/TfeSMaztDVc?t=95

We could take quake 2 engine an clone all "MMO's and have those same games run locally with ability to host multiplayer from your machine with no logins, subscription fees.

If you have to infinity multiplayer videogames, one allows you to own it and costs $60, and the other has an upfront costs + sub.... guess who got swindled?

⬐ nnt38

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia

⬐ stuu99

Nothing nostalgic about massive game theft.

https://youtu.be/TfeSMaztDVc?t=95

Infinite players, no drm, no steam, can't be taken away from you. Not nostalgia buddy, since quake champions is the same as quake 3 but back ended.

An unreal engine game (transformers foc) doesn't have basic features (multiplayer) unlike games from 20 years ago (unreal, ut2003, ut2004)

https://imgur.com/oWeY5Ps

But keep believing aiding and abetting the game industries theft is a sign of intelligence.

⬐ yunohn

Maybe you’re on the wrong thread/forum? This isn’t /r/pcmasterrace.

> the computer illiterate masses gave up game ownership giving birth to all the evils of modern gaming

It’s really hard to take you seriously with your constant berating of normal people.

⬐ stuu99

Have you ever considered normal people are stupid and have enabled the mmost mass invasion of privacy and hacking of our computers in human history with their mmo, steam and uplay loving habits?

AKA we're being spied on to use our own pc's, EA, valve can see whatever we do and exfiltrate data out of our pc's without our consent because we can't audit the code.

You don't grasp the massive invasion of privacy and the end of basic human rights normal people have enabled due to their tech illiteracy.

So stupid is an apt phrase for something that any 5 year old child should understand, why would any videogame need a 2nd pc 100 miles away? or a second playstation or a second Nintendo, unless something fishy was going on?

>This is a bad example because Steam's DRM is notoriously terrible

You don't grasp Valve and the industry has already won any game where the networking code has been pulled out already acts like DRM, any client-server app requiring username and login accounts, or has some piece of code living on some remote server, means you no longer own your own stuff.

Valve and the rest of the computing industry is boiling you all slowly. AKA look at this list of games from crackwatch.

https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/p9ak4n/crack_wa...

You'll notice more and more games are "online only". Diablo 3 is literally diablo 2 /w drm, they wanted to kill piracy.

Starcraft remastered, and reforged require internet to play, that means we've lost the battle. The public has eaten up client-server back ended games. You don't get that the whole point was to monopolize their own products and kill the local infinitely copyable binaries PC games used to be coded as, AKA PRe steam 99% of games were complete you got singleplayer+multiplayer inside the same game.

MMO's/F2P are literally just PC games with their multiplayer ripped out, don't think so? Listen to the ultima devs here, when Ultima online was successful, publishers and devs went over their entire PC game list to convert their local apps to client-server apps and stuck "MMO" on the front so they could steal PC games from the public.

https://youtu.be/lnnsDi7Sxq0?t=1134

EA killed ultima 9 when the UO beta got massive interest, that lead to the death of PC games as local applications, the industry from then on there was a massive war to back end all PC games, they couldn't immediately do that to quake and urneal because we'd been treated too good with Warcraft 1-3, Descent 1-3, Quake 1-3, and build engine games like Duke 3d. The entire industry has always wanted to kill piracy and Ultima online gave the entire industry the go ahead once they realized that many of our fellow programmers and gamers were irrationally stupid beyond their wildest dreams.

Anyone playing quake and Descent at the time fear the loss of dedicated servers and level editors which used to come with the games, we knew if Ultima online was successful that Publishers would want to back end every fucking PC game and that's the end of the personal computer and the return of IBM and mainframe computing.

"Signed exe's" and trusted computing is the return of mainframe computing of the 60's in new bullshit language but I don't expect the mmo/steam generation to do anything but froth at the mouth. When they were the ones killing gaming and gave birth to microtransactions.

You can't put MTX in diablo 1, warcraft 1-3, or starcraft 1 because they are local applications that run entirely from your pc. None of the code has been stolen out of the game carved back behind a user account and login requirement. Like with most PC games these days.

We're losing gaming history and generation mmo is to blame for their general cluelessness of the evil of mainframe computing.

⬐ hedgewitch

Ummm...more and more games are forcing you to be online during play because, in reality, that's what people want. People want their universal auction houses that connect with other players and feel more "alive." People want their Wonder Trades and other seemingly inane social features. Do all games need it (eg. the StarCraft and WarCraft III remasters)? No, but that has less to do with "ONLINE GAMES ARE EVIL" and more to do with them wanting to keep people firmly in the Battle.net ecosystem. There's an entire player retention strategy that goes into that that has nothing to do with piracy.

Moreover, MMOs in general necessitate a central server. They're a completely different genre that is isolated from the fears you're expressing and, more to the point, they're not a particularly popular genre when compared to session-oriented competitive multiplayer games, so they're not actually why those games are forcing you to connect to a central server.

The main thing you're missing when complaining about the "loss of dedicated servers" is that centralized services consolidate the userbase, allow them to programmatically split the userbase by region, and ensure that, as long as people are playing, they can always be found. But, more importantly, you're never locked out of the "populated" servers for an arbitrary amount of time because they're perpetually full, which has been a problem in a number of games with dedicated servers.

Also, you have to remember that the games industry is approximately 5x larger (by revenue, probably more by userbase, especially considering the rise of f2p games and increasing prevalence of deep discounts) now than it was in 2000. What the majority wants inevitably changed because "the majority" changed purely by virtue of there are 5x+ more people with their own opinions.

So, sure, things are changing and are moving away from self-hosting, but there are a lot of cultural factors (and undeniable conveniences) that have influenced it far more than "companies are evil and they just want to control us."

⬐ stuu99

There is no reason for ANY piece of software to require an internet connection, which is corporate newsspeak, for ANOTHER computer, they always wanted to kill the personal computer and move us back to the 60's with IBM and mainframe computing.

You really don't grasp what's been going on the last 23+ years, no one wanted steam when it launched it was forced. MMO's were just a case of irrationality and stupidity, the same "MMO" players bitch about DRM in their "single player games" on anandtech, not realizing, that MMO's are just PC game with their networking code ripped out into a seperate exe and coded in a fraudulent way.

They are not some "new type of game".

So with all the complaints on hardware forums about drm... the idea that the public likes what is happening is bs, most of the public is just unaware and too stupid to understand its own stupidity.

>Moreover, MMOs in general necessitate a central server. They're a completely different genre

Sigh, go listen to the post mortem devs of ultima online, as soon as UO beta was successful, Ultima 9 (the local app) was axed, for client-server ultima, aka "MMO's" are just back ended rpgs, they re not some different kind of game.

https://youtu.be/lnnsDi7Sxq0?t=1134

Unreal engine game disagrees with you, this is only possible because of you clueless people.

https://imgur.com/oWeY5Ps

Note that it's using the same unreal engine as UT2004. So we know the ability to have dedicated servers and in game server browser exists inside the engine. So why was the networking code pulled out of fall of cybertron/wfc? When during beta they had dedicated servers exposed.

And this is the industries big lie, we've restored many "MMO's", so no the central server mythology concocted by the game industry was so that they didn't have to give us infinitely multiplayer game engines like Quake 2.

Quake 2 was also a limitless multiplayer game, you've sucked up the mmo propaganda well. Scientifically the whole industry wanted to kill local binaries allowing us to host our own games, that's why dedicated servers disappeared in FPS games.

⬐ hedgewitch

> So we know the ability to have dedicated servers and in game server browser exists inside the engine.

You can continue to spout conspiracy theories if you want, but the fact of the matter is that dedicated servers are a completely different archetype. If you connect to a server, your connection is retained until you disconnect, meaning that you are in the player pool until you disconnect, which means no one else can take your slot in the player pool until you disconnect. This worked when communities were smaller, but it's completely incompatible with having 100k+ people online at any one time. The server lists would be massive, especially in a game like Halo Infinite, where lobbies cap at 16. No one wants to deal with that.

> Sigh, go listen to the post mortem devs of ultima online, as soon as UO beta was successful, Ultima 9 (the local app) was axed, for client-server ultima, aka "MMO's" are just back ended rpgs, they re not some different kind of game.

Ultima IX was, from the ground up, awful. Not to mention, you're completely misrepresenting this. It's not like they killed Ultima IX and reused its code in Ultima Online. They're completely different games.

And yes, MMOs are different. They literally have different mechanics. No Ultima game played like Ultima Online except Ultima Online. The entire appeal is that the entire userbase is all on one server.

But, more importantly, at any given time, the servers are too complex to manage for individuals and, at the time that Ultima Online was released, it would have been literally impossible to run on the average desktop computer. A RasPi can barely manage 8 people on a Minecraft server. You think that your 1997 Pentium could have managed Ultima's server? Alternatively, look at Ryzom's open-source release. There are like four different interconnected servers. What average user is going to be able to adequately manage that for other users?

⬐ stuu99

>And yes, MMOs are different.

No they aren't "MMO" is just a marketing moniker for limitless multiplayer game, well we had that in quake 2. Go see for yourself here John carmack, so who am I to believe someone who's slurped up mmo propaganda, or John carmack elite videogame programmer?

(slightly paraphrasing) "Effectively no limit to the # of players in multiplayer world"- John carmack, so if you had quake 2 infinite mmo game that required no user account or central server, and you got ultima online videogame that does and requires a subscription + up front payment for the client, doesn't that mean you're being ripped off and don't grasp basic facts about computers?

https://youtu.be/TfeSMaztDVc?t=99

Here's what you didn't grasp young padawan, if I'm a game company spending millions of dollars on a PC game, why would I ever give you a local infinitely copyable binary again if I can convince your dumb ass to buy a client-server application?

AKA client-server rpg's killed BASIC MULTIPLAYER that used to come with every PC game. You are deluded and don't get the agenda.

So let me explain it to you:

Two or more pc's in a network become and behave as a single computer. So the internet is one GIANT world sized computer to a software company.

As we know from CS 101, any program can be split into two sub programs and run over a network. It's called the client-server or mainframe dumb client model of computing.

You'd only use the mainframe model if your intent was to steal software and remove ownership from the public.

You don't get there is no magic networking code, that was the bullshit propaganda fed you by the industry so they could back end all their games in development.

Every "MMO" would have been a regular PC game with singleplayer+multiplayer hosting. Nowhere is this more clear then guild wars 1, the "MMO" you only pay once for that has user name and login account.

You don't grasp ANY program can be split into two sub exe's and run over a network, that means you just undermined the personal computer revolution and took us back to mainframe computing.

Because in scientific reality there IS no such thing as a special list of binary numbers.

You could take quake (for the sake argument) and re-arrange the list of numbers and get windows just by re-arranging the values.

In scientific reality, all software is the same to a computer.

You don't grasp the fact we've got emulated networking back ends for Earth and beyond (MMO) and Need for speed world (MMO).

Means MMO's are just pc games with fraudulently coded multiplayer you idiot. So no they did not require a special magical computer, it was used as an excuse to steal games and as an anti-piracy mechanism to undermine game ownership.

You can't put two and two together to save your life kid.

Need for speed world "MMO" we've restored -- AKA the fact that the game doesn't have to shut down because we restored it, means there was no reason for the game to be programmed in a client-servery way to deny the game being owned outright as a local application. But you're too stupid to see it, you don't grasp "private servers" exists undermines your "MMO's are differnet" thesis. AKA the game industry just wanted to steal games from their customers to prevent piracy and change ownership relations so they could insert in game stores, defeat piracy and remove ownership of local binaries from gamers.

NFS "MMO"

https://soapboxrace.world/

Earth and beyond "MMO"

https://www.net-7.org/

That means the fact we've restored their networking code, means there was no reason for these games to be programmed client-server and requiring user accounts to begin with. But that will never penetrate your irrational brain.

See the science: I can tell you the facts and the figures and you won't reason to the right conclusion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ&t=9s

⬐ hedgewitch

I literally didn't say the network code was different. But server load, internet requirements (have fun hosting an Ultima Online server for your friends on a 56K modem), and more make it impractical for any single user to host a server.

Quake II is literally not the same as an MMO. You have a small map with a maximum of, what, 32 players? MMOs can have thousands. Most modern MMOs can handle hundreds in the same zone before they become unplayably laggy. Most can't handle thousands in one zone, even on the machines the servers were built for. You can't do that as a consumer.

It's not about the code. It's about the game itself and its requirements.

Emulating servers doesn't change that.

Again, it's all about being able to connect everyone that is playing and the difficult parts being managed for you. You never have to worry about spinning up a dedicated server to play with your friends. You just load in, invite them to party, and queue up. These conveniences are why this model is popular, not because of this bizarre conspiracy you're pushing.

⬐ stuu99

"Emulating servers doesn't change that."

Yes because you CLEARLY haven no idea how a computer works.

The server exe that world of warcraft and UO use COULD have been given to you when you bought the game and you could run UO without a monthly fee and run the entire game locally.

AKA you could take the emulators or the original networking code from UO and world of warcraft and re-embed them inside the exe.

AKA you were robbed buddy. There is no magical reason for the networking to be outside the exe unless something funny is going on.

Sorry to tell you, it's obvious you wouldn't pass computer science 101. You don't grasp basic facts about PC's.

I can't converse with someone who doesn't understand basic computer science.

You don't grasp that emulators exist, means your mmo's are special thesis is disproven PRECISELY BECAUSE it didn't require a magical computer, you could have run the whole thing locally and it didn't require giving up game ownership.

You don't grasp we could use quake 2 engine to clone all your favorite mmo's because ANY game can be made in a game engine, once you have a game engine that allows limitless multiplayer you can clone ANY game in a game engine.

May you one day understand basic facts about computers.

That is why quake 2 and UO/Wow are the same thing because to a computer all a program is, is a list of binary functions.

If there is a game with infinite multiplayer that doesn't require user accounts, you can use that engine to clone all "MMO's" and turn them back into local executables. This basic fact about computer reality is lost on you.

⬐ hedgewitch

It's amazing that you've ignored everything I've said about the context surrounding these decisions and why consumers prefer them and you're calling me crazy.

⬐ hedgewitch

Okay, have fun in your alternate reality where users host all of your data and you regularly lose characters or accounts you've spent months on because they decide they can't be arsed to host the server that you were on anymore. After all, you can't allow users to brings their characters/accounts cross-server because that's a cheating risk. :)

⬐ stuu99

>Okay, have fun in your alternate reality where users host all of your data and you regularly lose characters or accounts you've spent months on because they decide they can't be arsed to host the server that you were on anymore.

This proves you have no clue how a computer works and are childish to an extreme degree because of your irrational feelings towards a video game.

Everything you said is not even wrong because you don't need user accounts if you own the game. There are ways to prevent cheating without giving up game ownership.

⬐ deadbeeves

I think stuu99 is off-base in several of their points, but there's no denying that certain games have been online'd purely as a means of copy protection. Diablo 3 is a great example. It's a game that's perfectly enjoyable in single player, but they specifically moved parts off onto a remote server to prevent you from giving copies to your friends. They could have just as easily (in fact, probably more so) put everything the single player mode needs in the executable and required a login for multiplayer, as was done for Diablo 2, but they didn't. Even if you have no intention of playing online, you don't have option not to connect to Blizzard.

⬐ stuu99

>I think stuu99 is off-base in several of their point

Then you're going to have to answer: why did we lose dedicated servers in fps and LAN in modern games like starcraft 2, and many others.

Things that used to come inside the game, Descent 1-3, Warcraft 1-3, Diablo 1-2, quake 1-3 Doom 1-3.

All those games had multiplayer built into their exe's. So you have a lot of explainig to do why multiplayer networking has been ripped out of games like

Transformers FoC (an unreal engine game)

https://imgur.com/oWeY5Ps

And games like Ridge racer unbounded

https://steamcommunity.com/app/202310/discussions/0/61282346...

Games from pre-steam era, multiplayer still work because they were embedded inside the exe. So you have a lot of explaining to do claiming "your mmo's" are special and I'm wrong, the easiest explanation is mmo's are just stolen PC games and they've been ripping out networking code once they realized you were computer illiterate/irrational to an insane degree in 97 with the advent of ultima online, lineage, everquest, guild war 1, asherons call and wow.

FoC is an unreal engine game, so why would we need to sign in to a remote computer to play multiplayer, when unreal 1, UT2003, UT2004, didn't require that? Or could it be those were all honestly coded local applications before the mmo-backend apocalypse infected all of gaming.

⬐ deadbeeves

You're responding to an argument I did not make. I specifically agreed with you that certain games have been crippled as a means of copy protection. Please try to read more carefully.

⬐ stuu99

"You're responding to an argument I did not make. I specifically agreed with you that certain games have been crippled as a means of copy protection. Please try to read more carefully."

You suggested there is a place for client server games, that's what you insinuated. So let me be clear.

Two or more computers in a network form and behave as a single device when networked together. So the only way to keep ownership over your PC is not to buy any client-server software (no mmo's, no steam, no overwatch, etc).

Why? Because client-server apps are the ultimate security risk, you can't audit the code so this foreign app spies on you and removes your basic rights and freedoms to remove your pc and software companies can see and hear everything you do if you take up those kinds of apps.

Now you might think this is hyberbole, but the internet allows software companies to trivially steal all their software apps from the public and turn our machine into dumb terminals because we have no say in how microsoft or game companies are run, and much of the public is completely computer illiterate and irrational.

So no, there is no place for DRM or client-server apps, because the tech industries agenda was always to kill ownership of our PC's and sadly they've won.

https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_...

Pluton

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2022/01/04/ces-2...

The whole agenda was to kill plaintext binaries where we could trivially crack software, they want to enforce copyright on our PC's by way of TPM and digitally signed exes, UWP games was a trial run for this in windows 10, where after windows 10 updates it will kill cracked exes.

They want to bring the console method of anti-piracy to the PC (aka every new app can communicate out to servers to check to see if you are running an "insecure" (non signed) exe and refuse to run it.

They've taken over your PC and you have 1) no rights, no privacy.

That's what W10, W11 and future windows and games/software is about.

That's why we didn't want you to buy mmo's/client server apps in 97 since me and many of my fellow nerds predicted all this when the public was stupid enough to give up game ownership in 97 with uo.

⬐ deadbeeves

>You suggested there is a place for client server games

Sorry, but I simply did not say that.

>So the only way to keep ownership over your PC is not to buy any client-server software (no mmo's, no steam, no overwatch, etc). Why? Because client-server apps are the ultimate security risk

If you believe that, why are you using a web browser and posting on Hacker News? At the networking level there's no fundamental difference between using an online forum and playing an MMO. Did you audit your web browser and HN's code?

⬐ Apocryphon

Server code is also there to prevent cheating. It’s often imposed in an onerous way that players hate, but it’s still a valid use case.

⬐ hedgewitch

Can't you use the auction house from single-player? If so, this is part of my point. This isn't some grand conspiracy to limit ownership of games. This is the kind of thing that more people want. They want the interconnectedness and that is an understated part of why gaming has been taking off as of the last decade.

There are a lot of things that are designed to limit how you can use your software, but gaming is one of the places that companies genuinely don't have to do that because the features that necessitate limiting how you use said software (eg. introducing anti-cheats and forcing you to be online) is stuff that people actually want.

⬐ deadbeeves

I'm not saying players in general don't want those features. I'm saying companies are taking advantage of that fact in order to require connectivity.

I never played Diablo 3 (because it's online-only) so I honestly don't know if the auction house is available on single player or not, but I'm going to assume that it is. OK. What if I have no interest in the auction house? What if I'm somewhat interested in it, but would much rather not be forced to connect to any service in order to play and consider not using the auction house a fair trade? It would be trivial to design the game so that it only connects when you try to use the auction house and to remain offline otherwise. In fact such an implementation is much simpler than to arbitrarily move critical components of the game onto a remote server. The only reason to do that for an optionally single player game is copy protection.

So yes, people nowadays expect online features, but this is a fact that's convenient for companies. And no, it's not a conspiracy. A conspiracy is an agreement between parties to perform an illicit act. What we have here is various separate parties independently converging on the idea that eroding private property rights (namely, your ability to play the games you bought unimpeded by any external factors) ensures future profits. If you haven't seen it, I recommend Ross Scott's series on dead games, to see how destructive this practice is.

⬐ hedgewitch

I mean, I know it's convenient for companies, but there are other ways to look at this, namely that it obsoletes actual DRM and provides you with something in return, which DRM doesn't. Or, to say it another way, there are worse fates.

That being said, even now, there are few genuinely single-player games that require an online connection to play. It's not a fast-growing trend by any means and, thus, not a threat. People love to bandy Diablo 3 about, but the thing is that it's the only game that they can reasonably bandy about and that was released 10 years ago in May. Or, to say it another way, if you're going to complain about something, maybe you'd better keep your references up to date.

Most games these days are on Steam. You can trivially make any game that uses only Steam's DRM playable without Steam and even trivially remove SteamStub. That emulator that I mentioned even lets you play "online" with friends via P2P, sans Steam or any third-party server. Is it entirely legal? No, but neither is making old games that forced you to keep the CD in the drive that new computers no longer have playable without the CD. Or, to say it another way, if you're so committed to that ideal, why aren't you doing what you can to make it possible to stay committed to that ideal?

⬐ deadbeeves

>People love to bandy Diablo 3 about, but the thing is that it's the only game that they can reasonably bandy about and that was released 10 years ago in May.

Hardly. Diablo 3 is probably the most famous example (partly because it's so popular, partly because it's direct predecessor didn't have an always-online requirement), but hardly the only one. Google "online only single player game" and you're bound to find a list.

>making old games that forced you to keep the CD in the drive that new computers no longer have playable without the CD.

If I have a disc or any other physical item I can at least take measures to protect it. I could conceivably put the console with the disc inside it in a closet, come back in thirty years, and play the game. I could back it up and wait for someone to make an emulator for the console. If the game needs a remote server to be up to run, there is nothing I can do to ensure I can continue playing the game in the future (other than painstakingly reverse-engineer the server). That's difference between owning something and not: control.

⬐ hedgewitch

> Hardly. Diablo 3 is probably the most famous example (partly because it's so popular, partly because it's direct predecessor didn't have an always-online requirement), but hardly the only one. Google "online only single player game" and you're bound to find a list.

If this is that big of an issue, shouldn't you already know the examples and be able to list them off?

> If I have a disc or any other physical item I can at least take measures to protect it. I could conceivably put the console with the disc inside it in a closet, come back in thirty years, and play the game. I could back it up and wait for someone to make an emulator for the console. If the game needs a remote server to be up to run, there is nothing I can do to ensure I can continue playing the game in the future (other than painstakingly reverse-engineer the server). That's difference between owning something and not: control.

Ah, yes, so instead of waiting for someone to reverse engineer the server, you're waiting for someone to reverse engineer the console so that it remains playable in perpetuity. That's definitely different.

⬐ deadbeeves

I can list the two I've played: Elite Dangerous and Planetary Annihilation. Another one I can name is The Crew. Yes, there's not that many, but I never said it was a huge problem, I just responded to your assertion that the only reason such games are online only is because of what players want. That's plainly false.

>Ah, yes, so instead of waiting for someone to reverse engineer the server, you're waiting for someone to reverse engineer the console so that it remains playable in perpetuity. That's definitely different.

You're responding to a specific example rather than the underlying point. That point being: when you own something you're free to do with it as you please. You don't need to ask for permission to read a book you own, although you do need to physically have the book on you to do so, and it needs to be intact enough that you can understand what's printed on it. A PlayStation game on a CD follows those same rules. Always online games don't.

⬐ hedgewitch

> I can list the two I've played: Elite Dangerous and Planetary Annihilation. Another one I can name is The Crew.

I don't know enough about Planetary Annihilation, but Elite: Dangerous and The Crew were definitively designed to instance you to make it feel like things were going on around you. The only functional difference between them and MMOs is the amount of players you see at once. They were made to be played online, allowing you to seamlessly move from going it alone to playing with others. This goes back to my "people want the interconnectedness" point. Allowing you to instance yourself out doesn't change that.

> You're responding to a specific example rather than the underlying point.

No, you're missing my point entirely, which is that there's a maintenance cost to perpetuity. It's just placed somewhere else in this case.

⬐ deadbeeves

Elite Dangerous has a multiplayer mode, but also a single player mode. Single player is single player, there's no reason to be connected, other than to make sure the player has not done something naughty with their copy.

>No, you're missing my point entirely, which is that there's a maintenance cost to perpetuity. It's just placed somewhere else in this case.

And what you're missing is that "perpetuity" is a lie. In practice most online games don't even to ten years before the developers shut their servers down permanently. If you really love Elite and you think it's the best game ever, you can take measures to continue playing it today, 38 years after it came out. Do you think Elite Dangerous will continue being profitable for another 30 years?

⬐ hedgewitch

> And what you're missing is that "perpetuity" is a lie.

You are now actively misrepresenting my point, which was that someone is going to have to reverse engineer something in order to maintain software. Disks don't last forever. They rot. Your copy of whatever in your PS2 for 30 years will potentially not come out unscathed. Other media has its own issues. PC games from that era simultaneously are getting harder to run and have their own DRMs that need removed.

Emulators are the only future-proof solution and they will undoubtedly need to be ported to new architectures in the future. The maintenance cost is somewhere. In this case, it's in removing ore reverse engineering the online-only components. You don't even have to reverse engineer everything - just enough to get it running. Look at Teknoparrot. Multiple games only barely work because they don't emulate the entire multiplayer backend.

This isn't an insurmountable task and you weren't about to be the one writing a PS2 emulator, so I'm not sure why you're so insistent that it's different. For you, anyways.

⬐ deadbeeves

Yes, all physical objects degrade with time. Different pieces of software can change in incompatible ways. This is all well-known. That doesn't change the fact that if the only way your property can stop functioning is if it breaks down at the software or hardware level, it will likely continue working for a longer time than if it additionally needs someone else to continue powering a server somewhere.

Signed binaries use will come into being with trusted computing, they are embedding Denuvo in the operating system, aka future compilers will allow game companies and companies like autodesk to sign their exe's and the exe's if cracked can be added to a list that windows 11 can force update the bios to add these cracked exes to a list that will refuse to run.

That's the gist of trusted computing they are building an alternative internet/mainframe computer inside yours that they only have access to.

Where have you been the last 23+ years? The videogame industry has been stealing PC games since 1997 with ultima online. Hear it from the dev's themselves.

Don't think MMO's killed local PC games? Listen here kids.

https://youtu.be/lnnsDi7Sxq0?t=1134

EA killed ultima 9 when the UO beta got massive interest, that lead to the death of PC games as local applications, the industry from then on there was a massive war to back end all PC games, they couldn't immediately do that to quake and urneal because we'd been treated too good with Warcraft 1-3, Descent 1-3, Quake 1-3, and build engine games like Duke 3d. The entire industry has always wanted to kill piracy and Ultima online gave the entire industry the go ahead once they realized that many of our fellow programmers and gamers were irrationally stupid beyond their wildest dreams.

Anyone playing quake and Descent at the time fear the loss of dedicated servers and level editors which used to come with the games, we knew if Ultima online was successful that Publishers would want to back end every fucking PC game and that's the end of the personal computer and the return of IBM and mainframe computing.

"Signed exe's" and trusted computing is the return of mainframe computing of the 60's in new bullshit language but I don't expect the mmo/steam generation to do anything but froth at the mouth. When they were the ones killing gaming and gave birth to microtransactions.

You can't put MTX in diablo 1, warcraft 1-3, or starcraft 1 because they are local applications that run entirely from your pc. None of the code has been stolen out of the game carved back behind a user account and login requirement. Like with most PC games these days.

We're losing gaming history and generation mmo is to blame for their general cluelessness of the evil of mainframe computing.

Fun fact: the word "shard" in this context was coined by the dev team of the first major commercial MMO, Ultima Online, as an in-universe explanation for why the game world was split into multiple servers.

If you're looking for an exemplary server architecture for MMOs, look no further than UO. That game came out in 1997 and supported worlds with thousands of players and millions of persistent objects. Players could build their own houses within the game world, decorate (and later design) them to an incredible degree [1], and have other players visit (welcome or not). Players could run their own shops within their homes and sell their own hand-crafted, signed goods (weapons, armour, clothing, furniture) in addition to any found treasure they wanted to offer.

What made UO so impressive, technically, was how they accomplished all of this on such modest hardware as was available in 1995 [2]. This second link is to the GDC postmortem of the game. If you're interested, I recommend you check it out. It may not answer all your technical questions but it's extremely interesting nonetheless. The story of how they had to shard the game is part of the talk.

I'm pretty sure they did not use any off-the-shelf databases as the performance would have been terrible at the time. Everything would have been custom. The custom networking protocol is extremely reserved (not chatty), since it was designed for dial-up modems. Even when you run the game on modern hardware with broadband, the game uses on the order of a few megabytes per day of traffic.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uo+house+decoration&t=osx&iax=imag...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnsDi7Sxq0

⬐ scott_s

I have heard Richard Garriott claim credit for coining "shard," and I'm very skeptical. The first database paper I could find that uses "shard" (as an acronym: System for Highly Available Replicated DAta) is from 1986: https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/889956

⬐ teraflop

Those authors may have been first, but I seriously doubt they were a significant influence on the term's popularity. If there's one thing I've learned from reading a lot of CS papers, it's that pretty much any word you pick out of a hat has been used as an acronym by somebody.

The paper you link to doesn't use "shard" as a noun, and in fact it doesn't describe a system that has "shards" in the sense that UO and just about everyone else since then has understood that term, i.e. independent partitions of a dataset:

> The reader is referred to [SBK] for a detailed description of the architecture of the SHARD system. Briefly, the main ideas are as follows. The network consists of a collection of nodes, each of which has a copy of the complete database.

(emphasis mine)

Additionally, according to Google Scholar, that paper was only ever cited 21 times. I checked the 16 of those citations for which full-text is available, and not a single one of them used the word "shard" as anything other than a passing reference to the name of the system itself.

⬐ throwaway894345

Welp, looks like I'll be going down this rabbit hole all weekend. Thanks!

⬐ winrid

Oh this is cool. Thanks.

⬐ onlyrealcuzzo

According to WikiPedia, it does say that Ultima really did influence the use of "sharding" as a term in databases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shard_(database_architecture).

I was the original lead designer on Ultima Online and the key designer of this system. A few notes, because this article has MANY inaccuracies.

1. Ultima Online wasn't even in development for three years total. An early prototype was February to September 1995, done by Rick Delashmit. Starting late August and early September 1995, the core team showed up. We showed the game at E3 in spring of 1996 in alpha form. We showed it in beta form at E3 in the spring of 1997. And we launched on Sept 26th, 1997. The ecology was in the alpha test, and was removed during the beta after being rewritten by an engineer who didn't really like or understand it.

2. "Not many players know about" this is false. The strategy guide published simultaneously with the game even lists all the resource values for how much meat, hide, feathers, whatever, each creature represented. All of those statistics remained in the game and still are there to this day twenty years later. What was disabled was the AI. The values are still used by crafting, harvesting, and lots of other systems in the game.

3. Said AI is exhaustively documented on my website here: https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uos-resource-system/ (first article, there is a sidebar with links to the follow-ons) and also collected in my recent book POSTMORTEMS, which has a huge pile of historical info on Ultima Online as well as Star Wars Galaxies and other games I've worked on.

4. The reason the AI was disabled had nothing to do with why the ecology collapsed. The AI was disabled because of the cost of doing radial searches followed by pathfinding. "The way players fit into this equation was that the they would embark on quests to kill the carnivorous animals and the pelts that they gained from those quests would be worth more than those gained from the herbivores" doesn't make any sense. :)

5. The ecology collapsed for a different reason: we had a closed economy loop at first, where everything was spawned from a fixed resource pool. It fell victim to player hoarding: when players killed sheep, they then made zillions of shirts from the wool to grind crafting advancement. Then they hoarded them or sold them very slowly. The result was the central bank ran out of wool, and then couldn't spawn more sheep. This is documented in one of the earliest detailed analyses of MMO economies, Zach Simpson's "In-Game Economics of Ultima Online," a very influential piece which led to the widespread use of the term "faucet-drain economy" in online game design. See https://web.archive.org/web/20020730225856/https://www.mine-...

6. "This problem is also what spawned multiple instances of servers (or as they called them, “shards”) that people know and recognize from most MMOs today." This is not why we ended up with shards, either. UO was originally designed for a concurrency around 250, much like Meridian 59 and other MUD heirs of the day. Its original lifetime forecast was only 30000 or so units, but we knew from early on we'd need multiple servers, even at that population count. Meridian 59 launched with a whole bunch of them, for example. After we got 50000 tester sign-ups, we were asked to hugely increase server size, which led to Rick inventing a server boundary mirroring technology we called "multiserver," which allowed the map load to be shared across clusters of machines. The entire game was then rearchitected for that in between 1996 and 1997. The term shards came from the fiction of earlier Ultimas, see https://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/08/database-sharding-came...

7. "At the time when 3D graphics cards were new" -- they were nonexistent when we started.

8. The source for the article is a more accurate video at Ars Technica, which has war stories from Richard Garriott. But Richard's memory is, alas, faulty on some of these finer details.

9. There are some great Quora answers on the tech stack for the game and whatnot which have been on HN before, but if you're interested, you may want to check them out.

I will say, it's awesome and flattering and super cool that so many people still harbor so much affection and so many memories from this game. I was around 25 when I was leading design on it, and the early days when we were doing the impossible are still some of the fondest memories of my career. For lots more war stories, do check out either the book, my site, or this postmortem presented at GDC for the game's 20th anniversary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnsDi7Sxq0

⬐ supernintendo

Thank you for everything Raph! You are a truly a pioneer. A few questions which I’d love to get your response on, although no pressure:

1. How much of an influence were past Ultima games on UO? The game engine itself resembles Ultima VIII, was any of the code from that game reused?

2. Whatever happened to Ultima Online 2?

⬐ Raph_Koster

1. Lots of lore and whatnot. More than people give credit for, actually.

1a. The prototype was actually based on U6's rendering engine, not U8.

2. Far too long a story. UO2 was a bit of a mess technologically, IMHO. EA disliked Origin in general. UO continued to do well and the question of why have a sequel came up. And more. But I left OSI before it was killed so can't say for sure.

⬐ joelx

Thank you for building this wonderful game! Helped me through a very hard time in my life when it came out. It also helped suck me into what I do today (started a web dev company that now has 130 FT team members).

⬐ sologoub

Just want to say a huge THANK YOU for your work on UO!!!

⬐ Raph_Koster

You're welcome!

⬐ debaserab2

Hi Raph, I don't normally do the fanboy thing, but you are an idol to me. 12-year old me grew up reading your UO patch updates regularly. When I found your personal blog a few years ago I think I spent a week straight reading through it.

UO remains the only MMORPG that I have ever played that felt like a truly immersive virtual world. It ruined all MMO's that came after it for me. I played the WoW beta for about two weeks before the grind became apparent and I lost interest. Who the hell cares about only completing pre-made quests? In ultima, you defined your own adventure, and if you succeeded in it your fame could actually be known among players on your shard and not just a mechanic of the game's code. To me, this sets the benchmark to what an MMO is supposed to be.

There's also a slightly darker/mischievous part to my experience with UO: Macroing (the act of automating your character via third party programs) really introduced me to the world of programming. At first it was using point and click step-by-step UI recording software, but after a few years I had a fully fledged ore mining bot that could even do things like respond to a red name appearing on the screen by recalling to a safe house programmed in an actual turing complete language. Although I'm sure that had to be a pretty big pain point for you, I'm not sure I'd have a career as a software engineer if that hadn't happen.

⬐ Raph_Koster

You're welcome, I guess. Assuming you like your career.

I'm loving this UO talk, I just found this Postmortem by GDC published in Sep 2018 (so I think it's new? I've never seen it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnsDi7Sxq0

This is a much watch if MMOs fascinate you. They're very transparent. Absolutely great video.

edit: Oh my god they bring up FlyGuys prostitution ring..