[Subtitles by danielsangeo] Hey, welcome to the Game Dungeon. Today, we've got a special
episode: BattleForge! BattleForge is a card-based
online real-time strategy game. Now this episode is full of surprises. If you've played BattleForge, you
probably know what the surprise is, but hey, I've got a surprise for you, too. All right, "piggybackbandit", that's me. Okay, so you log in and
the way this game works is you build your own army roster
from these cards, then go to war with what you've selected. In between battles, you can test out
how your units perform in this arena area. It plays like a normal RTS game,
but there are some distinctions. Anyway, once you have your roster,
you go to the world map area here and select your mission. The way the levels work is there
are multiple campaigns you can start with different storylines to them, but since this is an online game,
some of the missions are solo, others are for two-, four- or
twelve-players. I'll come back to that. Once you select your level then
you head into the game. I will say these loading screens
are all awesome. Even if you don't plan on
playing this game, you might want to check out the
wiki page to take a look. Some of these I'd want to
print out and put on my wall. Okay, once you're in the game,
it varies what you're supposed to do. In most cases, your ultimate
objective is to obliterate the enemy. Just the way I like it,
but there'll be variations. Like, you'll have to rescue civilians,
or clear the way for an ally on the run, or use teleporters to hop
between islands, so they keep things
pretty fresh in that regard. Now, a key part of this game is you have to
capture these Monuments and Power Wells. These are your resource generators. The more of them you get, the better
cards you can unlock in your arsenal. So, if you want a
big ass giant on the field, you're going to need to capture
more of these than just some... birds... KAW! Now, I haven't played every RTS
out there so I could be missing one, but I want to say, these
gameplay mechanics are unique. The closest thing I've seen to picking
your own roster before the battle is Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, but BattleForge takes that further because,
not only can you spawn in units anywhere, but you can use your resources
to cast spells, too. That, combined with a custom loadout, I think adds a ton of potential
depth to the gameplay since you can really tailor the game
to your play style IF you have the cards. But, that's a big "if".
I'll come back to that. Now, the game does have a story and I'd say it's somewhere in-between
minimal and something fleshed out. On some levels, you have these
hero characters delivering dialog, but they don't really delve into
ingame cutscenes or something like that. Like in this level, this... nature woman
is freezing the enemies coming at you to get more of an edge. Then later, she gets
corrupted by the Soultree. Honestly, I didn't find the
story that engaging, but I appreciate having SOMETHING
to keep me going through the levels. It's really rare that the story
in a fantasy game impresses me, so I'm usually getting drawn in either
by the gameplay or the environments. And BattleForge does a
pretty good job on those, but hey, if you want more story,
they cram some in. After you beat each level, you
unlock portions of the lore book. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like some fantasy fans
will read ANYTHING as long as it's long. Like, it can be extremely dry, like what grain of wood the
elves prefer for their toothpicks, but as long as there's a
lot of it, they'll eat it up. So, if that sounds like you, check out
the BattleForge story. You can do worse. Now, about the next-- SURPRISE! You thought I wasn't going to talk
about the Piggyback Bandit, didn't you? OF COURSE I'm going to talk
about the Piggyback Bandit. For those wondering, I'm not the
actual Piggyback Bandit, but he's a personal hero of mine that I was
inspired by when making my screen name. The real Piggyback Bandit is
Sherwin Shayegan, a man who is on a mission to go
to high school sporting events and find ways to get athletes to
give him piggyback rides. ["A strange man has been showing
up at high school sporting events ["making friends with student athletes
and then asking for piggyback rides."] ["Because he's known for jumping
on the backs of players. ["The Piggyback Bandit is
actually banned now in five states--"] ["He jumped on an unsuspecting
player for a piggyback ride."] This guy is so motivated. He has an arsenal of different
techniques of making this happen. Sometimes, he pretends to be a
student reporter interviewing the team, sometimes, he's a team manager,
a trainer, or acting mentally disabled... ["At some of our tournaments last month,
he did talk his way into the locker room, ["he did interview players, he did have
his picture taken, he did get autographs, ["and he did go out into the parking lot
and get a piggyback ride from--"] Have you ever seen that movie
"Catch Me If You Can"? Well, Sherwin is the world's
greatest con-man of tricking people into giving
him piggyback rides. He's heavy, too. 250 pounds.
I guess that's why he targets athletes. ["He took me in front
of the door, and then, uh... ["he said, for the picture that
he wanted to get on my back ["and I was like, okay,
that's fine, I guess.."] ["Once he jumped on my back, it
just got a little weird..."] ["I found it extremely strange. ["When I heard about, I had to
listen to it twice, because, um, I'd--y'know, ["it was the weirdest thing
I'd ever heard."] Anyway, I am in awe of this man
and I admire his determination. Now, I first heard about him in
2012, but he is still at large. He was arrested in December of 2014, but something tells me this won't be the
last sporting event he sneaks his way into. I wish him nothing but
a long and fruitful career. ["They have alerted all area
high schools and colleges ["just in case the Piggyback
Bandit shows up again."] Okay, back to the gameplay. There's one huge element left to
this that affects everything. This game came out in
March of 2009 and was $50 new, but lo and behold, two months
later, Electronic Arts decided, "Hey, let's make this game free-to-play "since we already got the bulk of
our money from people buying it new." So, BattleForge is now free-to-play. I'm all for free games, but, wow!
That has to suck for the early adopters. This is actually EA's first
free-to-play game. And speaking of firsts, a bit of trivia: BattleForge is also the first
DirectX 11 game. It does look nice. Now that being said, I think this game is actually a natural fit for
the free-to-play model because you're given
a starter deck of cards, but you have to pay money to get more. You CAN get new ones with ingame
coins without having to spend money but it would take a ridiculous amount of
grinding to get a deck that way. In the entire time I played, I think
I only "bought" two or three that way. Anyway, there is a hint of the
pay-to-win factor going on here, since most cards would be balanced for
how many magic power levels they require, but there will be others that are CLEARLY better than 95%
of all other cards at that level. This wasn't that big
a deal to me personally, but I think it means, if you
want to play competitively, you would need to fork out some
real cash to be in the running. Yeah, it's worth mentioning I
didn't play the PvP for this review since I was just interested in
it more as a single-player game. Let's talk about the single-player. You have ten single-player maps
and they're all a semi-decent experience. But, if you're like me, you're thinking,
"Hey, I want to play those other maps, too." Well, guess what? This game lets you play the other maps
whether you have the players to or not. Now, I guess I'm bragging here, but I managed
to beat the two-player maps by myself and I managed to beat a couple
of the FOUR-player maps on my own. So, according to this game,
under certain conditions, I'm as good as four normal RTS
players. That's an ego boost, I admit. I didn't get it on video, but
here's screenshot proof of one victory, even though this totally looks
like something you could Photoshop. But, hey, I did get THIS one on video. Four-player map solo! Yeah! Now, I didn't attempt the twelve-player
maps by myself because I'm not Korean, but I feel like I got about as far as you
can in this game for just one person. Now, I have to say, despite me
being proud of my RTS skill, I feel like these multiplayer
maps are totally artificial. If they had just given me
some braindead AI allies, that would've made this so much easier and I could even attempt the
twelve-player maps then. In my opinion, there's no reason
this couldn't ALSO be a single-player game in addition to multiplayer,
but that's online games for you. Finally, let's talk about the music. [epic orchestral music] [slower orchestral music] It's very competent. Like, it
didn't blow me away or anything, but it has a couple memorable themes. Definitely a traditional
orchestra style so, if that's your thing,
you might want to check it out. So, that's BattleForge, a decent colorful RTS with deep
gameplay and a few minor annoyances. I guess that about wraps this up. Stay tuned for the next episode which w-- Oh wait! I almost forgot! The surprise! You like surprises? Well what do
you think of this one? This game is dead. Now, I don't mean all the servers are empty
and you can't find someone to play with, you have to HAVE servers for them to be empty. I mean, if you haven't already,
you're NEVER going to play this game. In 2013, FOUR YEARS after the
game was released, Electronic Arts decided enough was
enough and pulled the plug on BattleForge and it has been stone-cold dead ever since. If you've watched my videos, you know I've complained about games
that depend on a central server before. This is why. BattleForge is the poster child of what awaits every game with
an online-only requirement. Now, you might be wondering,
"Wait a minute, Ross, "if this game is dead,
how'd you make this video?" Well, I figured this topic
was so important, I needed to fire up the old time
machine for this one. Now, the obvious question is,
"Well, why don't you just use the time machine "when you want to play old games?" Listen, I don't like using this thing. It trips the circuit breaker,
it causes nosebleeds, headaches, if I change too many things,
I can't come back... This is NOT a solution, all right? Guys, I think this is THE
biggest issue in gaming today. A lot of gaming "controversies"
I think don't matter that much. Meanwhile, companies like EA are murdering
games quietly like a fucking serial killer. I mean, if you're a gamer, that's the
biggest sin a company can commit. Crappy DLC, microtransactions,
buggy releases... that stuff doesn't seem so important
next to just killing the whole game, huh? I'm reminded of words from
someone more famous than myself: ["Now, what's the most important
aspect about any game? ["Well, being able to fucking play it."] I agree. This is the most
fundamental concept of gaming, and it pisses me off when I hear
arguments about online games that just act like this doesn't exist. Like, I've heard people say, "Well, the benefits of online-only
games outweigh the inconveniences." No! You sound like a retard saying
that when your game dies forever! Tell me how awesome your game is
when no one can ever play it again! Now, don't misunderstand me. I am NOT saying online-only games
are bad or shouldn't be made. I'm saying making those game
with NO plan for when they go down makes your company shitbaggers. If I sound bitter about this, well, I am, because this is happening more
and more in the industry. And I feel kind of helpless to stop it. In the movie "Krull", there's a
cyclops that can see into the future and know what his own death will be. Well, that's me, except with games. I see all these games that are going to
die forever and it's entirely preventable. This is insanely preventable. Like, imagine a new custom
started creeping into our culture where, about every 10 years,
you cut off one of your fingers. Then people would take the chopped
fingers and feed them to the birds. And over time, this starts becoming
very common, socially accepted. It becomes so normal, most people just
don't even think about it anymore. And journalists might write articles about
how we NEED to chop off the fingers or the birds will die, Or maybe people will debate if
we should just do it every 15 years, but even that kind of discussion is rare. But you might be part of a
minority thinking, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't do this? "Maybe we could just NOT chop off our
fingers and buy some birdseed instead? "Or, hey, maybe just not even worry about
the birds. Let them fend for themselves "and STILL not chop off
our fucking fingers?" And you say this to people,
but the culture is so different that they just think you're
just some old kook who "still cares about
all his fingers. Weirdo." Now, I'm an extremist. I think even
cutting off ONE finger is too many, so my message probably won't get through. But, to anyone watching this, I feel like WAY too many people
are getting brainwashed by the industry. So, I REALLY want to clear this up. Guys, let me to tell you something: video games are not cock fights. It's not inevitable that
some of them have to die. There's no legitimate reason
ANY game needs to die. Now, I know some of you are saying, "Whoa,
Ross. These games were designed to be online. "It's impossible to keep them
going once the central server goes down. "That's just the way it has to be." That answer is complete horseshit on every
single level and I'm going to explain why. See, there's two basic
classes of "online-only games". The first category of games
require an online connection, except they don't, really. All the game data is there. The online portion is just like a
locked gate to get into the game. These are the kinds that pirate
groups usually crack and rip out. If you ever have problems with a game like
that, go to the site: gamecopyworld.com. I go here all the time. This is NOT a
pirate site. It only has cracks for games. You should never feel bad about
removing DRM from a game you already own. What if your Internet goes down? What if a
patch gets released that breaks the game? What if the game's server shuts down? Well, thanks to these cracks,
you can still play your game. When I talk about online-only games,
I generally don't mean types like this because the fixes exist right now. So, it is a problem in theory,
but not so much in practice. AW YEAH! HERE COMES BIG SANTA! Now, the second class of
online-only games are not kidding. BattleForge, most MMORPGs... When I hear about games dying, I
get sick of idiots that come in and say, "Well, time to pirate." or
"Piracy will save us." Piracy does jack shit for these games. That's because they store crucial
components of the game on servers so when they shut down, you have
a lobotomized vegetable. The only way these games
come back from the dead is if they psychotically devoted
fanbases that ALSO contain a
couple geniuses who figure out how to reverse-engineer
the server software. That's insanely difficult. That's like throwing somebody in
a junkyard with a welding torch and telling them to go build a Ferrari. Now, MEGA popular games
are generally safe, because they have a critical mass where somebody is going to get that
back up and running if it goes down. Some fans don't even wait. EVE Online is a game that's seen
over 50,000 players all on one server. It's very buggy, but I've read
about a working emulator for THAT game. So, if we can emulate EVE Online,
we can emulate anything. But for any online game that's
not REALLY popular, like BattleForge, we're executing games. ["What's the most important
aspect about any fucking game? ["Well, being able to fucking play it."] Now, it's best if a company plans for
this situation from the beginning, but even if they don't,
they have options. Sell the property-- Now this one rarely happens
but it's not unheard of. But, really, that just passes
the buck to the next company so that doesn't really count. Patch the game-- Now this one is more work, and I understand may not be
realistic for a lot of situations. But, if it is, that's a way to keep selling
the game and make smaller profits without the ongoing cost of a server. Release the source code-- Hey, the fanbase will have an
emulator up in no time if you do this. The company doesn't
have to support anything. There's basically no cost to that. Now, earlier, I said I'm not
against online-only games, but man, the industry is not
making it easy on me. That's because about 99% of game companies
that have had to shut down a central server go with the final option: Go fuck yourself-- This is my least favorite option but
game companies pick this one so reliably. Like, if you give a panhandler a
whiskey bottle, will he take a sip? It's THAT level of reliability. I really wish "Go fuck yourself" wasn't
the industry-standard for online games. But "Go fuck yourself" is so
ingrained in the culture now. Like, sometimes it feels
impolite or naΔ«ve to seriously suggest that we
shouldn't be fucked. You're only supposed to mention
casually that you don't want to be fucked. Just make it a passing comment. Like there's a weird etiquette
we're supposed to be following for a prison-rape tea party. If I had any sort of influence,
I would make this illegal. If your company took money from
people for an online-only game and then you kill it, either patch it to
keep running without your server or release the source code. I mean, that's why laws get created. Somebody does something that
everybody agrees is being a colossal dick that wasn't covered under the
old rules so we make some new ones. Now, you might also be saying,
"Ross, you're being unrealistic. "You'll never be able to get the same
experience as a big MMO on private servers." And, yes, you're right. But the comparison is between a
less-functional game versus nothing. It's the difference between
putting grandpa in a wheelchair or taking him out back and
shooting him in the head. "WUUAAA--!" [gunshot] The only, ONLY reason we kill
games-- you know why? It's because some fuckwad manager,
usually the publisher, orders it this way. That's it. Any other argument is
just the brainwashing talking. You can't be a gamer
and support killing games unless you're willing to burn every game
you own older than four-years, because that's the principle here. And while you're at it, destroy every movie
and book you like older than four-years also. I mean this is some dystopian shit here. Maybe if you're like that "Memento" guy
and literally have no long-term memory, this stuff might make sense, but then old games
would be like new to you. Now this issue is bigger than EA, but EA is such a leader at
killing fingers-- I mean, games. I was going to make a list of
all the games EA has killed, but it turns out the list was so
huge on their website, why bother? This doesn't even include all of
them anyway. Now, a lot of these are Facebook
or mobile games that I'm not into myself, but these are canaries in the coal mine. For me, BattleForge was the first game
to die that I personally was interested in. I don't think it's the greatest
game I've ever played, but it was pretty decent and I would
be pissed if I never got a chance to play it. This is going to keep happening and
eventually they're going to come for YOU and a game YOU care about it. That's what you should think of every
time you see "Online Connection Required". Now, this video is going up
on a special day: July 14th. That's because, in case you thought
Andrew Wilson meant what he said and was turning EA around, making
them not evil, not a bad company, well, he's doing a heck of a job,
because four more games are dying TODAY! And, to make it better, if you hadn't
already signed up to play these games, you were locked out months ago. They gave no warning on any of this. Well, I can't speak for most of these, but I
was signed up for "Need for Speed: World". So, SURPRISE! We're going into
overtime! Double review! [music] Now this isn't going to be a
very thorough review. After all, the clock is ticking! Need for Speed: World has reached
a ripe old age of five years before dying so it managed to beat out BattleForge. You know how some games don't
have an ending? You have to decide for yourself
when you're done? Well, now you know when you're done!
Whether you are or not! Anyway, people who play driving
games care about different things. Some people want to see licensed cars
they know, or really accurate physics, or arcade powerups... Well, for me, it's all about the environments. I like places that are interesting to look
at while you're driving through them. And Need for Speed: World
has stuff to look at. The game is actually a combination of the
open-world maps of "Need for Speed: Carbon" and "Need for Speed: Most Wanted" so I cannot complain about the size. Now, I haven't played
Need for Speed: Carbon, but I have played Need for
Speed: Most Wanted. So, I'll be making some comparisons
to that since it's inevitable. All right! Let's get going! Now, my first impression of this
game is... it's hideous! Now, this probably bugs me more
than most, but look at this filter. It's this nasty teal-gray
smeared over everything. I'm normally pretty forgiving
about a game's graphics, but that's for things like model fidelity,
texture quality, stuff like that. Tinting the hell out of your image
is a huge pet peeve of mine. You have to figure, thousands of hours
went into fleshing out an environment like this to make it look as good as possible, so let's finish it off to add a
nasty filter you can't turn off to make everything look like shit. Am I just the weird one here
and most people like this look? It's okay. You can tell me. I've heard some people say that
tinting is to influence the mood. But one, I think it STILL looks like shit. If you want to set a mood, use
lighting, not some cheap-ass tint filter. And two, is this really the mood
we want for an arcade racing game? Is my driver supposed to be
depressed and wants to kill himself? I can see where this filter might
make sense if this was a ghost story. WooOOOooOOOOooo! Why not just make the lighting believable? But, to be fair, Need for Speed:
Most Wanted is almost as bad. By default, that game has this
nasty nicotine-yellow look. Again, why the fuck did they do this? This looks like if you left your camera lens lying around in a smoker's
lounge for a few months. And not a classy lounge with
fancy people smoking cigars, but some rundown slum where people are
missing teeth, there are stains on the wall... I don't get it. I honestly do not get it. Why you would purposefully do
this to your game is beyond me. Now, in Most Wanted, you can
turn off the more extreme effects. There's still some yellow
residue or something with it off, but it's not quite the
nightmare it was earlier. Now, in World, you have to bring
the settings all the way down to "low" before the filter will turn off. Again, it looks better, though not good. This is more the developers not
knowing what color the sun is. Another thing I noticed is steering
with the analog controls feels delayed and kind of unresponsive. Now, it's entirely possible this
is just a problem on my end, however, I did NOT have this
problem in Most Wanted. I ended up using the keyboard to
steer, it was that bad. I'm just going to blame it on the game. After all, it's not like anyone
can verify what I'm saying. In fact, unless somebody else
has a time machine, this is the last review of this
game there's going to be. As for the gameplay itself, they
have races, you can run from the cops... I enjoyed these scavenger hunt missions. Anyway, who cares? It's not
like you're going to play this. I do find it kind of funny that this game is merging the two fictional cities
from Carbon and Most Wanted. Palmont, I think, looks more
like southern California, whereas Rockport looks more
like the Pacific Northwest. So, you can go from
palm trees and arid dirt to deciduous and evergreen trees
in just a few moments. That doesn't seem to
blend so well to me. Now the developers actually did more
than just copy and paste the assets. They updated some of the textures
and fleshed out some more details. Like this carnival area looks MUCH
more alive than it does in Most Wanted. I also read that it took them a lot of
work to modify the assets from Carbon to look good in the day since
Carbon takes place entirely at night and Most Wanted takes
places entirely in the day. So, this is the last time we'll see the
sun rise in Palmont or night fall in Rockport. While they do like to go
crazy with the lens flare, the game actually looks
a lot better at night. The evenings can look pretty
good, too, IF that tint filter is off. So, I guess we can only conclude
that the art directors were vampires since these are the only times
of day they have any experience with. The game does have some issues. Like, at one point, after a cop chase, I could not for the life of me get out of menu
where they were pushing me to buy something. I clicked on everything and hit
every key I could think of. I had to forcibly quit the whole
game just to play it again. Also, while making this video, Origin decided to poll me about
my opinion of the game. I gave it high marks. After all, I want
it to look good for its execution. Honestly, this strikes me as the
sort of game that's ideal for modding since you have all these assets available,
but not a whole lot of substance. Like, if they had released a map
editor so I could drive in user-made cities using these assets, I would play
the hell out of this game. Look! It's like a real strip mall! As for the music, there isn't
much of it, but it's not bad, though it's kind of dark and
moody while you're driving around. So that, combined with
the default lighting, makes me think this might be the most
depressing racing game I've ever played. Again, why? All right, I know this
video is getting long, but it's not like I'm going to have
another chance to cover these games. So, there's one more thing we have to
look at in Need for Speed before we go: the ads! That's right. They changed a bunch
of ads between this and Most Wanted. Now Most Wanted has a bunch of sponsors: Burger King, AutoZone, Cingular,
Axe Body Spray and Edge Shaving Cream. Need for Speed: World has T-Mobile...
and that's about it. Their fake ads aren't as good, either. Not only are the Burger King ads gone, the Burger King itself has been
replaced by a generic chicken place. You'd think it'd be the other way around. T-Mart? Screw that!
Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart! The movies playing seem to be a little
better than what was showing in 2005 and the fish market is now EVERY DAY! We cannot contain the magic of the
Fish Festival to just one week in August. But, let's face it. This place just isn't the same without
Robo's! Health & Hip Hop Centers. So, that's Need for Speed: World, a Frankenstein's monster of
older Need for Speed games that's both better and
worse than the originals. Thankfully, its death won't be
a complete tragedy since we can still play the old
games with the same maps, but, man, it still feels senseless and there's some potential
locked away in here. Y'know, I talk a lot of shit about EA, but
I will say they are the masters of irony. As Need for Speed: World is
being lowered into the grave, EA has already announced the
next game, "Need for Speed", will have an online-only requirement. What I think about that name aside, that
shows EA is not losing any momentum. In the future, expect more and
more games to be murdered like this. Y'know, in another video, I mentioned
"The Crew" and I did some more research and somebody else brought up my
exact same concern about the servers dying. Well, a representative of
Ubisoft responded. Look at their reply: "that is still a long way out and not
something I think that has been thought of yet." Jesus Christ! What a perfect quote! That statement sums up everything. Every company that does this
should take that quote, engrave it in stone, and put it under
a fucking statue outside their building because that's how gamers of
the future will remember us. As for Need for Speed: World,
I looked at some comments and the general consensus about
these four games dying today were that they suck, so who cares? Well, tell that to BattleForge fans. I thought BattleForge was decent
but some people loved this game. "From the first time I tried it out, "it felt quite different from
everything I played thus far... "There is a huge amount of effort and
love placed within Battleforge. It shows. "...you guys at Phenomic created
a next gen strategy game." "Best game i have EVER play
will go into the trash." "Been the funnest game
I've played like, ever." "This is to much for me.
BattleForge is going to retire. "New Command & Conquer canceled...
Age of Empire Online dead as well. "All new rts titles I have touched
and liked died. I want to cry." "Damn I feel like a person I know very well
and are close to is going to die in a month." "I am not leaving battleforge,
it is leaving us." All right! Awards time! First award-- It's Dead.
You're not playing these games. Second award-- They Killed It.
This was not a natural death. EA pulled the fucking trigger. And the final award--
They Will Kill Again. There's going to be a generation of
games no one can ever going to play again. We are just getting started, guys. So, what can we do about this? I hate to be a downer, but I don't
know if we can do anything. The only two solutions I can see
are to pass laws to make this practice illegal, or create a climate among gamers
and the press that's so openly hostile to it that it would be a liability for
the companies involved. I doubt either one will happen, so this episode is mostly just a
lament of dead games. This is my message to the industry
asking them to stop killing games, even though I know they won't. Anyway. The next episode I
promise will be less bitter and on a game you can still play! Fuck. [music] [car engines roaring]
The video has a very interesting discussion on games dying off due to having vital online/server components that just get killed off with no recourse for the consumer. A bit hyperbolic at times, but Ross brings up a lot of valid and interesting points. It truly is a lamentable practice.
I agree wholeheartedly with him.
One issue with "releasing the source-code" is that companies often don't have the license to redistribute the middleware and frameworks that they use in their software.
Back when Ross was doing Freeman's Mind, I felt that Game Dungeon was kind of unnecessary and trying too hard, and Ross should do more FM instead. Now I love it just as much as FM, and have more trust in Ross's choice of projects. He really goes the extra mile, like reviewing a game that no one's ever played (Bip Bop 3), or using an actual time machine (in this video), etc.
Good news for Battleforge fans, Battleforge Reborn is in the works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kOP8GHejsY
Another great video from Ross, it's always nice to watch a video from someone that cares so much about games.
Damn, I absolutely loved Battleforge back when it came out. No kidding, it's one of my favorite RTS. It's probably the first game where I actually bought micro-transactions. We opened the card packs together with friends, I remember the excitement as you got near the end of the pack where the rarer cards were.
I'm getting so nostalgic about the game right now. I instantly wanna go play it, maybe see if I can remember my account. But I can't... :(
This video needs to be seen. I don't want to live in a generation were have the games have been killed.
...So how about that Piggyback Bandit, eh?
TL;DR: It's hard to open source games (it's not just a stupid manager decision), and this doesn't personally affect me a lot. But we should still fix this.
There is a problem here: For a long time, games have had all sorts of middleware. Need for Speed World reportedly uses the same engine as Carbon, which is apparently a thing called EAGL -- so EA actually owns that, they could release that much, but it could've just as easily been Unreal or Source or some other licensed engine. You can't just release the source code to a major engine without permission from that engine's developer.
And that's just the engine, there's all kinds of other stuff. The game GUI is apparently programmed in Flash, for example -- so they'd need Adobe's permission. Many games use PhysX and Havok for physics. A lot of games generate trees with SpeedTree -- probably fine if it just outputs trees that get imported into the map, but if there's a runtime component, you need permission to release that. There's integration with whatever platform you release on, like Steam, Xbox Live, etc.
This is a Good Thing! Games would be much more expensive to make without all this. How many indie games would we miss out on if not for Unity, for example? For every online game killed this way, there's a game that wouldn't have been made at all without middleware. (And what's the most important thing about a game?)
But it means that if you licensed a bunch of third-party code, then when it's time to shut down the servers, it's not up to you whether to release your code.
There are other reasons companies might not want to release the source code to a game, like the fact that they can re-use much of that code in a new game that they might not be ready to set free yet. But without the middleware on board, this isn't even an option when a company is straight-up going bankrupt.
I only really see two possible solutions here:
Option one is a massive culture shift, like you talk about -- if publishers have enough incentive to plan for this sort of thing, they'll put pressure on middleware companies to make sure their licenses allow games to be open-sourced. We're part of the way there -- anyone can download the full source to Unreal Engine 4, for free, you only have to pay once you make your first $3k in a single quarter. I'll bet a big publisher could work out a deal with Epic to make sure that applies to abandoned games, too -- if you stop selling your game, you should be allowed to release it, Unreal source and all.
Option two is to shift at least some of the cost back to customers before the game is killed. Like the good old days where you could start your own dedicated multiplayer server. The old, pre-Steam Counter-Strike require way less resources to keep alive -- there were the WON servers that basically just had a list of actual Counter-Strike servers you could connect to. And even when Valve turned those down, it was still possible to play the game -- you just had to connect directly to someone's server, by IP address or domain name. You could, say, set up a subreddit where people can share server addresses.
This is way harder to do with large modern games. They're more services than servers -- there isn't just one program you can just give to the community that they can set up and run, there's dozens of services. And middleware is a problem again -- what if you have an Oracle database in there, say?
I thought the idea seemed dumb at first, and I criticized it here on Reddit, but Sandstorm looks more interesting all the time. If your game really can't fit there, if it at least fits on a single computer, you could make it a pile of AWS machine images. You can't really save existing games this way, but you could build a game in the future where at least some reasonable subset of its server-side experience could be in some standard container like that, something you could sell to a fan and they could pay for the server time. You could put the game server up in a store, kind of like putting your back catalog of games up on Steam, and the game would stay alive as long as some players cared enough to pay. And you could use the same platforms to host your own free servers for as long as you want to support the game.
This helps make it technically easier -- you don't need to release the source code to save a game. But it still means a massive shift in the way people develop games, so it still requires a massive culture shift to happen.
Honestly, I don't really care about this for most video games. Ross says that I should just throw out every movie I have that's over 4 years old... I don't have any movies, I watch Netflix, and it's kind of the same thing. I can't always see everything I want, especially very old or very new stuff, but there's always something I haven't seen.
So, as a customer, this doesn't affect me much -- but it is killing our cultural legacy. I don't think I will ever play Spec Ops: The Line again, but I hope 5-10 years from now, I can keep telling other people to go play it for the first time. And if you're a game developer, if you have even a chance of making a true classic, well, this is your legacy, and this is our culture -- it deserves to be preserved.