Downloadable Games are Important

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PyTom
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Downloadable Games are Important

#1 Post by PyTom »

This might be a bit of an editorial, but hey, I just gave the community, for free, the product of several months worth of my spare time, so I think I'm entitled to do this once in a while.

Recently, we've had a lot of talk about online-only ("streaming") games as opposed to downloadable games. Several new online-only engines have sprung into existence, allowing people to create visual novels that are played without being downloaded to the end-user's computer. I find this development a bit dangerous.

Between Ren'Py, the Ren'Ai Archive, and this forum, I've spent the past six years doing what I could to help visual novels develop as an art form that has acceptance in the western world. And while it's the makers, not me, that made it happen, I think it's great that this is finally succeeding.

Visual novels are art and culture. And it's one that I think will be around for a long time - the rest of my life, hopefully. I'd like to be able to, when I'm an old man, pick up the same games I play today, and play them again. While I don't expect to have any children of my own, I'd like to be able to share them with my nieces and nephews, when they are born - and their children. In the same way people play retrogames today, I'd like them to be able to play retro-vns 20 or more years from now.

Downloadables make this easy. Once a game is released as a downloadable, especially if it's promoted a little, it winds up on thousands of peoples computers. The chance of it utterly vanishing from existence drops substantially. As long as one copy exists, it'll be recoverable - and experience with emulation technology has shown that games from two decades ago remain playable. What's more, it doesn't require the cooperation of the original creator for that game to be played.

By contrast, online-only games wind up being stored in transient places, like browser caches. They exist in a permanent form in only a few places - vulnerable to technical failures, business failures, loss of interest by the the creators. That's scary, as it means there likely will be games that I can play today that I won't be able to play a few years from now.

To the creators of these new online-only engines (DateEngine, Novelstream, and the other one), let me just ask that you try to come up with ways of addressing this issue, before it's too late. Releasing standalone players, at least for pc platforms, would be one way of doing this - for free games, uploading the files to places like archive.org and download.com would help them continue to exist even if not many people actually download the standalone version.

To the creators of visual novels - you spent months on your work, and it's important, too important to have disappear. Please use tools that can produce downloadable versions of your games. Ren'Py is one, but Novelty also gets this right, as do Sylph, ONScripter, and even Blade. As new engines come around, use being able to run without a central server as one of the criteria on which to judge them. Believe that what you're making now is worth preserving, even if the you a decade from now might not have the time to update it.

To players - realize that you're part of this too. Keep around the visual novels you play, so you'll have them in the future, even if they disappear from the web. And if you find a work you like, let people know about it, now and in the future.

Thanks to everyone for putting up with this, and thanks to the creators who make works that I think are worth preserving.
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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#2 Post by jack_norton »

Don't worry pytom, I have no intentions of leaving downloadables (and I know other good devs here that thinks the same).
They were saying that "downloadables are dead" already since several years ago (talking about casual games industry) but they're still there. I'm not against online only games, but neither I think downloadables are bad/dead/dying.
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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#3 Post by IceD »

Downloadables will endure!

Honestly, now I'm a bit sad I got rid of few rare, legal VN installers from my HDD, as I already found out they are almost impossible to get. This makes us really think about the importance on having something "physically" available; stream of information, is well - just a stream. I've never thinked less of downloadable games, they always were and I think they are and will be always available, though i'm a bit concerned with new ideas both Microsoft and Sony introduced not so long ago...

When you create something, you want it to exist. The art is one of most subtle forms of creation, and visual novels are art. They need to exist, both for us and for future generations, so they might see one day, how everything began and share the same hapiness as we share it today. I don't think any artist would not care about what he creates. As artists we are proud of our own creations and we create because we want to share our thoughts and emotions with others; it's a part of 'ourselves' we are sharing. We want also to leave something that will remind of us, when we won't be existing anymore.

Downloadables won't die. Never.

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#4 Post by Topagae »

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."
Last edited by Topagae on Thu Aug 25, 2011 4:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#5 Post by LordShiranai »

I agree with the statement. I still like to fire up my old games every once in a while, and it is nice that I can do so on my real SNES rather than paying again for a game I've already bought once already.

It is a scary thought that there is a possibility that some downloadable-only / DRM laden games out there will be dead or severely crippled once servers go dark. Right now, all original XBox games are permanently crippled (no more online play) because Microsoft took legacy XBox game servers offline. At the same time, I can still find Quake 1 death matches out there.

I am worried that this Cloud Computing craze will come around to bite people in the rear, and that as a result we'll lose a lot of culture in the process. If a company takes it's servers down because they go under or just simply think they are not profitable for them, what happens to that data? Can we trust these companies to give people enough time to preserve the data?

Sure, not all of the data out there is really all that important. The Tweet I made about what I had for dinner isn't important, but the games people make or the art they produce is.
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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#6 Post by LordShiranai »

Topagae wrote:Players pirate our games in disgusting numbers (50-95%).
Now, I am all for people making money from their works. While it is a complete fantasy to equate every instance of piracy to a lost sale, there is no doubt that it does hurt. Coming up with solutions to protect consumers and culture, while protecting the rights of the creators, are non-trivial.

That doesn't change the fact that I fear that if we lock everything behind DRM, we may end up losing part of our culture in the process.
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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#7 Post by mugenjohncel »

- CONTENT NO LONGER RELEVANT -
Last edited by mugenjohncel on Wed Jan 26, 2011 2:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Topagae

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#8 Post by Topagae »

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."
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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#9 Post by sake-bento »

To add a set of numbers to the party (for anyone who cares), I ran a poll on my blog about it. Total votes: 246. Things to keep in mind about the polling situation:
-It's a multiple choice poll. That means a user could vote for both free and downloadable, or neither.
-Fewer people voiced an opinion on commercial games, merely because fewer people are interested in commercial games.

Results here: http://sakevisual.blogspot.com/2010/08/ ... games.html
I prefer free VNs to be online - 71 (28%)
I prefer free VNs to be downloadable - 196 (79%)
I prefer commercial VNs to be online - 14 (5%)
I prefer commercial VNs to be downloadable - 119 (48%)
Anything's fine with me - 51 (20%)

And the slightly more useful user comments here:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogI ... 7359985056

Keep in mind that the sample set consists of my current fans, friends, and followers, so it naturally weeds out people who refuse to download games in the first place. However, this does include a pretty good chunk of people from facebook, which is overflowing with online games.

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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#10 Post by papillon »

Just fix up RenPy so it can export to chrome-app format as well as downloadable versions and problem solved, creators will make games that have ALL the versions! :)

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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#11 Post by Voight-Kampff »

Interesting post, PyTom. I have my own, parallel question: why are stream-able games important?

I've been loosely following a number of threads on LSF in regards to this whole brave new world of "Visual Novels on the browser", and it has me genuinely curious.

Now, obviously, I recognize that at least one of the issues that VNs have to contend with is platform. Historically, they've been trapped on PCs. And yes, successful titles eventually get "cleaned up" and ported to consoles. But when talking about that model, it basically only applies to established Japanese studios and publishers.

Which brings us to the fledgling non-Japanese VN creators. Which in turn brings me to my question...

Why is porting a VN to a web browser important? What will it do for a title?

I suspect it's believed that by doing so, it will allow a title to get in front of FAR more eyeballs than it would as a PC/Mac download. Anything with a browser can potentially play one's game. Which in this day and age, is just about any consumer electronics device. And of course, by reaching more people, a title can become that much more popular (and potentially profitable).

But, is that it? Is that why porting to a web browser is important? Is it more about applying a form of DRM? Believe me, I'm in no way attempting to be facetious. But I appear to have a legitimate problem wrapping my head around the concept and its importance.

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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#12 Post by Sin »

I love the ability to buy and play games on demand so I am no stranger to buying downloadable games.

That said, I strongly believe that the subscription model of MMO's and things like Quake Live (i.e. what you call "streamable games") is going to go away. The reason in simply that a game is not a service. You can argue that access to the online server is the service you pay for, but I don't think this matters to the customer. Too many people have experienced paying the subscription for a game they haven't played.

Once Wow goes free-to-play at the end of its lifetime, it will be very hard for a competitor (including their own inevitable sequel) to charge 15 dollars a month for a computer game.

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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#13 Post by Der Tor »

I am more concerned about the question of whether one should go with downloadable (or streaming) ones games versus putting them on a DVD.
Does the future lie in downloadable (and or streamable) games? Do DVD's and other "tangible" media forms have little future?

But what if you have a huge game, say several gigabytes? Is downloading or streaming even a suitable solution then?

As for MMORPGs or subscription games. That doesn't apply to Visual Novels, cause it be kinda hard to make them multiplayer :lol:
But yeah, i guess MMORPGs gonna become VERY dominant... I think the main reason for that is one there is a huge profit to be made because the players will have to pay continuously and often times they pay for years or maybe even the rest of their live and second: the reason they might pay for the rest of their live is because such games are addictive and the game developers know, and exploit that. Now from a greedy commercial perspective, that's a good thing, but from an ethical perspective, that's a very bad thing. That's also why i like Visual Novels more than any other type of games as they are more like a book and are 100% focused on an interesting story and so the reader isn't wasting his time any more than if he would be reading a book and it can be just as educational. Whereas in many other games like World of Warcraft. Although they also have a story, what drives people isn't the story but "getting to the next level" "getting this item or that item" or "being admired by other players" and it can easily lead to a kind of psychological addiction.
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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#14 Post by Jake »

The thing that matters to me as a consumer is more or less the same thing that matters to me as a developer, as discussed in the NovelStream thread in particular.

If I download a game - say I bought one from Hanako or Winter Wolves - I can do stuff myself to make sure I get to keep it and keep playing it. I can back it up to my own CDRs, magnetic tape, spare HDDs and/or flash drives, I can keep it on my own remote storage, and the fact that I could probably go back to Hanako or Winter Wolves and ask for a re-download is more or less a bonus, something I use if all else fails.

If I buy a 'streamed' game over a service like NovelStream, then I don't have any options to make it more durable; if the service goes down then the service goes down whatever I do. And maybe the NovelStream guys are going to keep their servers up 'til after I'm dead and maybe they're going to fold next year after key staff have got bored and moved on - there's nothing I can do.

I have the same attitude with most online service model stuff - I'm happy to use GMail, but I back up and/or print off important mails, receipts, etc. anyway.




I'm not totally averse to the idea of spending money on something I can't keep - I sometimes go to the cinema, after all. But I'll consider a streaming VN service much more like paying-to-go-to-the-cinema than paying-for-a-download, and accordingly I'll be less inclined to pay so much for the same VN if I can't download it. I get less, as a consumer, so I'm willing to pay less money for it.
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Re: Downloadable Games are Important

#15 Post by jack_norton »

It's sad because basically all devs I know don't like online games. Those who make them were forced by piracy. A guy I know was making shooters and earning a misery (shooters->male public->99,9% piracy), now he makes MMORPG (a bit RPG but still shooter at its core) and makes insane money. He is going to make downloadable again? no, never.
Once again, like for many many other things in human history, everyone is going to be affected by the actions of a minority (pirates are still a minority unless you live in Italy :D) of people.
I'll try to hold on as longer as I can though :) And chrome appstore might be a real cool thing to offer games both as download and also as webgames.
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