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How Indie Devs Made an 1,800-Player Action Game Mod In Their Spare Time
An anonymous reader writes "Just Cause 2 Multiplayer has been getting a lot of press lately, but this making-of feature points out how the mod raises serious questions about the games industry: if 1,800-player massively multiplayer action games are possible on one server, why did it take a group of modders to prove it? From the article: 'There’s more chaos to come. That 1,800 player limit isn’t maxing out the server or the software by any means. Foote says that the team, who first met online seven years ago playing the similar Multi Theft Auto GTA mod, are "yet to reach any real barrier or limitation preventing us from reaching an even higher player count than the previous public tests." When it’s ready, the team will release the software for everyone to download and run their own servers, wherever they are in the world.'"
The pay sucks, the hours suck, the management sucks. The industry is risk averse, and is a consumer of research - not a creator. Only moron brogrammers end up stuck in cubicles at game studios. Totally unsurprised that true innovation comes from outside the industry.
How Indie Devs Made an 1,800-Player Action Game Mod In Their Spare Time
Wow, indie devs making mods in their spare time? Holy crap! That would be revolutionary two decades ago!
Sit around, kids, and let me tell you a story about when PC games were expected to be modded, had rich and diverse communities devoted to all the mods, and all of this with the approval and support of the people that made the game!
Of course, back then, there was no concept of "DLC", and an FPS intended for online play with only a handful of maps was dead before it even got started. Games shipped with lots of content, and the game developers would churn out and release new content, for free, in addition to all the stuff the hobbyists made.
Games today, with entirely too few exceptions, are shitty console ports designed to be closed ecosystems so the publishers can charge you for piddly bits of content and you need to be a god damn hacker to even install mods, never mind make them.