- Joined
- Feb 23, 2020
as I'm sure all of you know, the concept of .io games - simple. usually 2d free to play online multiplayer browser games accessible through a .io domain - received immense popularity a little over half a decade ago, with agar.io being the first of its kind that spurred on countless copycats. Interestingly, a number of developers looking to cash in on the trend have since opted to skimp out on the "multiplayer" aspect of the archetype entirely and instead set up exclusively client-side games with a precarious illusion of a multiplayer gamemode. The reasons for doing so can be said to be both glaringly obvious and fascinatingly subtle: the obvious reasons involving the costs of servers and the complexity of writing netcode (managing client-server communications and filling in the gaps between updates from the server), and the not-so-obvious ones being related to providing a compelling illusion of a competitive edge to a disproportionately casual audience that's likely never known any such success within actual multiplayer games.
The latter of those two reasons is likely why a few of these cash-grab games tend to either dance around the reality that they have no multiplayer functionality or outright lie and claim that they do, and this dishonesty seems to lead to much anguish among those who've made an emotional investment into these products on the basis of an illusion of competition.
Here's an (imo, not very interesting) video on the subject you've probably already seen or at least had recommended to you before.
www.youtube.com
here's a fairly dead subreddit where much of the aforementioned anguish can be found
The latter of those two reasons is likely why a few of these cash-grab games tend to either dance around the reality that they have no multiplayer functionality or outright lie and claim that they do, and this dishonesty seems to lead to much anguish among those who've made an emotional investment into these products on the basis of an illusion of competition.
Here's an (imo, not very interesting) video on the subject you've probably already seen or at least had recommended to you before.
.io Games and The Rise of Fake Multiplayer
postfu: https://twitter.com/postfuMy game Theyest Thou: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1232330/Theyest_Thou/article by variety on Voodoo Games: https://v...
www.youtube.com
here's a fairly dead subreddit where much of the aforementioned anguish can be found
