> PEAK, on of _the_ multiplayer hits of last year from a small studio is built on top of Photon[0] for their multiplayer
How did studios deal with multiplayer in the 1990-2010? That's right, server binary and in-game server browser. These days you don't even need to enter an IP address, just use Steam to invite/join friends. Using third-party or cloud online services is just pure laziness/convenience, and allowing for players to host their games is not rocket science.
Yes, and it was an awful experience with a fraction of the playerbase. WC3 Battle.net browser is an experience that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. TF2 server browser, where many of the good servers were also not publicly listed and head to be discovered outside of the game is also not really a tractable option.
> Yes, and it was an awful experience with a fraction of the playerbase.
“awful experience”? That’s a very very surprising thing to read. My personal experience has been the exact opposite. I’ve personally experienced two types of games:
1. Games where you can choose a server manually (i.e., by using a server browser or by manually entering an IP address).
2. Games where you have let some sort of matchmaking system choose a server for you.
For games in the first category, I end up building up a favorites list of servers where I fit in and am appreciated. For games in the second category, I am not able to do that. As a result, I get a lot of hate.
I love being cheery and spreading positive vibes in voice chat. Some people like it when I do that. Other people hate it when I do that because they think that my behavior is gay and because they hate gay people. For games in the first category, I am able to avoid the haters by playing on servers where haters are not welcome. For games in the second category, I have to just hope that I get lucky. In practice, I end up being unlucky so often that it makes me never want to play games that fall into the second category.
So from my perspective, the older way of doing things was not an awful experience. It’s the newer way of doing things (the way that allows for games to be killed) that has been an awful experience.
> TF2 server browser, where many of the good servers were also not publicly listed and head to be discovered outside of the game is also not really a tractable option.
I love TF2. I play it all the time. I didn’t know that there was a bunch of good servers that are not publicly listed and had to be discovered outside of the game. Could you link to some of them? I would love to check them out.
Minecraft has mandatory hosted servers that are so non-trivial to host that it spawned a $XXmillion industry of third-party hosting, and first party hosting is also a paid service. Also bad netcode in the Java edition.
I'm not sure if I'd call either of those "just fine". That system also only works for games that are able to attract some minimum viable community where some enthusiasts volunteer to host any servers at all. Great for a really long-lived community, bad for any new game trying to make a splash.
Minecraft targets kids. Of course they would rather use mom's credit card to host a server than learn Docker. I have a Minecraft server running for my friends, it took all of 15 minutes to set up.
And what the hell has netcode to do with who runs the servers? So all the cloud-hosted games never suffer from jitter, latency, bad routing, network congestion? Again, it's just FUD.
How did studios deal with multiplayer in the 1990-2010? That's right, server binary and in-game server browser. These days you don't even need to enter an IP address, just use Steam to invite/join friends. Using third-party or cloud online services is just pure laziness/convenience, and allowing for players to host their games is not rocket science.