> [1] Think about all the useless things kids can be good at. Did they have to rationalize why they should learn them?
'It's fun' is a pretty compelling reason for both kids and adults to learn certain things, but you can't just decide what's fun and what isn't. Maths rarely gets to have that reason (and when it does, it applies to people for whom this entire problem isn't relevant).
The way I see it, new books = new information; new games = worse gameplay, worse story, with new graphics => money spent updating GPU/CPU/memory getting very little in return
2048 had in-game ads that you could buy your way out of. You couldn't just install the ad-free version, because iOS is locked down. You could on Android, but not everyone is tech-savvy enough to actually do that.
Oh yes, I know open source games existed, but did any raise enough to pay wages of a team?
ps. I personally played Threes first, which 2048 copied without the style and made free. I admit I was slightly disappointed for the original devs that the copy became significantly more well known. It wouldn't be my first example of the benefits of open source.
Full team, no. Probably not even just the one guy who made 2048, unless maybe you count minimum wage. It's hard to know what he earned of ads and such, but I can't imagine it being anything massive.
I have one. They were never fit for purpose for anything beyond reading email, watching 360p Youtube (back then, not so much now), and browsing very basic sites. I guess maybe Flash games were also on the table. The Celerons and Atoms in those machines were comparable to Pentium IIIs. There's a reason the Netbook was a fad. Most people discovered they didn't enjoy using them, while they not long after discovered that they did enjoy using these fancy new smartphone thingies.
> It really seems like the PC makers don't understand the benefits of low power chips sufficiently.
I'm sure they would understand, if you could show them the equivalent 25 watt x86 part. If you find one at 25 watts or lower, it'll be too slow to really bother with. And if it uses much more power than that, then a fan quickly becomes mandatory. It's easier to excuse having a fan than having a processor that's just dog slow.
There are 15W intel CPUs and .. they suck. Idle, windows and corporate “stuff” will put that at 75% utilization with no input from the user other than simply logging on. And the fan starts about 30s in and never stops. It’s embarrassing for intel.
And it's not much better on the AMD side! Like, the closest thing they have is the APU they put in the Steam Deck, which has a fan! I'm sure it would be a bit better if you put that thing in an aluminum body, so the heat can dissipate better, but after you've installed Windows on it, forget it.
I can kind of imagine a world where a suitably low-power Intel or AMD chip can exist; they've got good engineers and can probably do it if they put their minds to it, but that chip will be next to useless without a Windows that won't throw out half the chip's potential before you've even started a program.
Linux has pretty good support for Macs, since they're so common (the T2 chip made it more annoying, but it's still very possible). That said, it's still Linux, for better or worse.
If nothing else, it'd be nice if those iMacs could be reused as external displays, but nope. No display-in on them, so no dice (at least not without a lot of dicking about).
> Like is it that different to a (cheaper) iPad, which you can also get a keyboard for? I guess it's just not for me.
For anything that's not pure consumption, that's a massive upgrade. A proper keyboard makes a world of difference. You don't need it if all you do is browse and view, and you can manage if you only need to send an email here and there, but I'd never want to program or write longer texts (emails, essays, spreadsheets for that matter) on an iPad, even if I hooked up a keyboard, unless I'm desperate and have no other options.
> I was always at unease growing up, wondering what would happen to video games when they no longer became popular. Would I be able to enjoy them when I got older? Would my children ever be able to play the games that shaped my teenage years?
The worst thing, at least to me, is that the worst case scenario, as long as the devs don't go out of their way to kill a game permanently, is still not all that bad.
There's emulation, there's virtual machines, there's dicking about with config files, and there's just buying the old hardware outright. Even old, obscure and fiddly games can be played if you put in the effort. Even the old and obscure will very often be out there on the web, and even if it isn't, you can eventually get hold of a physical copy (and then make a good example and make it available yourself!).
But the moment there's a clown server dependency involved, that's it. You've lost before you've even begun. Sometimes a miracle happens, or someone dedicates their entire life to restoring that one game, and we thank them, for they are doing capital G God's work. But preservation can't depend on miracles.
Games in general are a very difficult thing to preserve because of how they are often "on-going" things rather than definitive objects like books or films. Minecraft has gone through 27 major version updates, most of which having had in the range of 3-10 sub-versions. So that's potentially ~100 versions, just for Java edition. Should all of those be archived? Or just the final version, when it one day arrives? At this point, the Minecraft from 2014 and from 2026 are completely different games. And at least for Minecraft, there's mostly just stuff added. What about games in which major features regularly get removed, like Fortnite? There, the "last" version will lack many of the games most famous attributes.
Maybe we should just accept that big online games are more like cultural happenings than media objects. In the future, you simply might not be able to play Fortnite, in the same way you can never visit Woodstock again. It's just something you had to be at.
> So that's potentially ~100 versions, just for Java edition. Should all of those be archived?
Minecraft is a great example here, because the answer it brings to the table is yes. You can play any version of Minecraft (barring some really early versions that are lost to time) natively in the launcher. Yes, even the stupid sub-versions. If Minecraft can do it just fine, I see little reason other games can't (barring licencing issues, ugh).
> What about games in which major features regularly get removed, like Fortnite?
Give the option to revert back. Provide the relevant files so someone can do it by themselves. Be a decent human being.
> Maybe we should just accept that big online games are more like cultural happenings than media objects.
Fuck off. You had to be there for WoW Classic too. Doesn't mean we can't still have it. There are WoW Classic server up right now, with people playing it. Not that that has much to do with Blizzard (they caved only after illicit Classic servers became stupid popular, and it's not like setting up those servers was an easy feat).
I think in the AI age, it might not be so bad. There's a small online game that I played years ago that I checked in on 2 days ago to see if it was still running, it was with a handful of people playing it. So I downloaded the client to pop in. It had aged really poorly so I thought, fuck it, let's see if Codex can reverse engineer the client, maybe I can build another one. I let it cook and came back an hour later to check on it. It had pulled out all the assets, a bunch of enums for different game states and animations, etc, and had started doing network protocol reverse engineering by building a bare bones client and pointing it at localhost. It had figured out how to authenticate and was already figuring out how to decode the game state from raw packets. I shut it down so my IP wouldn't get banned, but I was floored it was able to do that much in an hour.
You should be entitled to a fix for that, yes (say, some way to connect it to Home Assistant, or just a physical switch somewhere). That or your money back so you can buy an equivalent product that isn't broken.
I've seen discussions about this exact topic in Europe, but it's a hard topic to tackle, since the relevant services will usually shut down bell beyond five years, and by that time, the statute of limitations will have run out, so even if the product could in theory have lasted for 20+ years longer if you could just have it talk to the computer in your closet, or just flipped a switch to turn it into a dumb-mode where is still does the basics you don't need a clown for, you're out of luck.
Yea, it should not be even remotely acceptable that a physical device like an EV charger, installed in the home for the purpose of doing something in the home, can suddenly be nerfed simply because the manufacturer went out of business.
If this were normal, my car would suddenly stop working if Toyota went out of business.
> No reasonable consumer would assume perpetual access, either.
I expect perpetual access to my game the same way I expect access to my books. Most of my multiplayer games can still be played without involving a clown server somewhere (either by hosting one myself, or by playing over LAN). This is somewhat skewed by me not having bought many of the offending games, but it's clearly not an impossible feat. It's not even a big ask. And yet it's still not done.
> Steam shuts down tomorrow, guess what? None of your games are working without a third party workaround. Even if you had them installed.
The mere existence of that workaround means I still get to play my game. There aren't any workarounds for most of the games Stop Killing Games care about, since developing them requires enormous amounts of man-hours reverse engineering, while the devs could do the same in a fraction of the time (or at the very least give people a head start!).
I have books that link to online content. I've had one that had printable workbook that that no longer worked because the site had disappeared.
Are you going pay the extra money to the developers to keep the servers running? What will people choose, the 5 year support for game that might never play again, or the forever support? Game companies will raise prices, by a lot, if forced to maintain or release games.
Beyond that, I think the authors of your books are idiots for not making whatever content they have online not just a bundled part of the book (throw in a CD or thumb drive or whatever, not my problem. Solve it however you want. Just™ actually solve it). I've had the same happen with a quiz book I found, which had the answers online, with just a QR code in the book, which then lead to a 404 page. They could have just printed a few extra pages of answers in the back, but they didn't, and I mock them for it. They're fucking morons. Thankfully quiz questions tend to be easily googleable.
> Are you going pay the extra money to the developers to keep the servers running?
No, because you don't need to do that to have a playable game.
> Game companies will raise prices, by a lot, if forced to maintain or release games.
'It's fun' is a pretty compelling reason for both kids and adults to learn certain things, but you can't just decide what's fun and what isn't. Maths rarely gets to have that reason (and when it does, it applies to people for whom this entire problem isn't relevant).
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