Gamedate – A site to revive dead multiplayer games
159 points
1 day ago
| 11 comments
| gamedate.org
| HN
emmelaich
44 seconds ago
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In Australia we have https://dadlan.au/ monthly. Physical presence and remote is OK.
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wao0uuno
1 minute ago
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Dystopia just refuses to die huh. Another cool source engine based cyberpunk themed multiplayer game is NEOTOKYO. No idea if it's still alive tho.
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mentos
54 minutes ago
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Ha funny I had a similar idea I was calling ‘GameFlock’ but game date is much better.

To the creators I think there is something here worth continuing to push and try to find traction. As a game developer this is just a matchmaking algorithm with a week to month long wait time :)

My plan was to try to prime the pump with a few popular games and reaching out to existing communities to make them aware and possibly help organize the software/tools to help onboard new players.

For example Ultima Online has Outlands. Tribes2 has a popular discord that arranges matches. I imagine WoW classic and I know C&C Generals have active communities on Discord and I think they’d be willing to work with you to help prime the pump.

Then once you’ve got that critical mass of usage hope that players will participate in other games outside their main passion to make other game dates a success.

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PacificSpecific
8 hours ago
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Love the old school steam inspired ui.

First game I noticed was deadlock which technically isn't even released yet. That's fine though. Deadlock is a game that is really good to play with a fixed group. So I'd say this site is good for even more than dead games.

Nice work!

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efskap
4 hours ago
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Reminds me of a 2011 reddit post (obviously in the format of a rage comic) that led to the formation of r/playdate, although that shifted to just looking for people to play games with over the years.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/j8hpz/idea_for_subr...

I love seeing the original concept brought back with a cool UI.

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evilhackerdude
3 hours ago
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that early steam UI aesthetic has sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole...

https://archive.org/details/steam_10-08-2004

a rabbit hole, at the end of which is an imgui theme, and me was^H^H^Hspending entirely too much time extracting actual fonts, color codes and other minuscule details.

what's better, i have absolutely no issue with that theme being my new default!

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RestartKernel
1 hour ago
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I love how stylised it is while remaining more responsive than the vast majority of websites today.
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xandrius
1 hour ago
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Really cool initiative! Just created one for tonight for Warcraft 3 TFT custom games. Just to see.

I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm doing it!

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8cvor6j844qw_d6
7 hours ago
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Would love to see Steel Sentinels by FubOrb on here.
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slowcache
5 hours ago
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This is a cool website, and it looks great too

But it definitely could use some better moderation

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notenlish
5 hours ago
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I hope this becomes popular
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Razengan
7 hours ago
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StarCraft 1 let you take your computer to anywhere and connect on the LAN with anyone, or even dial-up directly to your friend's phone number.

In StarCraft 2, Blizzard like every other corp wanted to see and control everything we do so you have to go all the way through the internet and lag even if you sit right next to each other. lol if the connection goes down!

Even on the PS5 when I hand a visiting guest the throwaway DualSense I have to bump through a clunky UI of choosing a user or "Quick Play" and wait while it spins up a whole new home screen and other crap for them, and then warnings about DLC or whatever in Mortal Kombat etc, just to have a short 2 minute beat-em-up session.

Sigh

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vjk800
4 hours ago
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To be fair, multiplayer via LAN is such a marginal feature nowadays that you can't really blame the companies for not supporting it. You don't really need "greedy corporate fucks" explanation for this; it's just that you don't want to develop, support and test features that maybe 0.1% of the user base is going to use.
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Zambyte
5 minutes ago
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Every time I read something like "you can't blame companies for not supporting it" I think "I can blame companies for not letting me support it".
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jclulow
4 hours ago
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This is not an accurate assessment in the StarCraft II case. It was released in 2010, and LAN play was definitely still popular. I remember because I was part of a University club/society that was running ~200 person ~3 day LAN parties at the time, and I recall the intense loathing we had for how incredibly difficult Blizzard had decided to make it to actually play the game you had paid for, on your own network.

If anything, LAN play became less popular because it was intentionally hampered by Blizzard and other companies.

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Thanemate
2 hours ago
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To be fair, so is couch co-op and yet I always appreciate developers who go the extra mile of giving me the ability to play alongside a friend.
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Razengan
4 hours ago
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Games like StarCraft, CounterStrike, Warcraft 3/DotA etc were definitely popular at the time of SC2's launch and still are played in "cybercafes" etc.

Hell that LAN environment WAS the reason StarCraft got so hugely popular in the first place, before Blizzard got jealous and wanted to have their fingers in everything, and people still continued to play Brood War after SC2's launch.

Now, when the servers inevitably get graveyarded permanently some day, how is anybody gonna play SC2 or any of the always-online games?

> it's just that you don't want to develop, support and test features

Just let one player's machine host some of the same server code they use for their internet services?

> multiplayer via LAN is such a marginal feature nowadays

WHY?? Literally everybody has phones now, but how many local multiplayer games are there? Imagine if you could just bop your phone to your friends' and immediately start playing something together. The technology and social saturation has never been more favorable than now, but as always it's corporate greed/spying which is the biggest antifun cancer everywhere.

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fragmede
1 hour ago
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jackbox.tv has some really fun party games for that, if you've got the audience for that.
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stackghost
6 hours ago
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"Quick Match" and ranked queues destroyed multiplayer gaming for me.
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