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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

As a sidenote, this whole situation implies just how important platforms are.

Nothing about OpenTTD has changed. You can literally just go download it off their website for free - same as it was 20 years ago. And you can add it to your Steam library just fine. It's only been on the Steam store for 5 of those years.

But the open internet is dead now and just being "de-merchandised" from a platform feels like being relegated to the dark web (maybe something the open source community doesn't quite fully appreciate).

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> You can literally just go download it off their website for free

That's cumbersome. The main benefit of platforms is comfort. Steam takes care of installation and updating, while often also offers some access with the community. Open internet has more choice and liberty, but for the price of more work and annoyance.

That the main reason why all big platforms succeed and the small platforms fail. Comfort is just too valuable.

Easiest of all is `pacman -S openttd`.

Or even `winget install openttd`

OpenTTD has an automatic update mechanism already and its installation is as simple as could be.

Steam succeeded because of its store, which still has the best prices on the market. That’s their original moat. Their current moat is sunk costs. People have thousands of dollars in their Steam Library. At this point Steam’s advantages as software are negligible, especially considering its poor performance.

Steam, and Valve are solely responsible for me never having to deal with Windows, because they’ve made linux gaming easy. I’d use steam just for that.

>Steam succeeded because of its store, which still has the best prices on the market. That’s their original moat. Their current moat is sunk cost.

Then how come epic games store is not able to get a foothold for years despite offering literally free games? Not even children which are most likely to use it because of Fortnite use it for anything but that. Steam is objectively the better store and game launcher regardless or price or "sunk cost".

> That's cumbersome.

Nothing cumbersome about it. No one who wants to do this is going to fail at it, or even be inconvenienced.

> That the main reason why all big platforms succeed and the small platforms fail. Comfort is just too valuable.

The value of the platform, in this case, is that people know where it is, but they don't know where openTTD is.

Open internet is dead only to those that don't take the effort to discover. Otherwise it's still as open as it always was.

Since there was an internet to speak of, there always were and still are vast amounts of people unaware of stuff that exists, limited by no "platforms" but only by their own lack of desire.

> limited by no "platforms" but only by their own lack of desire.

Or Google's low ranking of their content

I don't even.

Relying on third-party ranking of whatever is a clear indicator of lack of effort.

Short of developing psychic abilities, how would you then address the discoverability problem without relying on a third party?

Forums, search engines, social media, and link aggregators are all third parties with their own ranking. Nobody outside of a handful of small-web hobbyists have put a "cool links" section into a website since 1997.

There’s always a relationship aspect in discoverability. Unless the set is small, there will always be intermediary nodes in that graph that will connect consumers and producers. But there’s no need for it to be a mega tech company. Radio DJs help with discovering musics. Books club can help with recommending books.

Doesn't need to be, but most traffic is driven by search. I reckon 2nd most common is influencers, and I don't know if that's an upgrade (even easier to buy out).

This is classic engineering missing the forest for the trees.

The answer to your question is: same as we always did before! Do you talk to friends? Colleagues? Family? You definitely chat with us here on HN. All of these people share things with you constantly.

There's a funny obsession in tech circles to gather all the information they can as quick as possible. I much prefer to optimize for the quality of information I'm ingesting.

> The answer to your question is: same as we always did before! Do you talk to friends? Colleagues? Family? You definitely chat with us here on HN. All of these people share things with you constantly.

So, in your opinion, we can cut out the reliance on third parties by relying on third parties?

Technology Connections referred to this as “algorithmic complacency”, young people don’t like Bluesky because they have to decide for themselves what content to follow instead of a default algorithm feed

I use a similar argument to those who say that gaming is dead. Sure, if you're waiting for $AAA_DEVELOPER to change, it's probably dead, but you don't even have to look that far to find amazing games everywhere in indie and AA.

Gaming feels dead to devs these days. But I know that's not what gamers care about.

Sadly indie developers are only just starting get into my preferred genre. I am excited to see how a number of upcoming titles turn out, but for the time I’m stuck waiting for $AAA_DEVELOPER to change.

I’ve had half the mind to just try my own hand at game dev again.

That is true to some extent. However, let me ask you one simple question: how would you try to search for something if you are not aware of it's existence? In other words, how people that are not aware of existence of open-source projects (such as OpenTTD) are supposed to discover them if they're not searching for them on purpose (which is impossible given that they have no clue about their existence)?

Of course there will be some ways like social media or something else. But that question is what seems to worry many people in our case, in my humble opinion. Remember that most of the planet's population is not even aware of existence of open-source projects and open-source concept itself. So how are they supposed to discover it if they don't know about it? When it's present on platforms like Steam and GOG, it helps to spread the word, but when it's not... Well, I guess that seems to be a problem for some people.

> In other words, how people that are not aware of existence of open-source projects (such as OpenTTD) are supposed to discover them if they're not searching for them on purpose (which is impossible given that they have no clue about their existence)?

This question tickles me. In the before time, something would be so good you were compelled to tell someone about it.

Sriracha, Costco are brands you likely know that dont advertise, and somehow got popular. In the 90's there were bands that were massively popular with little to no air play, and less promotion (Fugazi is a great example).

probably a little telling that you don't seem to know the name of the sriracha brand you're referring to that does zero-dollar advertising

Does it matter? People just look for the bottle with a rooster anyway.

Ahh the old days before Huy Fong lost the plot.

My introduction to their Sriracha was in 1994, when the Puerto Rican cook at the Italian restaurant I worked at sent me to Stop and Shop for the "rooster".

Till hosing their relationship with Underwood Ranch (their sole provider of chili's) this was the only product in the marketplace (much like ketchup was always Heinz for a time). Absolute market dominance wrecked over not honoring your handshake deal with your ONLY supplier.

The latest batches by them are green, and no one wants them. The underwood version of the product is taking over --- it has a giant dragon on the bottle now, and what I look for now rather than the rooster.

> Sriracha, Costco are brands you likely know that dont advertise

This was a Costco ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i5CQVfmx-0

> So how are they supposed to discover it if they don't know about it?

Presumably, through social interaction with others in the communities they are a part of. That's how I heard about OpenTTD in the early 00s, at least.

Right. This is a chicken-egg problem. We also need a replacement for google search; Google ruined it, on purpose. We are being made blind (not totally blind, but dumber, and then blind).

> how would you try to search for something if you are not aware of it's existence?

How are most games on steam found? I kinda doubt all people find them through steam own mechanisms. I even doubt the majority find them this way. Gaming has multiple sources of information, be it news, social media, influencers or cooperations. Video-content is probably the biggest source of being discovered for most games these days.

> how would you try to search for something if you are not aware of it's existence?

You're asking a leading question. The verb you're using here is one specifically indicating interaction with a "platform" (a digital aggregation of information). The answer is you don't search anything, you completely change your epistemic and interaction model. Instead you build a social web of people who have their own social webs, and you share things you've made and things that have been shared with you. This is your "platform".

By googling "best open source games" and finding blogs and forums that talk about them. In fact googling that exact phrase returns as its first search result a Reddit thread in which OpenTTD is one of the first games listed.

It's not like you can discover it on Steam any easier.

Of course, searching for information itself is also a skill, but it is a truly essential one for the modern world.

there are more platforms for searching for games: youtube, google, chatgpt... it's not so dire that if steam bans you then there is no way to find a game

Steam solves delivery, not so much discovery

This is as good an argument as saying that Americans with unhealthy diets bear sole responsibility, ignoring the massive corporate efforts to convince them of the healthfulness of highly processed foods. While, obviously, individuals have ultimate responsibility for their actions, ignoring the concerted efforts to influence those actions through psychology, marketing/ads, paid “experts”, paid influencers and celebrities, lobbies, blah blah et cetera.

When I started using the internet, if I asked someone what the internet was I was unlikely to get any answer at all. It was new. I had to define it for myself. Ask a 6 year old what the internet is. It’s YouTube. TikTok. Roblox. Experiences that are designed to keep them there. It is obviously more difficult for an individual to engage with the open web than it ever has been (for those with access at all).

> It is obviously more difficult for an individual to engage with the open web than it ever has been (for those with access at all).

It’s very easy. If you’re a producer, you maintain a separate presence outside the walled platforms. If you’re a consumer, you look outside the walled platform for content.

Hey maybe I’m wrong, overthinking it. Maybe the problem is that simple. Maybe you can only see things simply. There’s simply no way to tell.

>It’s very easy. If you’re a producer, you maintain a separate presence outside the walled platforms.

I want to try one day. Steam's pricing parity adds friction to that, though. I can't reward people for venturing to a place where they own their software, and that seems to be the only real way to move many.

>ignoring the concerted efforts to influence those actions

Ignorance isn't the point. The issue is that it's your responsibility to stop them. the buck always stops at "I". Are they just going to stop themselves? Is your neighbor going to stop them for you? If so, why should she if you don't?

As Kant said, enlightenment is getting out of your self inflicted tutelage. When is it self inflicted? When you have the reason but lack the courage to act without direction from someone else.

Yes, there's influencers and lobbies but the solutions are still one search away. Even Google doesn't hide the alternatives from you. And sure we can force feed every American veggies and force install linux on their computers but that'd defeat the point.

People who are not aware of a topic are not lacking courage for not engaging in it. Being damned without awareness of salvation is more of a St. Augustine thing. And Kant said my ancestors were less than human, so fuck him.

>People who are not aware

who isn't aware? If we were in the 80s and you lived in a village without an internet connection, sure but today everyone is aware of the means to liberate their computing environment or whatever else is bugging them. That's not an excuse any more for virtually anyone. The average American spends, not metaphorically 'literally', actually literally five hours per day on their smartphone. If you can doom scroll for five hours you can learn how to use linux, or get on a treadmill to lose some pounds.

the reality is people have the option to choose between comfort and autonomy and they voluntarily choose the former and call people annoying who preach about internet freedom and privacy. Which they might very well be but it also makes it clear they know and don't care.

>the buck always stops at "I"

Wait if it is your responsibility to stop corporations from doing bad things, why are they still doing them?

I didn’t realize there was an individual to talk to about this but, while I’ve got your attention, frankly for the sake of mankind you need to do better at this. They are running wild out here

The open internet is a whisper in a screaming crowd. Yes, it’s technically still there.

I played quite a bit of OpenTTD a year or so ago and I'm pretty sure I downloaded it straight from their site.

Although I agree on the general point, it's technically not true that the internet is "still at open as it always was". Nation states are increasingly putting up barriers and filters, and (pushed by commercial interests) forcing people to identify themselves.

All things considered it's still much easier to get to the open internet through those laughable barriers than in say 1995 over 14400 modem tied to a landline of quite horrible quality. And I actually worked at dialup ISP in 1996-1998.

Push to identify is tied to platforms again, which aren't quite what I'd consider open. Filters are meh, minimal technical competence, much less than was required in 1990s and you get through no problem. Until the moment the government idiots panic and cut off connectivity entirely it's fine. And if it came to that, you'd better be fleeing the country because the next steps are death squads knocking at your door and cruise missiles/drones raining.

Many people here are very worried about discoverability. I find this baffling tbh. It's as if "internet" is the top 10 google results and no more.

I don't remember how I first heard about slashdot, but I know I discovered debian and enlightenment through it, and I would assume I discovered openttd through it.

Perhaps some comment on a forum or usenet somwhere. Or perhaps on a compuserve group. Or maybe someone else at school.

And what did you discover on hn? Let me show you https://www.oldunreal.com/ ;)

I'm glad to have opend that link. Brought back memories.

head-shot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKgyH9k1CSM

TO me, UT is a modern game -- probably the last FPS I bought (well Elite Force which I think was based on UT)

I was more of a DN3D person. Laptop and a desktop, connected via a serial cable, great fun. Computer gaming was far more social in the 90s.

Yeah, I never got into DN3D, maybe b/c it was Windows only? I might be misremembering, but I played UT on Mac with friends by setting up AppleTalk using rj11 adapters. My now-spouse called it the game before the game and it was perhaps more social than the actual game.

That's why we need to reel in these platforms. The mobile ones are slowly starting to relent, but that's only the beginning.

The mobile ones only have one storefront. PC games distribution is a healthy and competitive market.

Healthier, yes. But there can be improvements. Steam still has a few more dials to tune down to truly make it fair.

Sideloading things into Steam is different than having them be a real Steam app. This totally fucks over new players. I hope those donations to OpenTTD were worth it.

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