[HN Gopher] Gamedate - A site to revive dead multiplayer games
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Gamedate - A site to revive dead multiplayer games
Author : msuniverse2026
Score : 217 points
Date : 2026-02-21 00:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gamedate.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (gamedate.org)
| PacificSpecific wrote:
| 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!
| Razengan wrote:
| 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
| stackghost wrote:
| "Quick Match" and ranked queues destroyed multiplayer gaming
| for me.
| vjk800 wrote:
| 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.
| jclulow wrote:
| 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.
| Razengan wrote:
| 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.
| fragmede wrote:
| jackbox.tv has some really fun party games for that, if
| you've got the audience for that.
| Thanemate wrote:
| 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.
| Zambyte wrote:
| 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 ".
| revlolz wrote:
| It was the "greedy corporate fucks" entirely though?
|
| LANs empowered gamers with full ownership and a better
| ability to self organize player communities and tournaments.
| The always online model was heavily hamfisted by Activision
| Blizzard who wanted to launch their esports ambitions with
| SC2, seeing the KR broodwar scene as missed revenue. Look at
| the failed Overwatch League (OWL), Heroes of the Storm,
| Hearthstone and even reforges of classic RTS.
|
| DOTA/League spawned from lan/bnet use map settings games and
| arguably Dota rise to success started in Lan cafes before
| hitting mainstream success on bnet.
|
| I acknowledge that many likely don't ship Lan because it's
| being seen now of days as extra, but I think that's pointing
| to the consequence as the root cause what the major entities
| wanting control and ownership on their platforms. It didn't
| used to be an extra feature 0.1% used, we were pivoted into
| this to profit larger corps and it's not a tinfoil hat
| conspiracy, it's just following where the real money was and
| investors want to be middlemen on platforms.
| LtWorf wrote:
| > To be fair, multiplayer via LAN is such a marginal feature
| nowadays that you can't really blame the companies for not
| supporting it.
|
| Yeah literally nobody has kids, siblings, friends. Those are
| all things of the past! (i'm being sarcastic)
| 8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote:
| Would love to see Steel Sentinels by FubOrb on here.
| slowcache wrote:
| This is a cool website, and it looks great too
|
| But it definitely could use some better moderation
| notenlish wrote:
| I hope this becomes popular
| efskap wrote:
| 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.
| evilhackerdude wrote:
| 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!
| RestartKernel wrote:
| I love how stylised it is while remaining more responsive than
| the vast majority of websites today.
| xandrius wrote:
| 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!
| mentos wrote:
| 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.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| 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.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Oh wow! That was a fun one.
| saidnooneever wrote:
| wow neotokyo such memories streaming back in totally forgot it
| =} followed it from starting as a tiny mod out on some dev
| forums wayback when..there were some cool mods back then but
| this one always stuck in my mind!
| emmelaich wrote:
| In Australia we have https://dadlan.au/ monthly. Physical
| presence and remote is OK.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I want to recreate the server for Peter Molyneux's "Curiosity:
| What's Inside the Cube?", but put a life changing Rightward-
| Facing Cow from Ian Bogost's social commentary game "Cow Clicker"
| inside the cube, instead of a huge disappointment and a pack of
| broken promises and lies and hype and literal promises of godhood
| and credits and royalties.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31981916
|
| DonHopkins on July 4, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on:
| Cow Clicker (2010)
|
| A decade ago attempted to troll Peter Molyneux at the Unity3D
| "Unite 2012" conference after his insufferably vainglorious
| keynote presentation of his "Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?"
| Cube Clicker game, jokingly guessing that the big secret inside
| the box was a cow, but he just didn't get the joke, even after I
| explained it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity:_What%27s_Inside_the...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380418
|
| DonHopkins on Sept 5, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on:
| Bullfrog After Populous
|
| His Cube game was the epitome of dopamine addiction games, all
| that was wrong with Zynga/Facebook games, the rage at the time.
| Nothing at all original about that: a total cop-out of game
| design.
|
| When Peter Molyneux gave his insufferably vainglorious keynote
| presentation of Cube at the Unity3D Unite conference at
| Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, I chatted him up afterwards and
| attempted to troll him by guessing that the big surprise in the
| box was a cow.
|
| I don't think he got the point that I was trying to make an
| ironic reference to Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker, which is a parody
| of and social commentary on dopamine games.
|
| I tried to explain the joke to him, and he still didn't get it.
| At least Ian Bogost had the self awareness to design Cow Clicker
| in the service of making a critical statement about game design,
| and the capacity of shame to be embarrassed when it was an
| accidental run-away success.
|
| Unite 2012 : Keynote - Founders & Peter Molyneux (The BS starts
| at 1h 8m 21s -- It's been 8 years since I saw this live, and it's
| much worse than I remembered, especially now knowing how it
| turned out!)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AY4fJ66xA&t=1h08m21s
|
| >1h 48m 06s, with arms spread out like Jesus H Christ on a
| crucifix: "Because we can dynamically put on ANY surface of the
| cube ANY image we like. So THAT's how we're going to surprise the
| world, is by giving clues about what's in the middle later on."
|
| http://www.cowclicker.com/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker
|
| >In the wake of a controversial speech by Zynga's president at
| the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2010, Bogost developed Cow
| Clicker for a presentation at a New York University seminar on
| social gaming in July 2010. The game was created to demonstrate
| what Bogost felt were the most commonly abused mechanics of
| social games, such as the promotion of social interaction and
| monetization rather than the artistic aspects of the medium. As
| the game unexpectedly began to grow in popularity, Bogost also
| used Cow Clicker to parody other recent gaming trends, such as
| gamification, educational apps, and alternate reality games.
|
| >Some critics praised Cow Clicker for its dissection of the
| common mechanics of social network games and viewed it as a
| commentary on how social games affect people.
|
| https://qz.com/34024/life-really-is-a-game-with-a-lot-of-cli...
|
| >Life really is a game--with a lot of clicks--and then you die
|
| >Curiosity is just the latest in a series of social experiments
| that rely on user interactions with seemingly no point. Of
| course, Zynga is the king of this phenomenon, providing games
| full of sticky and addictive action that encourage more clicks
| for the sake of clicks. Arbitrary value becomes real value, even
| when it's not meant to. Just ask Ian Bogost, who created the
| satirical social game Cow Clicker that went on to such absurd
| popularity that he felt compelled to continue developing it,
| trapping himself in an ironic loop that refuses to end. In Cow
| Clicker, you literally click one cow every six hours to collect
| Mooney, which lets you buy other cows to click on.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27324466
|
| DonHopkins on May 29, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: Y
| Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatan...
|
| Is Peter Molyneux a scammer? Or just a pathological liar who
| believes his own hype? He made some fantastic games in the past,
| but then...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux
|
| The Lesson of Peter Molyneux
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/15/the-lesson-of-peter-molyne...
|
| Peter Molyneux - Dreamer? Or Con Man?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62-J4KDMAIk&ab_channel=Shott...
|
| Peter Molyneux Interview: "I haven't got a reputation in this
| industry any more"
|
| https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/peter-molyneux-interview-go...
|
| >RPS: Do you think that you're a pathological liar?
|
| >Peter Molyneux: That's a very...
|
| >RPS: I know it's a harsh question, but it seems an important
| question to ask because there do seem to be lots and lots of lies
| piling up.
|
| >Peter Molyneux: I'm not aware of a single lie, actually. I'm
| aware of me saying things and because of circumstances often
| outside of our control those things don't come to pass, but I
| don't think that's called lying, is it? I don't think I've ever
| knowingly lied, at all. And if you want to call me on one I'll
| talk about it for sure.
| david3289 wrote:
| I like that this is targeting forgotten games with low player
| counts (since im new and not famous) Have you considered
| gamifying session creation (e.g., showing estimated wait times or
| crowd-sourced player counts) to make join-up easier? And I also
| like your 98.css style!
| arm32 wrote:
| I absolutely freaking LOVE this UI. Bravo.
| integricho wrote:
| I thought this is a sort of campaign / kickstarter site to
| prioritize which dead games are in highest demand, in pursuit of
| reverse engineering and building servers for them.
| andai wrote:
| The developer made a video explaining the project:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFBCNnOhYgs
| throwatdem12311 wrote:
| This is amazing.
|
| Would love for this to take off instead of having to join a
| bajillion LFG discord servers.
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(page generated 2026-02-22 16:00 UTC)