I've been trying to read an article on my phone, and upon scrolling down, the page drifted to the right, pushing all the content to the left, beyond the screen. I tried to readjust and control my scrolling, but the result was the same. I tried to do this "zoom out" gesture (whatever it's called) with my fingers, but the webpage became so small I couldn't read the text. Let me tell you: this is a truly annoying experience. I am sitting here, wondering, "Why can't you simply fix your overflows?". Come on, it can't be that hard. Don't you browse your own webpage on phone and see that's not it? That there's an issue?

Now when I see the horizontal scroll bar appear on the bottom, I automatically try to see how small the page will get if I zoom out. Well, sometimes it's not that horrible, but it drives the perfectionist inside of me a little bit nuts when, for example, seeing the header getting a strong cutoff on the right. The web is so broken, and not because of the standards or the technology--no, it's because I came to the realization that people do not like CSS. People do not like to manually type out HTML tags with CSS rules, and then debug that using web browser's devtools. But it's not that complicated, bear with me! Because I am going to fix your overflows (*of random websites I stumbled upon as of today--the day of writing this article) and show how it's not that complicated and only takes a few minutes of your time.

But, before we begin, let's understand why the overflow happens: that's usually because one of the elements has an incorrect size (width value) that makes it ignore the parent element's size and push beyond it. So, say, you have a div element that has a size of width=200px, which has a child element that is of size width=300px--this will cause the so-called overflow. Other common causes are code blocks and negative margin values. This happens because of incorrect styling (wrong CSS rules). The good news is that there's a way to debug it using "Developer Tools" (which you can invoke by pressing F12 in web browser):

The most common reason for this is usually because there is an element somewhere that has a fixed width that does not change when the web browser's window gets resized. In CSS, there are few ways to declare the width of an element: width (fixed), max-width / min-width (dynamic). For example, look at the animation below that shows how the navigation bar does not fit within the header and stretches beyond:

If we look at the DOM, we will see how old-fashioned the HTML is: that navigation bar was implemented using a table, and each ul element has a fixed width defined in CSS as width: 120px. This website is clearly not mobile friendly, because hovering over each link in the navbar will show more links. This would require rewriting the navbar entirely, accounting for smaller screens.

This another example defines both min-width and max-width properties with the same value 80ch. That makes it essentially equivalent to defining the width property. And since it is being used on the body element, it prevents all the content within it to adapt to smaller screen resolutions. The good thing is that the fix here does not require rewriting any HTML.

First of all, let's remove the min-width property from the body element. This will allow for everything within the body element to adapt to its size (as long as they don't have fixed width). Then we will give it padding: 20px to add some spacing on the sides. The horizontal bar does not disappear, though. Another obvious thing that can cause this is the pre element which is usually used for code blocks. It has one at the bottom of the page, so it needs to have some style fixing. The pre element has a child element code which has a fixed width:

Obviously, you should fix it in the actual CSS file--anything you're doing in DevTools is debug-only / for viewing the changes in real-time, and updating the page will reset every change made. This fixes everything, the overflow is no more. But it might introduce a new problem: what if the code inside of the code block is actually long, and it doesn't break to the new line? There's actually a known best practice for such elements--the content should be contained within that element using a horizontal scrollbar. You can learn to do that (or steal mine). The last thing, your header will look messy, so you want to make sure that once the screen is small, you want to add this code:

@media only screen and (max-width:600px) { nav { flex-direction: column; gap: 14px; } }

Having learned the basics, and the most common causes of this annoying "bug", let's cure some patients.

NOTE: just to be safe, take this as an advice and not an actual solution.

Modal.com

Next patient can be fixed with a single max-width property that needs to be applied to an element with a very weird class name (do people nowadays really prefer this over clean and short CSS names?):

.max-w-\(--breakpoint-lg\).mx-auto.mb-32.mt-16.w-screen.px-4.lg\:mt-20 { max-width: 100% }

AOSAbook.org

Moving on, the next broken website happens to be the infamous AOSA book. Firing up devtools and the body element shows an overflow indicator, but that particular element has no issues as it uses max-width, so its width is not fixed. Could it be a code block? Indeed! It has a huge block of code inside of the classic pre element. We can fix this with simple:

pre { overflow: auto }

Hold on, the overflow remains. Interestingly enough, the html element has a property font-size that is set to large. This is another reason why an overflow would happen, so to fix this you have to simply remove that rule. And if you want larger text--specify font-size for specific elements.

Cambridge.org

cambridge.org/core/books/abs

The overflow on this page is caused by the two drop-down menu blocks that have a margin with a negative value and a fixed width. To fix this, we will change width to max-width and remove the margin rule. So, in styles.83ea522.css:

• Step 1: in #app-tabs.mobile .tabs__collapse[data-v-1d90c6ce], #app-tabs.tabs .tabs__collapse[data-v-1d90c6ce], change margin: 0 -15px to margin: 0
• Step 2: in @media (max-width: 640.98px) {#app-tabs.mobile .tabs__wrapper .container[data-v-1d90c6ce], #app-tabs.tabs .tabs__wrapper .container[data-v-1d90c6ce]}, change width: 100vw to max-width: 100vw, and margin: 0 -15px to margin: 0
• Step 3: in .table-of-content-mobile, change width: 100vw to max-width: 100vw, and margin-left: -15px to margin: 0

DaringFireball.net

Ah, the Daring Fireball. The issue here is it being a classic old web relic. This one would require the use of adaptive styling. This shouldn't be an issue, because looking at the stylesheet, we can see it's using modern CSS features. So, what's up? What's the reason we don't make this small-screen-friendly?

Alright, I will propose a style fix. I have good news for John: this is absolutely possible with a single line that can be copy-pasted without breaking anything. The next needs to be pasted at the bottom of the stylesheet.

@media only screen and (max-width:785px){body{min-width:0;padding:20px;font-size:14px}#Box{width:100%;max-width:720px}#Main{margin:0 auto;width:100%;max-width:425px}#Sidebar{margin:0 auto !important;position:unset;width:100%;text-align:center}#Sidebar p{margin:0 auto;padding:0;font-size:12px}#Sidebar ul{line-height:24px;padding:0;margin:50px auto;font-size:12px}#Banner{margin:0 auto;width:100%;text-align:center}}

One more thing for this to work--in HTML you have to add this line inside of the head element, e.g. below the title:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

This is necessary for the responsive layout to function on phone screens. And it's fixed.

Interfaze.ai

This one can serve as a good example of why it is a bad idea to hide the problems. The html and body elements have the overflow-x property set to hidden--this basically hides the horizontal scrollbar. Here's solution for the main page (not docs, because it is already responsive):

• Step 1: in body, html remove overflow-x: hidden
• Step 2: in body, html replace max-width: 100vw with max-width: 700px
• Step 3: in body, html add margin: 0 auto
• Step 4: in .css-8zg6q6 remove width: var(--chakra-sizes-2xl);
• Step 5: in .css-1fu0utb remove width: var(--chakra-sizes-2xl);
• Bonus: in .css-1fu0utb add flex-direction: column; and gap: 20px;

Specular.fi

Straight to the solution:

• Step 1: in .site-header, main, .archive-footer remove padding: 0 18px;
• Step 2: in body add padding: 20px;

VittorioRomeo.com

The overflow is caused by the table element. The solution is similar to the code blocks--you have to create a parent wrapper element, and define the overflow-x property. You must be able to horizontally scroll within the table, instead of it pushing beyond the body's max width.

Radicle.dev

Fix: in @media (max-width: 800px) { body > main {...} } remove padding

antirez.com

Fix: add * { box-sizing: border-box } at the top of style.css

un0rick.cc

Fix: in just-the-docs.css, in .page-content a remove white-space: nowrap;

OK, I am done with free labor. I hope this was enough for you to understand the problem and the possible ways to fix it!

Blizzard's games have a unique artistic style. But that is compared to other video games. Most of Blizzard's own games feel the same: I would describe it as Blizzard to video games is what Disney is to animation films. But is this a bad thing? Not necessarily! There are many video game developers who have their artistic direction consistent across the games they develop. Take FromSoftware as an example--there are a few themes they are focusing on: dark fantasy, samurai, and mecha. Their recent titles, which include Souls series, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring, all received critical acclaim. Other than being dark fantasy games, they share the same stylistic and game design elements, and the art direction in those video games is virtually the same. What I like about those games is that there is a logical progression in the evolution of their game design. You can trace their roots back to King's Field--their first video game released in 1994--and see the general vibe of playing a FromSoftware title is still there.

Such video game companies do what they are good at--establish a working pipeline and stick to it, at least as long as it is successful. This is true for most game developers. There are some that do have a range of different genres they worked on, with distinctive styles, for example BioWare who made Baldur's Gate, MDK2, KOTOR, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect. Or Ubisoft with their Rayman, Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed, and Tom Clancy's series. Ubisoft is also developing the strategy game Anno, and the first-person shooter Far Cry, but it's a little bit nuanced--they are not the original creators of those games, as well as Prince of Persia and Tom Clancy's games. Many video game companies underwent mergers or acquisitions, some established subsidiaries or departments that work exclusively on certain titles, and because of that, there are game titles that have "changed hands", which put them in the danger of having their visual identity changed. To understand the reason why the visual identity of the game changes you have to look into company's politics.

When fans love the games that they play, what makes them more excited is for the potential sequel to be a logical continuation of the same experience that they got by playing the game. The loved game is not necessarily first one in the series--it can go as far as being the fourth installment in the game's series. For example, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare--a 2007 first-person shooter developed by Infinity Ward--is the fourth game in the series, it has a storyline which is not necessarily interesting, but the way the characters engage with you, and the way that the world is designed makes everything feel real, simply because it is based on modern warfare tech, not even a science fiction. And it is more loved than the previous games in the series. It was followed by two sequels that were just as good, mainly because they were extending that same experience from the first game. There are many other examples, including Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil 4, Tekken 5, Monster Hunter: World, etc.

So, that "logical continuation" means that you preserve the artistic direction, the music, the gameplay mechanics, and the general "feeling" of the game. Even minor changes can ruin the experience. One game that comes to my mind is BioShock--its first game is a masterpiece, but it cannot be said about its sequel BioShock 2. The reason BioShock 2 is boring (well, if there are actually people who liked it, then I have to be more specific and say that it was boring to me) is because the gameplay was unlike the first game: very repetitive--same empty corridors; you understand the point of the game early on, but it lacks any meaning in the long run; the weapons aren't as satisfying; and some other things I already forgot about. But the third game, BioShock Infinite, is suddenly just as fun as the first game. You could say "they" learned from "their" mistake. Or, it would make more sense if you know that the first and third games were designed by Ken Levine at Irrational Games, while the second one was made by a completely different developer--who was previously only in charge of porting the first game--just for the sake of it. Woah! Turns out, politics does play role in the way how the games turn out to be.

For some game titles that ended up in different hands--they changed not only in the visual style, but the genre itself. For example, Fallout is a 1997 role-playing game developed by Interplay Productions who in 2007 sold the Fallout IP to Bethesda Softworks. That game went from a tactical isometric turn-based post nuclear role-playing game to an allegedly-role-playing gamebryo-infected bug-ridden 3D-action-shooter derivative severely abused by Bethesda. You can call it a radically reimagined experience as it plays as a completely different video game. On the other hand, Arcania--a game developed by Spellbound Entertainment whose previous games did not include RPGs--was supposed to be the "logical continuation" of the Gothic series (originally developed by Piranha Bytes), and its publisher JoWooD Entertainment aimed for it to be the best RPG game of the 2010s. But JoWooD, being the exact reason why Gothic 3 was bad, didn't learn from their mistake, so upon the release of that absolute abomination of gaming experience, the game was so bad, and so hated by the fans, they had to drop "Gothic 4" from the title, and JoWooD going bankrupt as a cherry on top. In parallel, the original developers of the series shipped their own game--Risen, which was pretty good and loved by the fans with the only massive problem being its disappointing ending.

But what does this have to do with Blizzard? They seem to have a pretty good track record of releasing high quality games: WarCraft, Diablo, StarCraft, HearthStone, and Overwatch--all seem to be very well made and beautiful and loved by fans. They take quality seriously, hire good artists and musicians, so what's the issue here, if there is any? My focus is going to be on one of their games--Diablo. But let's first understand what is Blizzard. It started as "Silicon & Synapse" in 1991 by three newly graduated students--Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce--who each invested $10,000 from own pockets to start the business focusing on game ports, before they released their first video games for the SNES platform. After that, they: changed their name to "Chaos Studios"; started the development on Wrcraft: Orcs & Humans; were deep in debts; got acquired by "Davidson & Associates"; another company named "Chaos Technologies" claimed its trademark rights, after which they were forced to rename again, this time to "Ogre Studios"; and the new name not being liked by the new owner forced them to rename again, finally to "Blizzard Entertainment".

In 1993, another game company was founded under the name "Condor" by David Brevik, Erich Schaefer, and Max Schaefer, who wanted to create a roguelike game inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. That game was Diablo. It was supposed to be pure role-playing and turn-based (possibly, similarly to Fallout), but one of its programmers showed a demo of a real-time system which changed director's mind and allowed them to ship one of the first games of its kind. 9 months before its release, they were acquired by Blizzard and renamed to Blizzard North, however they still had a complete autonomy from their new owners, and were able to ship a sequel and later an expansion pack. Both of the games were highly successful, including the expansion pack--Diablo II: Lord of Destruction--being my personal favorite of Diablo series. They started working on Diablo III, however the new owner of Blizzard, Vivendi Games, intended to sell the company, which made the executives of Blizzard North to send them an email threatening to resign. Instead of communicating their intentions, Vivendi Games accepted their resignation and that made the executives--and other employees--leave the company to found their own game studios: Flagship Studios (released Hellgate: London, then ceased operations), Hyboreal Games (failed), Castaway Entertainment (failed), and recently MoonBeast Productions (planning to release Darkhaven).

Diablo Overview

As with the golden RPG titles of yesteryear, Diablo's premise is very simple: Find evil things and smite them repeatedly. The tricky bit comes in deciding just how to smite them, and how to do it without getting seriously killed.

Trent Ward (01/23/1997)

Diablo is, essentially, a hack-and-slash game. This cathedral consists of many different floors, and, basically your entire goal is to make it to the bottom. Of course, as you make your way downward, monsters will get progressively harder. The town you started in, and the cathedral where your fighting takes place, is all there is to the game.

TerrisUS (05/13/2005)

You could tell that there is a great amount of detail in the city and dungeons. Bones and corpses will be lying around, adding a creepy and frightening feeling that goes with the dark atmosphere. In dungeons, where it is dark and absent of light, your character can only see so far, until it fades to darker black, which is of course realistic.

maximus86 (08/27/2002)

Aside from story the interface is mostly clean and easy to use. You’ve got a section reserved for potions and scrolls, a quest log and character stats tab on the right, along with map and menu tabs, and on the left you have your inventory and spellbook tabs.

Zork_Wesker (11/01/2006)

The music is absolutely phenomenal, eerie, and is perhaps embedded into the minds of true gamers everywhere. The somber guitar strains of Tristram's town music, the famous Cathedral dungeon music (further immortalized by being redone in Diablo II as a piece called "Spider"), the haunting Catacombs music, the unnerving panting and dissonant strings of the Caverns, to the magnificent opus of abstract harmony, punctuated by a distant, repeating flute motif, of the music of Hell, all of it is absolutely mind-blowing and atmospheric. In terms of Blizzard canon, I don't think the music of Diablo has ever been exceeded in quality.

solipsa (04/16/2008)

Diablo III was handed to new directors at Blizzard Entertainment, with new producers and designers and programmers, and pretty much new staff. Before Diablo II: Lord of Destruction was released in 2001, Blizzard released Warcraft II (1995), The Lost Vikings 2 (1997), and StarCraft (1997) with three add-ons released in the same year. All those games feature the same visual style--they look cartoonish. That's compared to Diablo, which has dark tones: Gothic architecture, dungeons infested with demons, ruins, corpses of innocents who were once tortured in cold blood under rain. You were given a background consisting of several paragraphs to know what happens to a title when it changes hands. Well, Diablo III ended up having three revisions before it finally released in 2012. It looked and felt completely different from the previous games, just like if it was its own game, the only similarities being the use of the Exocet typeface and the classic health/mana orbs as part of the graphical user interface (GUI). Don't get me wrong--I am not saying it's a bad looking game, like in my previous examples--no. It actually looks beautiful, and it adheres to the Blizzard's standards of shipping good quality games. It's still dark fantasy, and it's still about demons. But it's not Diablo. The art direction completely changed the atmosphere of the game, now it looks similar to their other games. It looks like it's a cheap mobile version of the actual game infested with microtransactions (they actually delivered that, too). For instance, Diablo II: Resurrected would've been a better contender to the logical continuation of the series.

Diablo II Overview

This review doesn’t matter. There were 1.5 million pre-orders for Diablo 2 even before it went gold. In its first day in the stores, it sold about 250,000 copies off the shelf. It’s already a smash hit and it doesn’t need any good reviews for that.

Nebojsa Radakovic (07/01/2001)

The replay value of this game is absolutely amazing. There is so much equipment it is mind boggling. And with 5 different character classes, you will absolutely NEVER get bored of this game. ESPECIALLY the multiplayer.

Tyrant_007 (08/31/2000)

The map is randomly generated, so you may just have to go to a completely different place for all your quests every time you start up a new game, and because of the randomness of the thing you won't be able to see on your handy-dandy map any place you haven't visited before!

KingBroccoli (11/18/2000)

As you progress to the hot desert of Lut Gohlein, through the muddy swamps of Kurast to the final hellish pit of the Chaos Sanctuary, you really feel you've made an epic journey and as the monsters become cleverer, stronger and more numerous you are constantly having to refine your tactics even just finishing the game on Normal difficulty.

falsehead (10/15/2004)

Many game developers have been inspired by Diablo, their games were influenced by the new type of Action-RPG. Among those games are: Dungeon Siege, Sacred, Titan Quest, Torchlight, Path of Exile, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, Grim Dawn, Diablo III, Diablo IV, and more. I want to point out that some of these games did a good job capturing the same atmosphere, especially Path of Exile and The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. It's evident that this game had a huge impact on the gaming industry, so Blizzard--following on its legacy--had to make sure that they are delivering something that is nothing like its "clones" in order to satisfy its fans. Or... were they?

You see, Blizzard is nothing more than a company that creates a product; and that product has to sell; and for it to sell, it must be engaging. Isn't this the goal of every other game developer? Yes. However, unlike those unknowns who enter the market out of nowhere and aren't afraid to fail, Blizzard takes no risks. It's a large corporation that, if it releases anything remotely undercooked, they might damage their reputation. This is a rule of a corporation who has owners who focus on profit. Therefore, the game must be engaging, and that engagement must be guaranteed so there is no risk to it being unprofitable. And to guarantee that, you must employ industry professionals who will compose and present the thoughtful yap--about color and contrast and "screenshotability" of the scenes--that explains why the chosen art direction is actually the right one.

Diablo III Overview

"F*** that loser."

--Jay Wilson, the lead designer, about series creator David Brevik.

To expand upon how bad the always online aspect is, there is a known issue with Diablo 3 called rubberbanding. What this basically means is that you can expect the game to go smoothly, then you'll see a 2000+ ping, die to thin air, and get disconnected from the server. In standard Blizzard fashion, the fix for this issue actually made it worse.

UltimaterializerX (07/31/2012)

Regarding the game world, maps are not really random at all. There are some random aspects to them but after a few play throughs you'll realise that most of the important things are always in a certain location which really removes any sort of desire to explore.

Ihavealotofspac (05/24/2012)

Halfway through the game, I realized I wasn't playing a Diablo game. So I took a different approach about halfway in and decided I'd treat it as a whimsical game. This didn't help any of the earlier problems however, because the game would be bad for a whimsical as well.

Viridianbarry (05/21/2012)

I am not going to lie, the product they released was a financial success. It was also notorious for being one of the first games to come with a special kind of DRM that only allowed you to play the game while being connected to the internet. Pretty sad. But it didn't come without criticism from the fans. A petition with over 23 thousand signatures was filed by fans who were frustrated by the art direction Blizzard decided to choose for the game. This was back in 2008, when the game was first announced, four years before its official release. Fans were already unsatisfied with how the game would turn out to be. There was no way the game would've ended up looking differently, different from other Blizzard titles. After all, it's part of their branding. We already know it wasn't a flop from the financial perspective (and, perhaps, this is the only thing that matters to those who only develop games for money); so, is there even an incentive for game developers to care whether their game would be loved by the fans? Well, an interesting question that can be asked: would the game have been even more popular, and sell even more, if all that effort that was done was directed towards satisfying the fans?

Think about it--the fans are the core audience. They are the ones who will make sure others are as hyped about the game. The fans create content, the fans encourage friends, the fans establish the fanbase, the fans are the everything for your product. And if you keep ignoring them, who knows what could possibly go wrong. Don't forget what happened to Game of Thrones--one of the most loved TV series in the past decade--the end season of which made the fans "cancel" the show, to the point it became irrelevant overnight. A billion dollar franchise dropping dead because of the directors' decision to end it in the most ridiculous way imaginable.

Sometimes, if not all of the times, a good art direction [for a video game that changed hands] is not about "UX", or your personal biases of what would look good, or what would make the player think it would look good, but the deep engagement with the community, to hear them out, to understand their feelings, to understand what is it about the game that makes them enjoy it. And if that game took a long time to release, the fans would want to revisit that now nostalgic feeling that is not a radically reimagined experience, but a logical continuation that uses the same artistic elements that made that particular game enjoyable.

There is a lot of content on the internet. And we're used to hearing that "internet does not forget", i.e. everything lives on the internet forever once it is on there. In reality, this is far from being true. One part of me is actually happy about that. On the other hand, there is media that is at risk being lost. Yes, some machines might still store the data, but it won't ever be available to you, and it will never be found ever again once it is gone from the client's end.

One of such media are video games. Especially online video games, clients of which you must download in order to play them (in contrast with the browser-based ones). There are hundreds or thousands of players who can download, say, the beta version of the game's client, so you might think that it would totally be preserved and available on the internet at all times, perhaps directly provided by the official game's publisher for the next--what would feel like--forever; and then you'd think "surely, someone would have enough time to populate the internet with copies". That sounds cute. And if that was the case, I wouldn't have been wasting my time writing this article.

Instead, we're too careless, and we are most regretful when it comes to our attention. Who would've thought that I'd be spending my time trying to archive one of the games I played in the past, which is not even my favorite online video game? Yeah, that's what happened. This article is about some things I want--not just future archivists, but everyone--to be aware of in order to preserve the necessary data associated with the media of choice (not necessarily video games--it could as well be art, music, literature, etc.), especially in the highest quality possible.

The first thing I want you to keep in mind: what you have now might be lost tomorrow. This is to say that if it's possible to NOT delete what you have downloaded (e.g., early game installer; or early version of the software that does not have mirrors, or has very few mirrors), then please consider keeping it. Another very important thing is to have multiple backups of data, if you can afford doing so. I am currently not in possession of an expensive storage setup with an array of hard drives, but even a single 1TB drive still does the job, especially when the efforts are combined with other enthusiasts.

I am not going to give advice on which storage to buy (you might read this article in the future where the recommendations might be outdated), you'll have to research it on your own, I will simply give you pointers. For example, look into NAS and optical disks for archival purposes, if you want to take this to the next step. If you want a budget solution, then seek advice on the r/DataHoarder subreddit, or read this article on Archive Team's wiki. Tools and some other useful information can also be found here, here, and here.

Another very important thing to keep in mind: link rot. As I already said, you might have a link to some data hosted on a cloud service, but there is a very high risk of it being gone any moment. If it's possible to download--please, do. Do not leave it for later if you have enough storage space. If you don't have storage space, please consider letting other people know about it, and let them download. This might sound obvious, but sadly, it's a very common practice among preservation enthusiasts to gatekeep content. They feel special having something that is not owned by others. I understand. That does feel nice, indeed. But, say, the very reason you have it in the first place is because someone else cared to share.

Remember: sharing is caring. This project would've failed if not for the people who decided to share what they happened to have, and those who re-uploaded things from official websites to forums or blogs or other websites. For example, a Naver user under the name multiplegoer has posted what would be one of the only surviving screenshots of the 2007 CBT (Closed Beta Test) client of S4 League:

Last but not least, do NOT use AI to modify the files, be it images or audio or video. Do NOT attempt to upscale, enhance, photoshop, optimize, compress, crop, cut, or anything, at least without preserving the ORIGINAL unmodified, untouched file. You will understand the reason in the following parts of this article.

You want to preserve every file, of any quality, of every resolution, even if it's a "duplicate". Preserve first, sort and analyze later. When sorting the files, I am using naming conventions to better understand their nature (it might be subject to change), and it generally goes like this: "[game name abbreviation]_[unique filename]_[number/dimensions]_[additional info]".

For example: s4_og_300_video.png. Explanation:

• s4 - short for "s4 league".
• og - original (the game comes in different Seasons, each of which have a different version of the original logo; e.g., the final version of the logo is blue).
• 300 - the image has a resolution 300x300, which is WIDTHxHEIGHT, and 300 in this case is the first value WIDTH.
• video - after some analysis, I found the image was cut from one of the game trailer videos. It might not be valuable, but I keep it just because it's a miserable 87.5 KB file.

As you can see, I did not clutter certain filenames with information about dimensions, and no additional description was needed because there are no other versions of such files [that I have found], so I rather keep it simple. I also don't know which of the "og" logos is the "truly" original one, i.e. an official asset and not a modified one (resized, upscaled, compressed, etc.), so for the time being I will keep all of them, neatly organized.

Note that I am not following some standard, and I am not telling you to do exactly the same, maybe there is a better way of naming files that I am not aware of. The point is, you want to keep everything neatly organized, and there needs to be a way to understand what the file is about at a glance. The way I named it is also useful when I want to search a file using a program like Everything.

The directory structure should be pretty straighforward, but it changes over time, when I get more files that need to be separated into their own folders. The root directory should obviously be the name of the video game (or whatever else you're preserving: name of the website, music band, app, etc.). The folders within the root folder are based on the class of data:

• Audio: sound tracks, BGM, etc.
• Community: fan-created content (art, fanfics, etc.)
• Development: clients, servers, tools, mods, etc.
• Docs: game design docs, magazines, interviews, news coverage, etc.
• Gallery: concept art, promos, posters, wallpapers, etc.
• Video: trailers, gameplay, showcase, announcements
• Website: self-explanatory

Every directory can contain subdirectories that follow the same naming principle. Think of the scientific classification of animals, where, say, a Meerkat is an animal of kingdom Animalia, class Mammalia, family Herpestidae, genus Suricata, and species S. suricatta. In our case, Development is the kingdom; Clients, Servers, Resources, Tools are the class; Official and Unofficial are family; optionally, if there are many clients from different regions, EU, KR, JP, etc. would be the genus; and the actual file s4_full_client_2010_kr.zip is the species. So, that file would be located at:

../S4 League/Development/Clients/Official/KR/s4_full_client_2010_kr.zip

This type of structuring is self-explanatory, easy to navigate, and can even help identify possibly missing files. I will give another example of how the Gallery folder is organized, as it is one of the biggest ones:

• Aeria: assets from the publisher
• Alaplaya: assets from the publisher
• Concept Art: Art by [Artist's name], Maps, Costume Design, Weapons, Outfit promos, Artbooks, Early (prototypes)
• Features: promos of introduced features
• Launchers: screenshots of every launcher, installer, patcher, etc.
• Levels: ranks that changed over time
• Loading Screens: splash screens, game loading, map loading
• Logos: Official, Icons, Publishers, Banners, 3rd Party (Community, Pserver, etc.)
• Maps: Map promos, thumbnails, notes, official screenshots
• Modes: Mode promos
• OST: album covers, CD covers
• Other: unorganized stuff or content I yet to decide how to organize, e.g. regional based folders such as S4L Thailand, featuring assets from the Thai publisher PlayFPS
• Pmang: most of official promos were from Pmang featuring their banner
• Posters: promo illustrations with dimensions of a typical poster image
• Screenshots: official, CBT, different regions and years
• Wallpapers: any illustration with dimensions of a typical wallpaper image

Once you have everything collected, sorted, and organized, you're ready to analyze all of that stuff for quality to remove potential exact (!) duplicates and maybe update filenames to include additional information based on the analysis (e.g., whether the image is of high quality).

Now, there are images that might look exactly the same: same content, same dimensions, sometimes even the same size. But they can be totally different, and one of them can be of a worse quality, so don't rush believing your eyes! We will go through several examples of cases where images can at first seem to be the same, but looking closer at them will show that one is more valuable than the other. There are some pre-requisites for this stage: you need to know about file formats (at least the most common ones: JPG, PNG, GIF, and BMP).

For the first example I will show you two banners that have the same dimensions 1600x376, one file having a size of 1.10 MB (1,164,252 bytes), another one is 560 KB (573,700 bytes). Guess which one is of the better quality? If you don't know much about image analysis, you might proudly state "the one that is heavier is better!". The intuition with such thinking is that the more bytes--the "more data", and the "more data"--the higher is the quality.

But don't rush with such conclusions, because we will take a closer look to see whether this is actually true. We need proofs! We always need a proof! The first easy thing that we can try is hover over the file and see whether it will show any interesting metadata:

This is very interesting: the first file on the left, which is 560 KB, is a JPG image format, while the other one is PNG. If you know something about formats, then you would know that JPG image format is lossy (which means, there is loss of quality), and PNG is lossless (and it contain an additional alpha channel, which allows for the image to have transparency). But, wait, the JPG file has another interesting metadata: Date taken: 24-Jul-08 15:21. Even though the presence of that metadata does not guarantee that the file wasn't messed with, it is still valuable regardless. Let's right click on the file, choose Properties, then open the Details tab:

Take a look at the Origin section, where you can see Program name: Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows. Looking at the Properties of the other file--it shows no such metadata. This file, which I already marked as "original", is straight from the Adobe Photoshop CS2 program, and I would consider it to be more valuable, unless the other one is of higher quality but with metadata being stripped. Let's look further, zooming directly into pixels:

I chose to zoom into the part of the illustration that features the sword with scratches--you can usually see the compression artifacts on these fragile elements. The image on the left side, which is called s4_banner_og.jpg has scratches looking "intact"; the image on the right is from the file called s4_banner_valofe.png, where Valofe is one of the official publishers of the game that is notorious for reviving dead games, milking players for money, and outsourcing workforce that heavily uses AI. You can clearly see that the image on the right has some scratches smudged--it's clearly suffering from lossy conversion.

But why is it heavier in size? Sometimes, it just is (say, because of PNG format artifacts or the use of AI)! And that's the lesson you have to learn from this particular example: just because the file is heavier, does not mean that it is of higher quality. This simple analysis, that did not involve using specialized image analysis software, revealed that the file with the smaller size is actually the more valuable one.

Here is another example:

If you look closely, you would see that the image on the left is slightly worse in quality than the image on the right. This is a portion of the S4 League logo on a black background. So, the first one (left) is called s4_league_01.png and it is 255 KB (261,352 bytes) in size; the second one (right) is called s4_league_02.jpg which is 58.8 KB (60,214 bytes). The case looks similar to the previous one, but hovering over images and peeking at its properties did not reveal any interesting metadata in both. We would want to take an even closer look to detect artifacts at the pixel-level:

The image on top is the JPG one. It might be hard to tell the difference when looking at the cropped versions of the images (much obvious when looking at the full image), but if you look at the shadows on the top right, you should see how the shadow on the top image goes in a straight line, while on the bottom image it slightly drifts off. That is one of artifacts of lossy conversion mentioned in the previous example earlier. What is also interesting is that, at certain points, hexagon's lines are much smoother and "cleaner" on the bottom image compared to the top image. That's because of blurriness that causes that false perception of higher quality.

One more comparison, I want you to zoom in to take a closer look at each image and see how the image on the left (s4_league_02.jpg) has a smooth glowing effect, then zoom into the second image on the right s4_league_01.png and you should notice "block-y" portions. The smaller size of the lossy format wins again!

See another example

The left image is noticeably of a worse quality because of increased blockiness compared to the image on the right where the gradient is much more consistent. When something is compressed, it loses some data; and if the compression is too harsh the loss of data can be noticeable, just like the "shadow" of the white line above is missing some color data of a pixel on the left image while on the right image the line stays intact.

This next example is really interesting, because it's unlike the previous ones: both of the images have the .PNG extension. However, they slightly differ in size: the first image is s4_neden_3_overhead_01.png and is 239 KB (244,758 bytes); the second one is s4_neden_3_overhead_02.png is 271 KB (277,891 bytes). I am going to drag and drop both files into WinMerge to see whether they are different:

It shows they are identical. Image data might be identical, but files themselves are clearly not identical. To understand what is going on, you can open them in any hex editor program to look directly at bytes. If you're not familiar with byte analysis, then you can try using ImHex, which will automatically apply a pattern to the file so you can hover over bytes to see what those bytes represent. I am switching between both tabs and I immediately notice how some of the starting bytes in the image's header differ, particularly the 0x02/0x06 byte:

That byte represents color_type, and on the image above the value 0x02 means the color type of the image is RGBTriple, and for the 0x06 byte it's RGBA. What is the difference? You see, the PNG format is a lossless format that is known to support the alpha channel (for transparency); the A in RGBA means exactly that: Red (8 bits), Green (8 bits), Blue (8 bits), Alpha (8 bits) = 32 bits. What about the former one, RGBTriple? That one means the image does not have the alpha channel, so it's simply RGB = 8 + 8 + 8 = 24 bitss. We can look further to see other identical bytes: chromaticity (63 48 52 4D), DPI (70 48 59 73), background (62 4B 47 44); and the CRC values are different, as expected, and that's OK because even with the presence of an extra byte, the hash value will change: we already know that the extra byte is unrelated to the actual data, and it's due to the difference in format (24-bit vs 32-bit).

Even though the images are identical, the byte analysis reveals that the reason one of the images is heavier is because it has additional data related to transparency. A PNG image that supports transparency is usually more valuable than a PNG image that lacks it, but here, them being essentially identical, keep them both around, I guess. To further verify that, we will use specialized tools. In this case, we're dealing with a PNG image, so we will use pngcheck. It's a command-line utility, and I hope you know how to use those, because it will come in handy. I am running it with this command:

pngcheck.exe -v s4_neden_3_overhead_0X.png

It should generate this output:

The header size matches (the additional 96 bytes come from each IDATA having additional 12 bytes of data: CRC+length+name=12*8=96). And the reason IDATA of RGBA is heavier is because of the alpha channel.

You might be wondering whether the alpha channel contains pixels that we couldn't see with our eyes (even though it was already reported to be identical). And we can verify this. For that, we will use ImageMagick. I will run it with this command:

magick identify -verbose s4_neden_3_overhead_02.png

The output is pretty verbose, but we're only interested in looking at the Alpha channel's statistics, particularly the min and max values both being 255, which confirms there is NO range of data and it is fully opaque, i.e. every single pixel has the alpha value of 255. We can keep both of the images and rename them to reflect their technical details: s4_neden_3_overhead_rgb.png and s4_neden_3_overhead_rgba.png.

One more thing to be aware of--when the images are actually (visually) different--keep a close eye on details:

This is not a work of AI. Both of those images are official illustrations from back in a day, one of which was later reworked. I should probably give an advice on how to recognize whether the artwork is an AI slop. These particular illustrations can be found on websites that posted them a long time ago, before the AI craze, so that's the one way to know. Another way, if the artwork is a work of recent years, then there's not much that I can say right now. The way I am trying to identify the slop is by zooming into the image and looking for parts that seem weird (hallucinated): weird hands or weird amount of fingers; weird background; too many various pixels "sprayed" in certain parts (brushes are usually smooth) which are not compression artifacts, or it being "too smooth"; nonsensical details; etc.

See more examples

Just like image files, video files are also coming in lossy and lossless formats. The most common and relevant video file extensions are MP4, AVI, MKV, MOV, and WMV. Now, these are containers, and unlike image file formats, the actual formats of video codecs use a different name. For example, an AVI file can use either Lagarith or HuffYUV as its codec. Lots of old videos were using this format, before the release of better codecs such as H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, H.266/VVC, and AV1, with common containers being MP4, WebM, and MKV.

Most of the videos you will ever archive (at least, video game related footage) will be of lossy format, which is OK. Videos are containers that can store few types of things, some of which are optional: frames, audio tracks, subtitles (some videos can be interactive, too). When analyzing a video file, you will see relevant metadata related to the video codec used, and data related to audio. Our goal is to archive any surviving footage, and as long as the video exists, all good; and even better if we can find the same video in a better quality.

First of all, we want to make sure whether the video that you have archived is scaled. That's how you'll know whether a possible duplicate of it is worth archiving. To view the videos, I am using VLC. Assuming you're also using it, let's open any video and make sure we're viewing it at original resolution: on the menu bar click on "Video", then uncheck "Always Fit Window". You will now be able to see the video at its original resolution, so it might be small or bigger than your screen's resolution.

What matters is not the resolution (I mean, it does matter, but let me elaborate) but the quality of the video: the original video could be 720x480, but it can be "crisp", i.e. not suffer from compression-resulted artifacts. Its original resolution can also be 720x480, but what you have archived could be an upscaled and re-encoded version of it at 1280x720, making it look like it's HD. There are 10-second videos of renders by 3D artists that are ~200 MB in size, and there are similarly 1 minute videos that are quarter of that. So, just like with images, the size of the video can also be tricky.

For the next example I chose one of the official promo teasers. Look at the image above--it clearly has poor quality, but I don't know if it's caused by re-encoding, perhaps it could actually be the original video released by the publisher and there is no other similar video that exists that offers better quality. I happen to have another one, directly from an official press release, and I would like to know the difference. VLC is not just useful for playing the video, but also gives us an ability to view its metadata, so let's do that: on the menu bar click on "Tools" and choose "Codec Information".

We immediately see that it's made of H.264/AVC1, 30 FPS, and an audio stream based on MP4A (typical for videos from the internet) with a sample rate of 44.1KHz. You can also browse other tabs in the same video: General tab shows... well, general information such as the title, copyright info, and info on what was used to encode the video; Metadata tab shows additional technical information about the video. Both tabs might not show anything at all. In this particular video, switching to the General tab reveals that it is Encoded by: Lavf58.29.100, which is a version of libavformat--library used by FFmpeg.

Since there are many tools that rely on FFmpeg, we will not be able to identify what is the exact source of the file, but it's clear that this library appears mostly as a result from the video being downloaded using tools such as yt-dlp. You can know that's the case if you yourself have done it (directly pulled the video from YouTube, Vimeo, or a similar service). Gladly, I have the WMV version of the file, which is an older Windows Media format commonly used by videos made on Windows back in a day. Let's play both of the videos, pause at the exact same timestamp, and use our photon receivers to compare the frames:

The image on the left is from the s4_dance_promo.wmv, the image on the right--s4_dance_promo.mp4. I might've chosen a bad example, but what you're looking at on those images is the arm of a character who is holding a weapon. Look at the arm having "pins" all rendered pretty well, while on the right image you can't even see them because they got blurred away. The lines are more crisp on the left image, so the video on the right is essentially a useless garbage that would only waste space (since it's not even of a higher resolution)... right?

Well, as the last check for this example we will use ffmpeg--particularly, the ffprobe.exe command-line utility that ships with it--to inspect the video files and see whether they have the exact same timestamp (we can do it just by looking at the VLC, but we can also see the more precise duration down to a fraction). We can use either of the tools (ffprobe prints more information that can come in handy):

ffprobe -v verbose -show_format -show_streams s4_dance_promo.wmv

ffmpeg -v verbose -hide_banner -i s4_dance_promo.wmv

Look at the ISO Media file produced by Google Inc.--probably a YouTube artifact. And the bitrate of the MP4 video 878 kb/s is significantly lower than the bitrate of the WMV video (10,000 kb/s), which means the compression ratio is really high. Now, let's take a look at the timestamps. Wait, what? The video we called a useless garbage and were about to get rid of has additional 8 seconds! It seems to be +8 seconds right after the promo ends, and it features an ad for the OBT (Open Beta Test) of the game.

They are, after all, different videos. That's why you should remember: any file is a good file. Make sure you do a comprehensive analysis before you decide to do something graciously ridiculous that might've ended up being one of the greatest screw-ups in history of archiving (I've done this before, a long time ago, and that was a pathetic mistake).

We've talked about formats and quality, so for this part the principle is the same: there are lossy and lossless audio file formats. The most common ones among lossy formats are MP3, AAC, and Ogg Vorbis (this one is most commonly used in video games). Among lossless ones are FLAC, ALAC, WAV, and AIFF. This is not to say that these are the only files you should be interested in! The whole point is to know the difference between the lossy and lossless formats. But if you see audio files that are FLAC or WAV--those are the most valuable ones, especially WAV, which represents a raw uncompressed audio file.

But. As with the previous examples, you probably already know that just because the file is of a lossless format does NOT mean that it is one. Doesn't make sense? Well, there is such a thing as transcoding--it describes a process of converting a file from one format to another. And there are times when some "genius" decides to convert a lossy format (e.g., MP3) to lossless (e.g., FLAC). That does NOT work. Once something is lossy--it remains lossy. So this is one of the things that we want to identify when analyzing audio files. We will use a very simple tool that will allow us to see the spectral analysis of an audio file. There are many programs that allow you to do that, but we don't need anything super complicated, so you can either use Sonic Visualiser or Spek. I will use Spek, because it is pretty straightforward, lightweight, and does not require an installation. All you need to do is to run the program and drag-and-drop the audio file into the program.

This is a random MP3 file that I already know is lossy (because of the format), but the thing about MP3 audio files is that there are actually good ones: they can also be of high and low quality. A good MP3 file has a standard bitrate of 320 kbps--this is the best MP3 quality you can get; the other common ones are 192 kbps and 128 kbps; the less common ones are anything in-between, 96 kbps, and lower than that. But these values aren't everything: there are tracks or sound effects that are low-frequency "by nature". The values that we are going to deal with are hertz that describe the frequency, and that's what we are going to look at. So the image above shows a clear cutoff at around ~15 kHz. And the text above shows that it is a 128 kbps track. The red part is the one that you hear the most, while the blue parts are quiet. Below is the table that associates the bitrate with the frequency you expect to see on the spectrum:

Now you can clearly see that 15 kHz is actually pretty low--not only it's a lossy MP3 file, but also with a bitrate as low as 128-96 kbps. But what is on the table is not guaranteed to be the exact 1:1 match on the spectrum--one possibility for that is it being re-encoded. As you can see, Spek reports the file to have a bitrate of 128 kbps, which is not always the reality. Please, note that this does not mean that the file is useless. In my case, this is the only version of the sound track that I have, in this particular quality, so it is worthy regardless of the quality, unless there is the same exact audio file that has the same exact content but is of higher quality (raw/lossless/higher frequency lossy). If you drag and drop a lossless audio file (e.g., WAV or FLAC) and see a similar cutoff--then it's not a real lossless audio file and it was interfered with. Here's how a typical FLAC spectrum looks like:

Compare it with the previous example of the MP3 file and the difference is staggering. This is the type of quality you're hoping for having, even though there are many other file formats that exist and every one of them is worth archiving regardless (yes, I keep repeating myself). What we want to recognize is: given two identical audio files, we need to know which one is of a better quality. For example, the files can be shipped as part of the game's client (usually in WAV or OGG format); FLAC, even though is lossless format, it is "less lossless" than the WAV format which is uncompressed (you might hear someone say it's a raw format, but it usually means that it comes with no metadata and is a pure uncompressed and un-containerized audio data). FLAC is common in digital audio distribution and ripping (which must also come with additional files--logs from EAC and a .CUE sheet--to verify the quality of the rip).

See OGG Vorbis "128 kbps" example

See MP3 320 kbps example

Going back to the MP3 example of the track Tsukasa_Landscape.mp3, we will use ffprobe to see a detailed information about that audio file. We will use this simple command:

ffprobe -i Tsukasa_Landscape.mp3

There are actually two streams present: one is the audio track, and another is an attached MJPEG which serves as the cover art with a very irregular resolution of 740x468. This, and the fact that there are traces of an MP4 FFmpeg encoder being used, strongly suggests that the source of this audio file is most likely an audio-only pull from a YouTube video. Now, let's look at the WAV example of a different track called 09 Chain Reaction.wav:

And here we see the file comes with an interesting metadata about the album: it is S4 LEAGUERS SuperSonic Limited Soundtrack which suggests that it could be a rip of this album. The page on the VGMdb shows that it comes with two discs: disc 1 with 27 tracks, and disc 2 with 2 additional files. In my archive, there are only 27 WAV tracks with the partially confirmed quality (there are no logs and .CUE), and it lacks the contents of the second disc which--per VGMdb--includes S4 League Game Client and S4 League Promotion Movie. The reported bitrate is 1411 kb/s--indicates it's uncompressed/CD quality.

ffmpeg -i input.wav -filter_complex "pan=stereo|c0=0.5*c0+0.5*c1|c1=0.5*c0-0.5*c1" output_ms.wav

ffmpeg -i input_ms.wav -filter_complex "pan=stereo|c0=c0+c1|c1=c0-c1" output_lr.wav

Hopefully, this is enough information for you to know how to organize audio files.

In conclusion, I want to point out that there are many other things I did not cover in this article, so you have to be mindful about the ways you choose to handle certain files. This is mainly about the way that you can organize things you have already archived, verifying their quality. And I hope that you learned at least a bit about quality, formats, and being more attentive to details. The S4 LEAGUE Archive Team has done a good job of archiving dozens of gigabytes of material, but there are still things that we are looking for: higher quality versions of audio files, videos, and images; footages of the 2007 Korean CBT; 2007-2008 versions of the game's client; etc.

If you happen to be in possession of one of those things, please conisder contributing that stuff. If you have something to contribute, I am happy to hear from you!

I said this many times before, and by before I mean since decades ago, but allow me to do what I think is a necessary memory dump once again: there are different kinds of games which are defined by a genre, and those genres can be either "singular" (e.g., racing) or "blended" (e.g., racing+puzzle). A genre is a category based on certain criteria: for example, 2D + side-scroller + platformer + action = metroidvania; or difficult boss fights + dark fantasy + lore-driven (usually somewhat abstract) = souls-like. But, similarly, there is also this type of game where a similar combination of design elements results in a unique genre blend, which is a mix of: open-world + empty world + shallow story + overhyped + stolen IP. That results in, what I personally call, "oblivion-like".

Now, I am one of the few people who hate Bethesda with a passion, and as such I also hate Todd's smug face and his garbage creations: games built on the worst and buggiest game engine ever made, composed by a sexual predator, programmed by people who seemingly never cared to optimize it, based on the series of someone who left the company after the second game in the series, and someone who was ousted from his own company. That Todd guy is known as the one who was leading the development of one of the worst video games ever created that plays like a walking simulator, like a Unity demo project, like a well crafted purposefully buggy application designed to infiltrate the gaming market like stuxnet to prevent gamers from playing actual video games. It lacks any joyful gameplay mechanics, it lacks any depth, there is no reasonable dialogue with NPCs who only know the word "citizen", there are no mobs to fight, and the "dungeons" are the same empty locations copy-pasted across the world, which itself lacks any life and dynamics. The experience of buying and playing Oblivion back in 2006 was the worst gaming experience I had in my entire life since the MS-DOS era. Playing that game after having played something like Fable: The Lost Chapters, among other RPG masterpieces was straight insulting. The "game" was so bad, it was the first time in my life that I went back to the store to return it. But.

But it opened my eyes. Such "games", turns out, they exist. They can exist. And, more so, they started existing en masse especially after Steam decided to get rid of Greenlight and popularization of mobile games. Those two things are the reason why almost every major company changed their gamedev strategy, since Flappy Bird proved that you can generate massive profits without your product being a well made AAA title--no, it can be a ten-sprite single tap low effort garbage that plays on people's feelings. Right after 2013 you can witness AAA games slowly losing quality, indie game enthusiasts spamming digital storefronts with unfinished and undercooked garbage, and on top of that the gacha plague, Valve dominance, further monopolization of the market, chip shortage, consumer market depression, and wget ignoring my regex rules for some god-unknown-damn reason. And that's fine, because now, after certain game designers have produced masterpieces that were a driving force behind graphics cards development, and thanks to whom the world has seen and experienced the vast possibilities of how a game can entertain your brain cells, we now have a standard to which we can hold new AAA creations, which is based purely on experience. Such were games like original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series. With every MW game I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth, it was so atmospheric and real, that wasn't just me playing the game. I was experiencing it. That was an immersive experience. Now? Now you have the sequels being infected with microtransactions and cringe like this. They simply killed the title.

We already know that AAA titles are those not only with big budget, but also with a team of professionals, each of whom knows what they are doing and is a master of their field: UI designers, programmers, sound designers, artists, composers, etc. Things they create aren't random--they are consistent. One of the issues I have with modern RTS games is that they aren't immersive, mostly because there is some inconsistency in their design: for example, the world is supposed to be medieval, but the UI suggests it's a sci-fi based long-long time in the future in the galaxy far-far away. That might look like a small detail, an unnecessary nitpicking, or being overly judgy over a passionate project of small and poor indie devs. But... nehh. Such a "small" thing is the reason why I wouldn't consider playing their game. And this is to the same effect with big companies attempting to create an "immersive experience" using Bethesda's signature method: market your game as open-world with vast possibilities. What they end up shipping? An overhyped abomination. A buggy dumpster fire. A No Man's Sky. For some reason, there is this tendency of thinking that the game having a bigger world makes it vastly more interesting and enjoyable and immersive. But, my experience of playing thousands of video games shows that this is not the case.

Gamers also come in different shapes and forms: there is this certain breed of players that only played games that are known to be oblivion-like. Or gacha trash. Or they've been growing up on Fortnite, and their all-time favorite is Red Dead Redemption 2. Or they've only played Animal Crossing, the diet version of The Sims--no, not on the N64--on the Nintendo Switch. Those are casuals. And don't get me wrong, I like Animal Crossing, it has its own unique atmosphere; and they play for fun, and that's OK. The problem is the people who are so casual and so far away from gaming politics, they lack any kind of awareness of what is considered a good game. Take Cyberpunk 2077 as an example: I heard about that game since this teaser trailer was uploaded on YouTube (or maybe even before that), it was pretty hyped, and it was delayed several times, and once it was finally released it was a total disaster. There were few reasons for me to think it was going to be a disaster: first, I didn't like The Witcher series, and it would take a whole another rant to explain why; secondly, the first gameplay reveal video they released was awful. But I didn't expect it to be so bad it was probably the first AAA game to be pulled from Xbox and PlayStation Store platforms. And such clueless gamers keep buying these overhyped games, and even more so--pre-ordering. People are ready to throw money at companies who actively abuse them, and in return those gamers get not even a 1% of the experience gamers like me got by playing those good old games.

Because of that, companies lack any incentive to "try hard" to make an actually good video game anymore. They went from making a game that you play to a game that is playing for you. Examples include God of War going from an action-driven masterpiece to a woke nintendovized disneyslop. That is also any mobile gacha hell with hundreds of buttons. You could call it a button clicking simulator that sucks your time and money, examples of which include Age of Empires going from cult classic to a miserable button clicking simulator that sucks your time and money. Same with Diablo series. There are just too many examples for me to bother to list them all. This is a shift in industry's priorities. And the priorities have changed because of the shareholders within those companies--those aren't passionate gamers or developers. That's why the easiest thing one can do is render a massive terrain, plant few trees here and there, insert mobs at random distant places, and let the player explore. Let them take a deep breath in the vastness of the wild. Should this really be the core reason of excitement? The open world. Or the fact that it's part of an old popular franchise? Take Risen as an example: you start on an island, and it has a relatively small world, but it's rich in quests and gameplay; and there are monsters everywhere, chilling in their natural habitat, minding their own business. The size of the world is not enormous, but it doesn't even matter--the gameplay is so good that you can actually experience the RP part of the RPG genre. There are games that are simply linear, like Enclave or Bulletstorm; there are also games with linear storyline and open world, like Dark Souls or Borderlands; there are similarly non-linear games. So, the issue is not the game being open-world. It's how does the game being open-world contribute to the consistency of its design and gameplay mechanics.

Why is it open-world in the first place? How do you interact with the environment? What does "exploring" mean to you? Is it running around an empty terrain, and once you found something interesting the game takes away controls to show an unnecessary cutscene while also showing sci-fi stylized dialogues with obvious messages describing what is going on? Is this what you call revolutionary? As you already realized these are all rhetorical questions, as the only reason why someone would call an oblivion-like experience a "paradigm shift for open-world design" is if their previously played game was The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Let's all collectively ignore the existence of ArcheAge released back in 2013. And if you're genuinely curious what else do I expect from an open-world game, what else would make a game with an open world much more enjoying, then here are three letters you should keep in mind: CDP. Content. Dynamics. Purpose. Does your game have character progression? Are NPCs dumb things you interact with in order to accept a tedious quest, or are they relatable (take an example from Tales of Eternia)? Does the quest require some mental work and a fun adventure or is it something primitive like "go bring me this item"? Is traveling from point A to point B a boring trip across an empty map, or is it rich in flora and fauna and you meet new monsters and NPCs and locations that are designed to provide a unique experience? You need to enrich your game with content (NPCs, monsters, locations, items), make it dynamic (activities, relationships, action, change), and give it purpose (rewards, character progression, world-building, moral decisions).

There are quite a few games that are "CDP-compliant", and one such game is Gothic. It was released in 2001 by Piranha Bytes and is an open-world dark fantasy action-RPG where you play as a nameless guy trapped in a colony. There are fractions you can be part of, each of which is unique; there is a weather system; there are houses with beds where you can take a nap, and if you enter someone's house they will be mad about it; there are annoying NPCs, there are cool NPCs, there are friends and foes; each quest has a meaning; there are no hints on the screen and no GUI elements other than HP/MP bars; cooking raw meat on the fire or asking a chef to make you a stew after bringing him some meat; opening some chests or doors requires lock picking; you can make your own sword, and for that you have to literally do it from scratch. There is so much more about that game it would take a whole another post of appreciation. Today, a new studio is trying their best to ruin the original experience of the game without realizing that. The most impressive part about it is that it's a 2001 game. 2 years before The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. 5 years before The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. 14 years before The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. 16 years before The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And with every new RPG game released I am thinking to myself: "they could've done so much more, and I am not even asking for too much". After all, a game is an art, being a game designer is a skill, and running a gamedev company requires a passionate developer who cares about their craft and can direct a team to create an amazing experience.