| I suppose the importance of "lost when the project closes" depends on the lifespan of the project. Every Flash/Shockwave browser game is becoming increasingly hard to play. Games for ancient Windows versions can be devilishly hard to get running, and games for PowerPC Macs are all but impossible. Emulation is flaky and incomplete for console games of all kinds. When it comes to something like a music library, "buy don't rent" makes a lot of sense to me, but the lifespan of software and particularly games tends to be finite even when you do own them. Now, I totally grant that Stadia will probably have 10% the lifespan of Flash or PowerPC architecture. But lots of people avoided a string of ephemeral music-streaming services and finally bought in with Spotify or Google Play Music. Lots of people avoided ebooks, but are finally starting to come around. So even if Stadia looks too short-lived, the second or third big game-streaming service might convince people it'll last as long as any other software does. (Along with picking up all the users who are only interested in one or two AAA titles to begin with.) I share the rest of your concerns though, so that sort of worries me more. Streaming games may be what finally enables the death of free/independent modding, DRM-cracking, tracker disabling, and offline play after years of battles with publishers trying to push them directly. |
If you have the actual .swf file, you can run the game in Flash Projector, easy!
> Games for ancient Windows versions can be devilishly hard to get running
What doesn't work in Virtualbox? Luckily, games from the 90's generally don't need GPU acceleration. I'm also continuously amazed by how much just works in modern Windows.
> games for PowerPC Macs are all but impossible.
There you have a point. Although even then, you can use VMWare + some unlocker tools to install Snow Leopard, and from there use Rosetta. Qemu is also supposed to be pretty good these days, although I've never tried it. Alternately, it's not that difficult to track down old Mac hardware.
> Emulation is flaky and incomplete for console games of all kinds.
Huh?
The Atari, NES, SNES, Genesis, Playstation, and all Gameboy models have damn-near perfect emulators. Identical to console down to the pixel, for every game.
Dolphin isn't quite take-a-microscope-to-the-screen accurate, but it will run the vast majority of the Gamecube and Wii's library such that you won't notice a difference.
The N64 and PS2 lack great emulators, but what's available is still very good. Some niche titles will exhibit glitches or refuse to run, but most stuff works well enough.
The Wii U and PS360 don't have such good emulators yet, but that's because those consoles are relatively recent. RPCS3 and Cemu are making great progress, and can already run a handful of large titles without problems, such as Persona 5 and BotW.
The original Xbox lacks a usable emulator, which sucks. Luckily, this isn't the norm.
Emulator developers have done amazing work, and the result is that most of gaming history is fully open to your exploration. Games will never be quite as plug and play as music files, but they aren't that labor-intensive to get working either.