If a game is fully available on the client side - it doesn't just need to run on the client side, but have everything available on the client side, data files and all - then yes you can archive it. But this is a very limited case and so far only the most simplistic games can be distributed like that. And TBH considering the DRM craze that games have, if anything i'd expect companies to try and make such archival as difficult as possible.
> You can’t run google docs offline because what would that even mean?
Having a word processor, spreadsheet, etc available offline.
> One of the main features of google docs is the live collaborative editing. It’s a multiplayer game that requires a host server.
It is a feature but i'd say that the main feature is being able to edit documents. In terms of games, it is a game with multiplayer features that still requires a host server for its singleplayer part (which is generally something that is frowned upon).
> You can architect your game to be friendly to being archived or you can make it completely impossible by introducing a dependency on the network.
You are talking from the point of view of the developer, i am talking from the point of view of the user. It should be obvious from when i wrote "How can you preserve a game that you have not full access to its files? Only the developer has that power and developers for the most part have shown over and over that they do not care about the games and applications they make after a couple of years or so". It is the user that suffers from such choices, not the developer.
Please try read my posts with the eyes of a user, with the concerns of a user's and try to avoid any developer bias.
> This is true for native games and web games.
Technically yes, but things aren't black and white - there are "natural" tendencies in each approach with the web approach leaning heavily towards network reliant applications and the native approach avoiding it.
Uh, before Google Drive, I'm not sure people were looking for a substitute to Word or other word processors. The "Killer Feature" of Drive is that multiple users can collaborate on the same document, hosted online, in real time. If anything, Google Drive has less features than Word overall. It's having "one true source" instead of emailing around mutliple drafts that is the killer feature for most people. Or having access to that document across all their devices. You could build an offline text editor in the browser, but why would you? (Then again, I use VSCode every day which runs on electron and works totally fine offline).
Edit: I just realized, you CAN run google docs offline. https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6388102?co=GENIE.Plat...
> Technically yes, but things aren't black and white - there are "natural" tendencies in each approach with the web approach leaning heavily towards network reliant applications and the native approach avoiding it.
The native approach has it's own "natural tendencies" that are anti-user, but I'll agree that yes, there are a lot of games that are unarchivable. I don't disagree with that.
> I'd rather not see (offline) games in the browser, or any other online-based method, personally.
This is the statement that you made that motivated me to respond. This is why I tended to ignore what some businesses might do and focus on the developer perspective of "what is possible with these technologies." Because we're already talking about single player offline games.
I guess I'm focusing on the developer side because you seem to be focusing on all of the anti-user things that game devs might do, to which I say "aren't they already doing those on native apps?" I just don't see how the web can make the situation worse. Everyone isn't going to want to play every game in the browser. However, there is great potential for multiplayer games, there is great potential for single player games that compete with mobile (which is by far the most anti-user platform of all!). Yes, people will use for other things, but they're already doing that without the web's help anyway.
Another Edit: > If a game is fully available on the client side - it doesn't just need to run on the client side, but have everything available on the client side, data files and all - then yes you can archive it. But this is a very limited case and so far only the most simplistic games can be distributed like that.
This is increasingly possible with WASM and WebGL.
> Edit: I just realized, you CAN run google docs offline. https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6388102?co=GENIE.Plat....
Yes, but i'm not talking about being able to run something offline, i'm talking about being able to take Google Docs, put it on a CD, DVD, external hard disk or whatever and have it working in 10 years or whatever independently from Google's servers, pretty much how you can do today with -say- Microsoft Office 95 (or any other desktop application available in downloadable or physical format).
> I guess I'm focusing on the developer side because you seem to be focusing on all of the anti-user things that game devs might do, to which I say "aren't they already doing those on native apps?"
> [...]
> This is increasingly possible with WASM and WebGL.
It was possible ever since the days of Netscape when could encode data as arrays in JavaScript and you could make (simple) games with all assets in a single easy to copy around HTML file since Internet Explorer 8 was released.
WASM isn't any different from JS when it comes to how data is accessed. Native/offline games (and other applications) have their data stored locally, all the files are available there and to do anything else it needs the developers to go out of their way to achieve that - which is why practically nobody does such a thing. Web-based games would have their data stored remotely so even if you download the entire code of the game on the client side, you still cannot archive it because you'll practically never have access to all the necessary data files (imagine an open world game, for example, that downloads assets as you roam the world).
> possible with WASM and WebGL
And to try and make myself clear, i am not worried about the possibility of doing something, i am worried about the impossibility of doing something: ie. having full control over the software you are using.
You can’t run google docs offline because what would that even mean? One of the main features of google docs is the live collaborative editing. It’s a multiplayer game that requires a host server.
You can architect your game to be friendly to being archived or you can make it completely impossible by introducing a dependency on the network. This is true for native games and web games.