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0 pointsMereInterest4y ago0 comments

I'm not sure what you mean by the "classic" meaning of "server". Typically that list of servers in online games was actually a list of different physical locations you could connect to. Each one was a different server, a different physical computer. Some were hosted by the company that made the game, and some were hosted by the community.

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8 comments · 2 top-level

maxsilver4y ago· 4 in thread

The "gaming classic" meaning of "server" is a dedicated hosted instance of a software. It's from late-90s/early-2000s era LAN party lingo, stuff like, "let's get a game of Quake going, start up a server" or similar.

A single "server" (one physical computing machine) could have hundreds of "servers" (instances of the server-side of the game software) running on it. One physical tower PC could have "10 Quake Servers", "2 HL2-DM servers", "a Team Fortress 2 server", "a Unreal Tournament server" and such on it.

Discord originally seemed to be using that era of lan-party style language for it's naming conventions. A Discord "server" is just an instanced section of the server-side of the Discord software, and not specifically related to any real-world physical machine.

ryukafalz4y ago

The thing about game servers though is that you could run them yourself and typically choose where to do so. On your PC during a LAN party? Sure. On an always-on VPS? Sure. But wherever it was, you were always able to run it yourself, even if you ultimately might have paid someone else to run it. You're just running a server program.

By contrast, only Discord-the-company can run Discord servers.

fragmede4y ago

Sure but that hasn't been true since, like, 2003. Many games these days (especially popular console games) have no such option (despite the existence of a PC port). Only the company can "run" "servers" that the built-in (aka GameSpy is dead) matchmaking will see. Gone are the days that you can feed an IP address and port into a game and connect to a friend's instance. There are exceptions that prove the rule (Hi Factorio!) but they're rarer and rarer, especially if you want a dedicated (no graphics) server running. Still, technology has advanced to the point that we can run Quake2 in-browser via JavaScript+wasm (and I don't mean via a plug-in!), so the old ways aren't totally dead.

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MichaelBurge4y ago

There are "private servers" made by people other than the developers for games that don't release server executables or source code. So the remote side being named a "server" is independent of whether it is available to run(for gamers).

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MereInterestOP4y ago

But it also implies (1) that the server programs are independent, and (2) that I could run my own server independent of the developer. A Discord "server" is an unknown number of programs/services that interact with each other while presenting a unified interface. It is also entirely in the control of the developer, and I cannot run a private server.

theelous34y ago· 2 in thread

The general meaning of "server" as it relates to the world of gaming is; an instance of the application that more than one person can exist within at the same time.

It doesn't matter how temporally limited it is, it doesn't matter if it's on dedicated hardware or not, or how many "servers" are sharing that hardware. It doesn't even have to be on a different machine.

> Typically that list of servers in online games was actually a list of different physical locations you could connect to.

And? If you saw me hosting two cs lobbies from the same box, would you stop calling them servers?

MereInterestOP4y ago

The key was that it didn't matter which hardware was hosting the game. You connect to that server, which may be from similar locations, or may be hosted by the community. Calling it as a "server" had the implication that it wasn't necessarily the game publisher that was running the server.

fragmede4y ago

Yes but did we stop calling them servers when publishers stopped letting us run our own; accessible outside of their matchmaking process?

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8 comments · 2 top-level

maxsilver4y ago· 4 in thread

ryukafalz4y ago

By contrast, only Discord-the-company can run Discord servers.

fragmede4y ago

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MichaelBurge4y ago

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MereInterestOP4y ago

theelous34y ago· 2 in thread

The general meaning of "server" as it relates to the world of gaming is; an instance of the application that more than one person can exist within at the same time.

> Typically that list of servers in online games was actually a list of different physical locations you could connect to.

And? If you saw me hosting two cs lobbies from the same box, would you stop calling them servers?

MereInterestOP4y ago

fragmede4y ago

Yes but did we stop calling them servers when publishers stopped letting us run our own; accessible outside of their matchmaking process?

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