How is it NOT a spiritual successor?
(preface: I'm aware i'll get downvoted by the gmod stans, I'm fine with that)
So, I'm not a gmod player. Played a little bit of it a loooooooong time ago. But as a game developer for over a decade (and currently working on several projects for S&Box), how is literally ANY game engine NOT a "spiritual successor" to what is GMod? ESPECIALLY SBox Editor?
I'm coming from the perspective of someone that sees gmod as the following: A creative platform where you make "game modes" or "mods". Those are just games. You're making video games. Sure they may depend on other things made by people you've never met, but it's videogames. It's game creation but with limitation.
How is Unity/Unreal/Godot/SBox NOT a "Spiritual" successor when they are also creative game making platforms yet with even LESS limitation? I'm not talking about a TRUE successor, but a SPIRITUAL one.
Add to the fact that SBox offers the BEST online multiplayer developer experience out of ALL the game engines out that (which was a big part of gmod).
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Genuinely, I don't understand most of the haters. I SOMEWHAT understand those that wanted GMOD 2 (and NOT a spiritual one), but do you feel like Garry and/or FacePunch owe you that? I would understand if he publicly stated he's working on actual literal "GMOD 2". Now, IF that's the case, I too would remain hurt, until a public follow-up statement apologizing and stating the reason for the pivot into "spiritual successor".
Has any of that happened?
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tl;dr
- A spiritual successor is defined as something that takes a SPIRITUAL definition of a thing, and then extrapolates on that.
- The spirit of gmod was: an online place to be creative with your friends, w/ a kick of retro IPs
- A successor to that spirit would be: an online place, but a larger platform, that allows even more creativity, without sacrificing access to retro IPs.
Does S&Box not satisfy that? Is my definition of the spirit of GMOD not to your liking?
Let's talk :)
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p.s. While, as an online-multiplayer engineer coming from Photon and Unity, I mean it when I say that SBox has the best experience for devs like myself. So while I am a fan of what FacePunch is doing, I am by no means a "stan". Like, first of all, do we REALLY need the word "bullshit" glowing on the sbox.game homepage? What are we, an edgy sixteen yr old boy?
EDIT::
Thank you u/TheWinningHit and u/ZweiProbleme , I think I have a super solid understanding of the problem and the source of the drama.
There HAS been reasonable implication to believe, earlier on, that this WAS going to be GMOD2. And ample clarity on the direction change was either lacking or nonexistent. (This is still open to debate, but just parroting the below convo so far)
GMod barrier to entry, despite this new age of LLMs, was and is still vastly lower in terms of "making something". Even if that "something" was cloning an existing thing and changing a single variable. That was easier via GMod than anything offered at that time.
SBox can still hugely benefit from making something like #2 available. A "Clone into Editor" button plus a server browser showing game versions.
"Spiritual Successor" is just simply too non-definite. Especially for a community as diverse as the GMOD one.