What The Indie Stone know about how you play Project Zomboid!

[Another Mother's Son]

This should not be a spoiler, since you all had to accept the Terms of Service when PZ started to get all growed-up. As much as I trust The Indie Stone after all these years of them trusting me, I was curious as to what this specifically means about our relationship. Like when you realize you are getting pretty serious with That Person and you have to have That Talk about What Are We and What Does This Mean? It was honestly the most exciting moment since I started playing Project Zomboid.

So I actually read the TOS. Pretty boiler-plate for the most part. This is ours, you can't use it except in this way, we're not liable for burning up your gaming rig / fish aquarium. And then I read what I had actually hoped to find... SPOILERS! If you want to maintain your faith in RNG and just plain luck, skip this part!

The Indie Stone aggregate data on ... [paper shuffle, push up glasses] ...and I quote:

"B. Your Activities.

When you use, play or access The Indie Stone Services third parties (such as platforms like Steam or GOG) may on our behalf collect details of how you use our services, including:

• metrics information about when and how you use the services
• traffic data
• language preferences
• ACHIEVEMENTS
• SCORES
• GAMEPLAY STATISTICS
• TIME SPENT PLAYING
• CHOICES YOU MAKE ABOUT ANY CHARACTERS YOU USE AND PROGRESS YOU MAKE ON PROJECT ZOMBOID"

The first three are germane to any online game, to determine server requirements, volume of use, server origin... But the last five are the meaty ones!

• ACHIEVEMENTS? Does this mean in-game XP upgrades? STEAM badges?
  
• SCORES? Again, XP aggregate, longevity, ACHIEVEMENTS?
  
• GAMEPLAY STATISTICS: the most cut & dried. How many newspapers did you deliver vs. how many windows did you break ;)
  
• TIME SPENT PLAYING... this is where this starts to get interesting. I just crested 1000 hours in Project Zomboid. I've been playing since build 39, I think... This has been the most continually challenging (and my favorite) aspect of playing an early access game. I can read the developer's patch notes and still get caught completely off guard when zombies suddenly know how to find me upstairs or get around a long fence!
  
• CHOICES YOU MAKE ABOUT ANY CHARACTERS YOU USE AND PROGRESS YOU MAKE ON PROJECT ZOMBOID... This is the most fascinating by far! This means how we play Project Zomboid informs how Project Zomboid is played. For those who remember Build 40, waiting for a zombie to fall over a fence was pretty much a guaranteed one-shot kill. Well, guess why that is now offset by the RNG of an ankle lunge!

To me, this is the ultimate answer to Why Should I Buy/Play a Game that's Not Finished Yet? It's fulfilling to watch your use of the game affect the outcome of the final product from an independent development team with a goal to make their game as fleshed out and immersive as they possibly can. At this rate, I'd gladly pay annually what I first ponied up to get PZ 1000 hours ago!

[Shady Allie]

Publicado originalmente por TankGoodness:

Have you ever noticed when you text a friend or whomever about maybe a plumbing problem, for example or a car problem, perhaps its trouble with a boss, then you start to see advertisements geared to those issues. Anyone?

Not only that, a *guy was visiting his *grandma, who used a certain toothpaste. the google monster embedded in their phones saw that the guy's phone was in proximity to the grandmommie's phone and thought, hey, these people are close in proximity for a long time and we have the toothpaste data that the grandmommy likes, and so it pushed content ads for that toothpaste to the guy's phone.

*names were changed to protect the innocent.

How does this all tie back to Indie Stone and the little button of acceptance you ask? Well it doesn't of course. I'm just here to let you know I have been trying to find you and need to ask you... "did you know your car's warranty is about to expire?"

[TankGoodness]

HAHAHA