TICKRATE

by amicro

You start with a server, a little money and nobody online. TICKRATE is a management game about running a game server that people actually want to play on. Not a shooter, not a sandbox. A control panel, a chat window that never stops moving, and a pile of small decisions that only look small until you add them up. Players arrive once you give them a reason to. Then they start reporting each other. Every report lands in a queue with its evidence attached: accuracy, headshot rate, movement telemetry, chat logs, a note from whoever filed it. None of it is conclusive. A genuinely good player puts up numbers that look exactly like a cheater's, and the anti-cheat plugin you bought has opinions rather than proof. Ban the wrong person and you lose them for good, along with the reputation you spent two weeks earning. The machine underneath you has limits too. Every plugin costs tickrate. Every player costs tickrate. Below 25 the game stutters and people leave without saying why. A bigger hosting plan fixes that and takes a full day of downtime to migrate. You will be offered money, repeatedly. A donor wants admin rights. Someone found a duplication exploit and will sell you the details. The store moves real advantages, and every advantage you sell makes the chat a little angrier. Hire moderators and one of them will quietly unban his friends for cash. Read the audit log. Thirty days, or forty five, or sixty. One game day is three real minutes. Every player on your server is simulated on your own machine. Nothing connects anywhere.